- [Announcer] Support for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, and the Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication, ellergroup.com.

- I'm Evan Smith.

He's a Pulitzer Prize winning associate editor of "The Washington Post," a co-host of "The Weekend" on MSNBC, and the author of a bestselling new memoir, "Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home."

He's Jonathan Capehart.

This is "Overheard."

(bright music) A platform and a voice is a powerful thing.

(audience clapping and cheering) You've really turn the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

Are we blowing this?

Are we doing the thing we shouldn't be doing by giving in to the attention junkie?

As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

- Two.

- This is "Overheard."

(audience clapping) Jonathan Capehart, welcome.

- Thank you very much, Evan.

Great to be here.

- Thank you so much for being here, and congratulations on the success of your book.

- Thank you, thanks very much.

- It's a big hit, and it really is a wonderful read.

As I told you, I thought it was very moving to read it.

I want to talk about some of the things and beginning with the title.

So the title is, "Yet Here I Am."

And to me, that speaks to the improbability of your story.

Right?

You're a Black man.

You're a gay man.

You grew up under difficult circumstances as a kid.

Your upbringing was difficult, and yet, you transcended that.

This is a book about your transcending your circumstances and transcending all the obstacles that you and others put in your way.

Right?

- Right.

You know, originally the title of the book was "Black Boys Like Me."

- "Black Boys Like Me."

- Right.

But then it was suggested to me that, "You know, we should probably change the title of the book.

"And we should also get a more up-to-date picture," 'cause I would use a black and white photo of me behind the microphone at KRLX at Carleton College and put an up-to-date picture, which is on the cover now.

But before we did that photo shoot, the photographer, Beowulf Sheehan, wanted to read the manuscript.

And when we got on the phone, he said, "I understand you're looking for a new title, "and I actually think the title "should be the very last sentence of the book."

- Right, this is the last line of the book.

The last line of the book is, "and- - [Both] "yet, here I am."

- And the moment he said it, a chill went through me because, no, that's it.

That title tells you everything you need to know about what this book is about.

It tells the story, so that's where the title came from.

- Well, I think it's a great title, and again, very evocative of what this is about.

I wanna ask you, you're not the only person who has had to transcend difficult circumstances growing up or has succeeded despite the odds or with improbable circumstances.

Why did you succeed?

What was it about your story that is different from the stories of so many other people who might have been in similar or even the same circumstances?

- I mean, quite honestly, it probably goes back to my mother.

I mean, the book is dedicated.

It says, "For Mom."

- Right, and it begins with her, right?

It begins with her.

- Yes, yes.

So my mother, when I was growing up, you have to understand, I was a big-headed news nerd who told everybody's business and then learned by watching "The Today Show," that oh my God, you could actually make a living running around- - A career out of this.

- A career out of telling other people's business.

(audience laughing) And so here I am, interested, wanting to go and be a television anchor, be a reporter, a television reporter.

And yet, there are no reporters in my family.

There are no journalists in my family.

There are no authors.

There are no writers.

There's no one in television in my family.

The closest I came to having anyone like that was my Uncle McKinley, who was an electrician at "30 Rock."

- At "30 Rock," right.

- At "30 Rock," right?

So, I give you all that background, because the number one thing my mother did was what she didn't do.

She never said, "You can't."

I would say this to anyone who would listen what I wanted to do, and at no point did she say, "You can't do that," or, "Why do you think you can do that?"

Instead, she said, "Well, if you think you can do it, "you're going to do it," and she was my biggest cheerleader.

- Now, of course, let's say with regard to your mother, she raised you, not literally by herself, because you had a whole bunch of other people who were kind of in the lane with her, but your dad died- - When I was four months old.

- When you were four months old.

I mean, so your circumstances from a family standpoint were at least difficult almost from birth.

- Right, I was the only child of a widow.

My father died when he was 25, 26.

My mother was around the same age, and so think about that.

My mother and I...

It was my mother and myself until she remarried when I was 16.

So, in a lot of ways, our relationship is more sibling than mother and son, which is, I think, why we were able to argue like siblings, but come back together like mother and son.

- Yeah, I wanna actually venture a guess at the answer to why you transcended.

