“Over the years I’ve worked closely with the production team and the hosts on so many breaking news stories out of Washington—including a memorable time where I had to run to catch a campaign bus on live radio—and have always been impressed by how hard they work and how smart they are,” Detrow said last month, when NPR announced his appointment.
For Detrow, hosting NPR’s flagship evening news show is the latest milestone in a radio career that began when he was an undergraduate at Fordham.
Paying Tribute to a Fordham Mentor
Last fall, at the annual On The Record benefit for WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, Detrow reflected on his time as an undergraduate reporter at WFUV—and the lasting impact that George Bodarky, FCRH ’93, the station’s former longtime news director, had on his career.
“He always believed in us, he always treated us as professionals,” said Detrow, whose work at WFUV included an hourlong radio documentary, Treating the Rainbow Nation: AIDS in South Africa, which aired on New York and San Francisco stations and garnered nationwide recognition in 2006.
“[Bodarky] was willing to entertain the most wild proposals. He gave us confidence to make us feel like we belonged. … He was serious about ethics. He was serious about errors and talking through mistakes with patience and kindness, but making it clear that you have to get it right.”
After graduating from Fordham, Detrow earned a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government and worked as a statehouse reporter for NPR affiliates in Pennsylvania and California.
He has won numerous awards, including a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013 for reporting on Pennsylvania’s hydraulic fracturing boom for NPR’s StateImpact project. He joined NPR in 2015 and reported on the 2016 presidential election before becoming a congressional correspondent. In 2021, he produced a documentary, Sacred Ground, about 9/11 and the legacy of Flight 93. He had been NPR’s White House correspondent since 2020 and co-host of The NPR Politics Podcast, which he helped launch.
Bringing Everyday Stories to Life
Through it all, Detrow said, he has drawn on lessons learned at WFUV, especially Bodarky’s sense that it is a privilege to tell other people’s stories.
“He was talking to a student reporter one day, and he said, ‘What kind of interviews do you want to do?’ And the … student said, ‘I want to interview important people, I want to interview famous people,’” Detrow recalled last fall. “And George said, ‘Those are actually the most boring interviews to do. They don’t want to tell you that much. What you want to do is interview people who have compelling stories—bring their stories to life, tell people about them.’ And I never forgot that.”
Detrow said that joining WFUV and meeting Bodarky in his first year at Fordham helped set the trajectory for his career.
“I cannot think of doing anything else with my life. And the fact that I say that after covering the 2016 and the 2020 presidential election really says a lot,” he said with a laugh.
He’s excited for the new opportunities that will come with being the weekend host of All Things Considered.
“With a presidential election already underway, there will be a lot of political news to cover,” he said. “But I’m also really looking forward to branching out into other areas, including the cultural, musical, and sports news that listeners look for on the weekends.”
