'It's a calling,' says Korva Coleman on reporting the facts every hour, every day

0:00Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. Before we start the show today, the days left in this year are numbered, and we're feeling reflective about the values and commitments of public media. Public media is what makes Consider This and all the podcasts you love from NPR unique. From its founding, public media was meant to educate listeners and illuminate stories from underrepresented communities to provide cultural insight that expands your perspective. Our commitment to those principles will never change at NPR. But with federal funding for public media eliminated, we now rely on your support to bring you Consider This more than ever.

0:40That's why we're extra grateful this holiday season and want to pause to appreciate the generosity of NPR Plus supporters and all of our listeners who have already stepped up to donate. Thank you so much. If you haven't made a year-end donation yet, you can cross something off your to-do list right now and support public media by signing up for NPR Plus. It's a simple recurring donation that gets you perks with a whole bunch of NPR podcasts, including Consider This. Join us at plus.npr.org.

1:21Chances are, before you heard the first story on today's show, you heard an NPR newscast. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. I'm Giles Snyder. I'm Janine Hurst. I'm Dave Mattingly. I'm Lakshmi Singh. Newscasts are the five-minute news summaries that you always hear at the top of every hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We're always here. If you don't already recognize her voice, that's Korva Coleman, one of NPR's newscasters. Newscasts are one of NPR's most popular products. Millions of listeners tune in each week. I can also tell you that NPR newscasts are the number one podcast listened to in the United States, according to PodTrack.

2:06Number two is The Daily, and we leave them in the dust. The number three, I should add in fairness, is NPR is up first, and we leave them in the dust too. But they're nice people that NPR is up first. Corva starts her day really early. I get up at five minutes of midnight, Eastern time. And that's not just to read in on the news. There is also the fact that Corva is on camera, too, for visual newscasts. Carl Castle, one of my most beloved predecessors, had an old saying. And he used to say he got up at 1.05 a.m. every morning. And people would say, that's an odd time to get up. 1.05? But Tam, Carl never had to match earrings to his jacket.

2:52Was he camera ready? No, he did not have to do that. Carl, I know you're having a wonderful time in the afterlife, but you never had to find stockings in the middle of the night. Consider this. Day in and day out, it's NPR's newscasters who deliver the news to our audience more than anyone else. Coming up, we talk to Corva Coleman about what it takes to get the story and get it right every hour of every day.

3:22From NPR, I'm Tamara Keith.

3:34It's Consider This from NPR. One of the things listeners probably don't think about is how often radio journalists see words for the first time right before we have to say them out loud. And that's especially true for newscasters. So when we began our conversation for this week's Reporter's Notebook, I asked veteran NPR newscaster Korva Coleman how she gets pronunciations right. So the famous name that I have is the Icelandic volcano, which is Ajafanajokala. And this is the volcano that erupted in 2011. And there was so much ash in the air. No one could fly. Traffic was disrupted. this was so impossible just when you looked at it.

4:19It's like they never heard vowels. There was no way to look at that and even sound it out. You just don't know. What do we do? You call the embassy. And I'm like, I'm so sorry to trouble you. But do you mind if I say this for you a lot? And they were like, oh, I have fun of yoke a lot. Let us say it for you again. So that's a fun one. And you can still say that one in your sleep. Oh, I can. But actually, my favorite one, for which I have a crown. I'm seeing that you do, in fact, have a crown. This is the president at one time of Madagascar. Harry, fortunately. Raja Onari Nampianina. And I cheated.

4:57I called the embassy for that one, too. Now, these are lovely people who do like vowels but don't believe in consonants, apparently. So they were eager to walk me through that. But in honor of my getting it right, I was presented with a small paper crown. So how big is the team you work with? Very small. In the morning, of course, everyone has heard of Dave Mattingly, my co-anchor. But we work with a team of only three producers and editors. They are always hard at work. They are always putting things together. So as Dave Mattingly and I are writing like the wind, the producer is looking ahead, always looking to find the best audio for you that they possibly can.

