Guest hosting NPR's Weekend Edition: Loving journalism as a team sport

The coolest thing about guest hosting a show, is the fun of working with talented colleagues to pull off a major broadcast

After finishing my second stint as a guest host on Weekend Edition, filling in for news legend Scott Simon on the Saturday show, I’m experiencing a few feelings at once.

First, relief that I didn’t accidentally sneeze, curse or mangle someone’s name terribly during the live parts of the broadcast. But I’m also feeling super grateful, both for the opportunity to do something different and for the amazing staffers who work so hard to pull the broadcast together.

We presented a really wide-ranging show, with everything from an update on the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans to an inspiring talk with poet Amanda Gorman, an exploration of the traditional journalism vs influencers debate, a quick update on the Friday Night Lights reboot and a freewheeling sports segment that somehow also touched on fashion and chess.

You can hear it all by clicking here.

But the show ended with an interview that was one of the favorite moments of my time at NPR, a talk with virtuoso bassist Tony Levin.

Tony might be the most amazing bassist you never heard of. He’s played bass parts that anchored hits like Sledgehammer, Shock the Monkey and Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel, along with songs by Seal, David Bowie, Paul Simon and King Crimson.

When producers asked me for ideas about a musician to speak with for this week’s show, I thought about Levin because I had just seen him perform on the BEAT tour, where he joined fellow Crimson alum Adrian Belew, virtuoso guitarist Steve Vai and Danny Carey, drummer for Tool, to play songs from Crimson’s 1980s period. I knew the tour had just ended after 64 dates and Tony had just released a new solo record, Bringing It Down to the Bass.

Because we were working to schedule interviews during a holiday week, I wasn’t hopeful. But it turns out, I’ve known the publicist for the BEAT tour for many years – all the way back to my days covering pop music for the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey – and he was instrumental in getting Tony to join us for a fun interview.

And here’s where the teamwork comes in: Producers at NPR did an amazing job blending Tony’s music with our discussion, so when he talked about a song or technique, listeners immediately heard an example of what he was talking about.

As a critic, analyst and correspondent, I don’t often get to do longform interviews for NPR. And it is easy to feel a little isolated, working on your own story ideas in your own little corner of pop culture.

But joining a team of great producers, editors and journalists to shape a compelling two-hour broadcast – that is a new and thrilling experience that I have really enjoyed while guest hosting.

It also brings home for me how many hard working, smart, principled people it takes to create our reports. I know there’s a lot of cynicism out there about major media outlets – and we certainly deserve some of those side-eyes.

Still, I resist the kind of knee-jerk cynicism about journalism that leads people to write sentences like “traditional media always…(insert insulting presumption here).” Because there are way too many good people working hard to deliver quality news every day, and I’m in awe of their collective wisdom, talent and enterprise.

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