- Oh, I can't wait to hear this.

- Because of course, I read this book looking for what was the thing, or what was the moment, and you already mentioned it, it was "The Today Show."

You did an internship at "The Today Show."

And the reason you did the internship, or that you got the internship is because you came into New York to interview for Carlton College where you were ultimately gonna go to college, at the New York Hilton was the interview.

And your Uncle McKinley, who you referred to, had you come over to "30 Rock" while you were in town, so he could take you around.

- Well, I called him.

I called him and said, "I'm just up the street.

"Can I come to the building?"

He's already used to me coming to the building and running around the 6th floor.

- But he asked you over on that day.

- Yeah, he said, "Oh, please come on over."

And I get there and he says, "You're just in luck.

"I have work to do in the Nightly News office.

"Do you want to come?"

And that was a rhetorical question.

He knew the answer to that question.

Of course I wanted to go.

- Of course, news nerd.

- Because I thought I was gonna meet Tom Brokaw, John Chancellor, all the greats.

And I get there, and there's nobody there.

It's 9:00 in the morning, no one is there, except for this one woman sitting at her desk, drinking a coffee, eating a bagel, reading one of the tabloids.

And I was seated on a sofa, facing her, like this close.

And I worked up the courage to talk to her, and I asked her name.

She said her name is Anne Skackle-Tarian.

She worked on "NBC Nightly News."

And then, you see a kid sitting in front of you, you ask, "What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

And I said to her, "Well, I wanna be a Moscow correspondent, "and then I'm trying to decide "whether I wanna go to the London Bureau or the White House.

"But if I go to the London Bureau, "I definitely then wanna go to the White House, "because then I wanna come back to New York "and be anchor of "The Today Show."

(audience laughing) I can only imagine what her reaction was, probably like your reaction right now, like, who is this lunatic?

- Glad I asked.

- Right.

So my uncle comes back, says, "It's time to go."

And I thank Ms. Tarian for speaking with me.

I mean, I was and remain a very shy person.

And so it took everything in me to talk to her.

And when my uncle said, "It's time to go," and I said, "Thank you," she said, "Wait a minute," and then opened her desk drawer, pulled out an NBC notepad, wrote down the name Kay Bradley, her phone number, 'cause this was before the internet, her phone number, and then with a flourish, ripped the paper off and said, "Here, get yourself an internship on "The Today Show," and that's how it happened.

(audience clapping) - Right, and the thing... We'll talk about "The Today Show" in a second, but the thing about that is that might not have happened for a million reasons.

For a million reasons that might not have happened.

You might not have gone with your Uncle McKinley to "30 Rock" that day.

He might not have taken you to the "Nightly News" set or offices where you met this woman.

She might not have decided to engage with you.

She might not have given you the name, a million things.

- But one thing you didn't mention, I could have just sat there and said nothing.

- True.

- And what I learned in that instance, and another instance 20 years later, is one of the lessons sprinkled throughout the book.

And the number one lesson is when someone asks you what you want, tell them.

- Tell them, say- - Say it out loud.

- And be an advocate for yourself.

Because you're gonna be the best advocate for yourself of anybody.

- But also, you never know what they're going to say.

And in that instance, she asked me, I told her, I got an internship.

20 years later, I'm asked in what I thought was an informational interview, "Do you wanna work here?"

I said, "No, because I don't do this kind of reporting."

And the person got mad and said, "Well, what do you wanna do?"

And I thought, I've got nothing to lose.

I still have a job I like and I said, "I wanna write a column once a week and go on television "and talk about it like I do right now."

And he looked at me and said, "Well, why can't you do that here?

That was at the beginning of a week.

By the end of the week, I had a brand new job and tripled my salary.

- Because you spoke up.

- Because I was asked what I wanted, and I told them.

- It's amazing to me.

I appreciated "The Today Show."

There's a chapter devoted to "The Today Show" experience, and I appreciated you saying how important Bryant Gumbel was to you.

Because at that time, it was not the case that no one on television looked like you.

But you needed to see people who gave a sign to you, "I can do this, because they can do this."

