ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
If you're a faithful listener, I don't need to tell you that every hour, 365 days a year, our newscasters tell you what you need to know. Often, the first place you'll hear breaking news on NPR is in those updates delivered by people whose voices you trust. Well, Jack Speer has been one of those voices, anchoring afternoon newscasts for almost 20 years. And this week he is retiring, so he is here to look back on his tenure. Jack, it is nice to have you here in Studio 31 instead of the other side of the building, where you broadcast the newscast from.
JACK SPEER, BYLINE: Yeah, it's great to be here, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Most...
SPEER: It - whole different change of scene here.
SHAPIRO: A whole - it's a much bigger studio here.
SPEER: It is. It is bigger.
SHAPIRO: Most listeners know you as a newscaster, but when I started at NPR in 2001, you were a reporter on the business desk. How did you get your start at NPR?
SPEER: Well, I was a local reporter covering business news, which I started doing about in the '90s, which was a time when you really didn't need to have, like, an MBA or anything like that. I had a lot of business experience because my father was a vice president of a titanium company. I learned a lot about business. And so in 1993, I was at WTOP here in Washington, and they said, hey, we need someone to talk about business. You seem to know about it. Why don't you do it?
SHAPIRO: You started at NPR in 1998, is that right?
SPEER: Yeah, I started in 1998. I came in actually to do a morning business segment with Bob Edwards.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Correspondent Jack Speer.
SPEER: Good morning. Will this be the week Wall Street puts another one in the record books?
And the spent the next 10 years running around in the field, having fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: What we call the angel's share.
SPEER: It also helps if your master distiller comes from a long line of whiskey makers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I followed in my father's footsteps...
SPEER: The city of Cincinnati has around 3,000 miles of sewers. The large pipe we're standing in at the moment is spewing an unsavory greenish-brown mix.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: A lot of things relieve themselves into this thing. Sort of a little potty humor there.
SPEER: There are plenty of things that make this plant different. There are, of course...
SHAPIRO: When I think about the news events that have happened during your career at NPR, it's all of the enormous things of the last...
SPEER: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: ...You know, this century that we're living in. Can you tell us about one of your most memorable days on the air?
SPEER: The most memorable time for me would have to have been 9/11. I mean...
SHAPIRO: What were you actually doing in the days after 9/11?
SPEER: I think I spent about - I don't know - a week, 10 days - I don't think I even went home much. I was mostly here, and I worked with Scott Simon overnight, and I was Scott's studio buddy.
SHAPIRO: 'Cause I remember NPR stood up a kind of call-in show between...
SPEER: We did. We did.
SHAPIRO: ...The end of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED and...
SPEER: Yep.
SHAPIRO: ...The beginning of Morning Edition.
SPEER: Yep.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
SCOTT SIMON: This is a special report from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon in Washington, D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SPEER: I referred to it kind of as like sort of, like, a national handholding, almost.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
SPEER: Scott, good morning.
SIMON: And how are the overseas and financial markets reacting?
SPEER: Well, you know, in the clear, cold light of day, less than 24 hours after this horrific series of events, and the rest of the world has now had some time to absorb some of this...
And we would take calls from people. And Scott would answer people's questions. And, you know, we tried to provide the information we could provide.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
SIMON: Take a call from Priscilla (ph) in Winthrop, Maine. Priscilla, thank you for...
PRISCILLA: Hello.
SIMON: Hi. Thank you for calling.
PRISCILLA: Yes, Scott, thank you. I am...
SHAPIRO: And for the 18 years that you've been on the newscast unit, how do you think about that role? It's different from being a reporter or being the host of a program like ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SPEER: Very different. And the things about being a newscaster - one, there's a situational awareness that you have to have with that job because you live in maybe such small boxes and they're very confined - 2 minutes and 59 seconds in the front and 1 minute and 39 seconds in the back, which is where I mostly live. But you have to have the ability to tell stories in an interesting and compelling way, and you have to have the ability to make changes almost instantly.
SHAPIRO: Right.
SPEER: I mean, we can be 30 seconds from air, and my producer, Nathan Thompson, can tell me, hey, this just happened. And he can talk in my ear, and we can make a change, and we do, and we...
SHAPIRO: Whether it's an earthquake in this country or the president just signed this bill into law or...
SPEER: Right.
SHAPIRO: ...Bombs dropping on who knows where.
SPEER: Yep. Yep. And it happens every day, and we have to get it right.
SHAPIRO: What are you going to miss about it?
SPEER: I'm going to miss the pace, I'm sure. I think I'll miss a lot of the deadline pressures that I've grown very accustomed to over all this time. There are things that I really am interested in doing that I can't do if I continue to do what I'm doing. And I - teaching would be a big thing for me. I'm an adjunct instructor at Johns Hopkins and teach business communications and ethics, so very different from what I do on a daily basis.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Jack Speer. It's been an honor to call you a colleague. Congratulations on your retirement. I look forward to seeing what comes next.
SPEER: Thanks, Ari. Appreciate it. Good luck to everyone.
(SOUNDBITE OF NSYNC SONG, "BYE BYE BYE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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