5:38Your editors are making sure that you don't end your sentences on a preposition. If I can confess a major failing that I have, I seem to be a little bit geographically challenged. I have a tendency to say things like east when I mean west. Once I put a major fire east of Manhattan, which of course would be the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe there's an island. Perhaps. And fortunately, my editors will always say, I think you mean West. Are there any moments from your career where something really big happened while you were on the air that really stick with you? Yes. The first thing I can think of is I was at work on September 11th all those years ago.

6:24And at the time, I was the midday newscaster, a shift that Lakshmi Singh now holds. And I started the day just as any other day. But I ended the day with the 4 p.m. Eastern Time newscast. And I can still recite my lead, which was,

6:47And now I have chills. That was an incredible day because we watched the evolution of what was happening. We had to experience it as well as report on it. But at the same time, people are doing what I'm doing. I'm calling my husband, telling him I'm going to stay. I had to call my mother and tell her the same thing. And being glad at the end of the day that I made that choice. I was really lucky. My late uncle who served in the Navy in Vietnam was really kind to me. I called him on my way home and he said, this will not go unanswered. Your job is to show up at your job tomorrow morning. And that just sort of gave me the wind in my sails that I think I needed.

7:35I will tell you one that I get a lot of questions about is that newscast in January 2018. Donald Trump was president at the time and NPR had reporting that he had used an epithet to refer to some countries. And for purposes of this interview, I will just call that mmm whole countries. And it's not the A word. Yeah, it's far from it. That is the most collaborative piece of copy I think I have ever written. It was decided that we would say it. We were going to do it. I wrote it. My editor looked at it. My producer looked at it. My executive producer looked at it. The deputy managing editor for the mornings for NPR looked at it.

8:27Our wonderful team from Legal looked at it. The vice president for news looked at it. And by 9 a.m. that morning, we were ready to go. And so I took a deep breath and said, I have something to tell you. And I did. Just to put on my White House correspondent hat for a second. At the time, it was reporting based on things the president had said behind closed doors. Well, at a rally just recently, he said it out loud in public, recounting that one time he said that thing. So now he said it live on C-SPAN at the very least. I feel vindicated. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Oh, I have to fan myself. Seriously, I think I still have the piece of paper.

9:15I would frame it. I have it safely tucked away because I think this should be given to NPR as a keepsake. It was a memorable day. So you have a very tough personal schedule, certainly. and at times the news is very tough. What keeps you committed to this day in and day out? I actually have given this a lot of thought, especially as this has been not just a difficult year for journalism, it's been a super difficult year for public media and particularly public radio. I think all of us, Tam, have come to a moment where we took a breath and we realized we were going to recommit to what we were doing But I approach journalism as a calling, as some would say.

10:04I think about people who are called to nursing. I think about people who are called to social work, teaching. I think about people who are called to the ministry. I think about journalism in the same way. It's a calling for me. This is something that I have to do. I can't imagine not being a journalist, and I cannot imagine myself as anything other than an NPR journalist. And because I feel I have this deep calling, that faith, that knowledge, that relationship we have with listeners is what sustains me through everything. We are purpose-driven. Exactly. Like, to the core. Yes. Or at least that's what we tell ourselves to get up in the morning.

10:51We do. But also, there's a way that we know it deeply about ourselves, the way we know it about each other, the way we know it about all of our colleagues at member stations around the country, how they, too, with few resources and just as much passion as we have. We're both out of member stations, Tam. We know what it's like. Which station did you come from? I came out of WAMU, Washington, D.C. Where did you come from? KQED San Francisco, KPCC Pasadena, spent some time with my friends at KBPR, Valley Public Radio in the Central Valley of California in Fresno, WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and WCPN in Cleveland.

11:34I've got an alphabet soup for you. We're all NPR. This episode was produced by Lina Muhammad. It was edited by Adam Rainey. Our executive producer is Sammy Yinnigan.

11:50It's Consider This from NPR News. I'm Tamara Keith.