- Well, keep in mind, Evan, I knew I could do the job.

(audience laughing) Remember, I was already- - All right, all right.

- Remember, I said to Anne Skackle-Tarian- - You did.

- "This is what I want to do-" - Right, Mr. Self-confident, I get it.

- And that was when "The Today Show" was anchored by Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley.

But it wasn't until Bryant Gumbel came on the scene that I looked and I said, "Wait, I really can do this, "because there's someone on screen who looks like me.

- Yeah, that's amazing.

So I wanna go to the end of the book.

There's something that you said that really struck me.

You said, "I have enduring faith in this nation."

I'm gonna paraphrase now, "despite the fact "that this nation tests that faith every day."

You still believe in America.

You still believe in the values and the principles that undergird all of this.

- Absolutely.

- And yet you also acknowledge that, man, oh man, we're in a moment.

Can you say more about that, please?

- Well, I'll deal with the positive first and then deal with the man, oh man.

But think about it, as you started this interview, my story is improbable on paper, but yet, in this country, my improbable story is more than probable, it's happening.

- It is.

- Right, it is.

And so, in writing that chapter, I was reminded, I started writing this during the first Trump administration, and I needed a break from the merry-go-round that that was, and started writing down all the stories that had been in my head.

While at the same time, I was reading David Blight's mammoth biography of Frederick Douglass.

And there was a paragraph in there that I'll try to paraphrase that was sort of a survey of Douglass's life from man born into slavery, escaped, taught himself to read, became the greatest orator of the 19th, early 20th century, and then lived long enough to see all the work from abolition of slavery to helping women suffrage, saw all of it destroyed by the courts, by presidents, by Congress, through Jim Crow and the end of Reconstruction.

And what hit me when I read that paragraph was, well, but wait a minute, I am reading this paragraph as an out gay, Black, married man who works at one of the preeminent newspapers in the United States, you can't tell me that progress is not possible in this country, that we cannot move forward.

And so, I'm looking at what Frederick Douglass went through, and what I'm going through now is nothing compared to what he went through.

And by reading that paragraph, it showed me that history is not linear, history is cyclical.

And so, to your point about, man, oh man, what we're going through, we're going through it.

We've been going through it for a while.

But what I like to say to people is, how many of you have been on a really turbulent flight?

Like, so bad, you're knocked around, you're jostled.

You don't think you're gonna make it.

In fact, some of you may have said the rosary, you prayed, but you're here, you survived it.

And that's what I think we're going through right now in this country.

We're going through a really bad flight, but we will get through this if we do not lose faith in this country and in each other.

- Right, provided that, that flight is not on the way to a CIA black site in El Salvador.

(audience laughing) - Way to keep it positive.

- Yeah, okay.

- Way to keep it positive.

- Not my job.

- Right.

(laughing) - So, let me pivot the conversation from the moment we're in as a country to the moment we're in in journalism.

You and I have both been at this for a long time.

Is journalism meeting the moment?

I wonder about the profession that we have devoted our lives to, and whether, in this moment, we are doing everything we can to inform the public about the things going on, how they affect their lives, to make those connections.

I worry sometimes, Jonathan, that we write about the distraction and not the destruction.

We write about the outrage rather than the thing that causes outrage.

And different people view what is destructive and what is not differently, we know that.

But I feel like we chase the shiny object, but there are consequences on people's lives and communities that we don't necessarily devote as much time or attention to.

Am I wrong about that?

- No.

In fact, I was sitting here thinking, why are you bugging my office?

I mean, I'm saying the same thing.

You know, before we went to the ensemble show, and I had my own show, I remember saying to my team, in the early days of the second Trump administration, I said, "Listen, we cannot be distracted.

"He says a lot of things on social media.

"He does a lot of things.

"We have to pay attention to what he actually does."

He talks smack all the time, but until which time action is taken, let's focus on the action.

And I think our business has been going through ups and downs, but mostly downs for a long time now.

Before, it was because of technology.

Because of the democratization of information, because of the internet, everyone in this audience has the same access to information that we do.

That used to be- - We used to be the gatekeepers, right?

- Yes, yes, but now that's not the case.

Fast forward, then comes Twitter, then comes Snapchat, TikTok, and now suddenly, there are people out there who are either masquerading as journalists or who have such a following that people turn to them for information.

And so it's old dudes like us who are trying to figure out, well, how do we get that audience back, or how do we capture that audience and have them pay attention to what we're doing?

And I think at a certain point, we have to stop, one, chasing the shiny object, but we have to stop chasing what we used to have and start chasing where the culture's going, where the people are going to get their information.

- Right, I mean, look, I play tennis occasionally, and on the court, you play your game, you don't ever play their game, always play your game.

And I worry that sometimes we've been put in the position on defense of playing their game, chasing audience, chasing clicks, not actually doing the hard work that's in the public interest, I mean, that's my concern.

- Right, but I think of PBS in this regard, and specifically, "PBS NewsHour."

When I stepped into the very big shoes left by Mark Shields, I had this impression that the PBS viewer was older, not necessarily in urban areas.

And what I discovered really quickly is that the PBS audience is huge.

It runs the range of America.

The number of young people who have come up to me and say, "I watch you every Friday night," or, "I used to watch with my grandparents, "and I still watch, because it reminds me of them, "and also, it's a terrific show."

But what they don't say is they're not watching on television, they're watching on YouTube.

And so, to your point of stop chasing the audience, what PBS and "PBS NewsHour" does is they're just providing the news.

They're doing excellent reporting.

- And they're playing it straight.

- And they're playing it straight, but the audience, they're not chasing the audience.

The audience has found them because of the work that they do.

And I think if more people in our profession just focused on the work, do the work, this job is a calling.

There's a reason why journalism and the free press is the only profession protected in the Constitution.

- For the moment.

(audience laughs) - Only protected in the Constitution, Evan, because the Founders understood that a successful healthy democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and that informed citizenry, we're the ones.

- We're the root there.

- Yes, we are the ones who inform them.

- Right, so I do think that your weekly appearances with David Brooks, terrific, and I think it actually, it's great to see the two of you who don't agree on everything, maybe don't agree on most things.

- Well, not everything.

I mean, thanks to Trump, he's come a little more my way.

(audience laughing and clapping) - But I would say, to me, the feature of that interaction, the two of you, is the civility of it and the mutual respect, and there's not enough of that in the world.

- Right.

- Okay, now do MSNBC.

- [Jonathan] Okay.

- Is MSNBC in the same vein as PBS, do you think, playing it straight, down the middle?

You know the critique of cable news.

- Sure.

- Is the critique fair?

I mean, you've obviously... You mentioned that you hosted a show before alone, now you're hosting it as a triumvirate.

Is cable news good for America?

Is MSNBC good for America?

- Well, I mean, when you put MSNBC up against, say, Fox News, yes.

Yes, the other thing that folks have to keep in mind is that, think of MSNBC as two halves put together.

One half is the day side programming, the straight down the middle, here's the news, here's what's going on.

And then there's the other half, which is what we call perspective television, basically from Nicolle Wallace through "11th Hour," and then on the weekends, our show's 7:00 to 10:00, Ali Velshi, and then in the evening with "Weeknight."

Our shows, our perspective, but all of our shows are rooted in fact.

All of our shows are rooted in reporting.

We just have the privilege of being able to say, "As a result of this reporting, here's what we think."

And certainly, on our show, I'm the only one at the table who is an opinion writer.

The other two, Jackie and Eugene, they are straight news reporters.

So they get to say, "Well, my reporting says this, "and my reporting says that," and I get to say, "Well, my reporting says this, and that is not good."

I get to say what- - What you think.

- What I think.

- Right.

- And so, I think as long as the conversation is rooted in reporting and rooted in fact, there's nothing wrong with turning on MSNBC and getting a perspective that you might not get anywhere else.

- So, let me ask you about that and also, the role that you have at the "Washington Post."

You've been on the Opinion section of "Washington Post" previously, right?

- I'm still there, 18 years.

- Right.

But my point is, you've been there for not, this is not a new thing for you, you've been there for a while.

One of the challenges that I find as a journalist is making the case to the public that there is a difference between opinion and news.

And the question is whether the media literacy of much of the country is up to that task.

- No, it's not.

- Right.

Seeing the difference, right?

And so, whether it's MSNBC and the difference between the day side and the perspective, or the "Washington Post," the difference between opinion and news, we have a problem that the people out in the world who don't have the same knowledge of this stuff as we do, they can conflate the two.

- Right, they conflate the two, but this is one of my soapbox issues.

Because at the height of Twitter, when I would be writing a column, and I would put it out on Twitter with either a quote or something from the piece with a link right there.

And then people would pop off about the headline, about the quote that was there.

"Well, why did you say that?"

"I didn't, it's a quote."

"Well, why didn't you say this?"

"I did.

You should have read it."

And I started saying to people, "If I wrote the way most people read, I'd be fired."

(audience laughing) The amount of time I spend writing a column, I've done my reporting, I'm doing my writing, and then every time I make an assertion or put in a data point, a poll number, a figure from the GDP or whatever, there's a hyperlink.

I put a hyperlink, because what I have in my ear as I'm writing is a reader saying, "How do you know that?

"Prove it to me."

- You have to show your work.

- I show my work and so it takes me longer, because I have enough respect for the reader to try to anticipate their questions, try to anticipate their pushback, and yet, the reader doesn't even meet me halfway.

- Right, but of course, from the perspective of the journalism industry, that's the situation that we deal with.

I mean, I find myself frustrated also at times, similar to what you're saying, but what do we do?

We go to war with the army we've got.

This is the army we've got, these readers, who are not as discerning as we'd like them to be.

- Well, right.

They're not as discerning in any particular moment, but there might come a time where that reader is really angry about something, and they're looking for that story, column, whatever, that will give them what they're looking for.

And as long as we keep writing, keep talking about the things that are important, the audience will find it, and that's what keeps me going.

That's what I tell young journalists, "Remember, this is a calling.

"You do not get into this profession-" - To get rich.

- "to get rich or to be famous."

They might be, might be byproducts, but you get into this job, because you want, there are stories you want to tell, there are people you wanna shine a line on, there are issues that you want to highlight.

And at some point, someone is gonna be working on a paper, or they're gonna be preparing for a committee hearing or a school board meeting, and they're gonna come across something that you've written, and that's gonna be the thing potentially that changes their mind or gives them the silver bullet that they're looking for to try to make headway on an issue.

- Yeah, we've got, Jonathan, just about two minutes left.

You sort of got there a little bit in your answer just now, but I want you to leave us with something optimistic about the future of journalism.

I mean, you and I both believe in this work.

We're not gonna stop doing it.

But there's a whole generation trying to decide, is this work for me?

And I worry that we're hollowing out that generation by talking about how bad things are all the time and how hard this work is, and the economic model is broken.

And we have undermined faith and confidence in the media business, not you and I, but out in the world.

The confidence that people have in our institution is not there.

Despite all of that, what optimism do you have for the future of our profession?

- I've been saying it.

I'm always thrilled to see a young person who says, "I wanna be a reporter.

I want to get into this business."

And I say, "Don't do it to get rich.

"Don't do it to get famous.

"Do it because you want to do it."

And we've been in this business a long time.

We have seen the folks who get into this business for the wrong reasons.

They flame out.

They do not last.

They do not last long, because either they've proven themselves to be unworthy of the profession, or more importantly, the audience can see right through them and understand that they are not giving them the information that they want or they need.

- Yeah, well, I'm gonna take from you the fact that we need to continue to make people understand, this is a calling, that this work is important.

That's optimistic.

I like that.

Jonathan, thank you for being here.

This book is so good, as I said.

It's wonderful to see you.

- Thank you so much, Evan.

- Jonathan Capehart, thank you so much.

(audience clapping) - Thank you.

- Good, good, thank you.

(bright music) We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- The opinion side of the paper is where the publisher of the paper can exert his influence.

It's the only place where the publisher can or should exert his influence.

And so, when the publisher says, "We're not going to endorse "in presidential elections anymore," that is his prerogative.

- [Announcer] Support for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, and the Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication, ellergroup.com.

(bright flute music)