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The Complete Cast of TODAY: Every Host and Anchor

These are the friendly faces greeting you every morning.

Over the years, the friendly faces greeting NBC viewers every morning on the TODAY  show have rotated and changed, and the modern iteration is as beloved as ever.

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Watch TODAY weekdays at 7AM ET on NBC .

The gang has camaraderie and banter, tempered with some of the most admired journalistic credentials in the industry. Here are the correspondents and anchors currently hosting the long-running program:

The TODAY  cast: Currents anchors and hosts

• Savannah Guthrie

A former attorney who earned her JD at Georgetown, Guthrie is NBC News' chief legal correspondent and co-anchor of TODAY. Guthrie moderated the Democratic presidential debate in 2019 and a live Trump town hall in 2020, and during her long broadcast career has been honored with multiple Emmys and the Edward R. Murrow award.

She is the author of two books for children and one faith-based memoir, Mostly What God Does . She has been married to former Democratic political advisor Mike Feldman for 10 years , and the pair share two children: Vale, 9, and Charley, 7.

Kotb began her career as a broadcast journalist in New Orleans and Florida before joining the NBC team, where she co-anchors TODAY 's 3-hour block alongside Guthrie, as well as the fourth hour with Jenna Bush Hager. Kotb — who was born in Oklahoma and his Egyptian-American — is a breast cancer survivor and often uses her work and her platform to raise awareness about the disease.

She has won multiple Emmys, a Gracie and the Edward R. Murrow award for her work and is currently raising two daughters, Haley Joy and Hope Catherine.

One of the most recognizable faces on TODAY, Roker has been on the program since 1996 , and at NBC even longer. Though he began his career as a weatherman, Roker has since branched out into all types of segments, from celebrity interviews to parenting advice, and currently co-hosts TODAY 's third hour.

Roker performed the role of Old Joe in Broadway's musical Waitress and and made a one-night cameo in the Broadway musical Back To The Future . He has three adult children and is married to ABC News' Deborah Roberts.

• Jenna Bush Hager

The daughter of former president George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush, and granddaughter of former president George H. W. Bush, Hager co-hosts the fourth hour of TODAY , known as Hoda & Jenna, alongside Hoda Kotb. Previously, she was a reading teacher at a public school in Baltimore. For five years, Hager has promoted her favorite reads through her book club  Read With Jenna .

She and her husband Henry Chase Hager have three children — Mila, 10, Poppy, 8, and Hal, 4 — and two cats, who were recently married .

Craig Melvin

Melvin covers the news for NBC viewers in the morning and at night, first as a News Anchor on TODAY and co-host of the third hour, and later on Dateline and as an anchor for MSNBC.

With his wife, sports broadcaster Lindsay Czarniak, Melvin is raising two children : Delano, 9, and Sybil, 7.

• Carson Daly

Carson Daly rose to fame as the producer and host of Total Request Live  ( TRL ), and has since hosted programs including NBC's  The Voice and NBC's New Year's Eve specials. He's a feature anchor on TODAY and co-stars with The Voice 's Blake Shelton on their game show Barmageddon . Daly has  four children with his wife, Siri

Sheinelle Jones

Jones earned a degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and co-hosts the third hour of TODAY . She also hosts the "Wild Child" segments in NBC's The More You Know programs, about baby animals across the globe.

Jones has three sons and executive produced  Stories We Tell: The Fertility Secret ,  a documentary that highlights infertility among Black women.

Dylan Dreyer

Dreyer co-hosts the third hour of TODAY and is the show's weekday weather correspondent . She's also the meteorologist for NBC's Nightly News with Lester Holt. You can find her hosting the "Earth Odyssey" segments in NBC's The More You Know programs.

Dreyer and her husband Brian Fichera  have three young sons.

Willie Geist

Geist leads in-depth celebrity interviews and news pieces each week during Sunday TODAY . He can also be seen co-hosting NBC's Morning Joe and stepping in at Meet The Press ,  Nightly News with Lester Holt and TODAY throughout the week. He's been with his wife Christina since they were teenagers , and the pair are now raising teens of their own.

Laura Jarrett

A Harvard Law graduate , Jarrett is NBC News' senior legal correspondent, and reports on judicial news across NBC's news programs. Before joining NBC in 2022, Jarrett was a correspondent at CNN. Her mother , Valerie Jarrett, is a businesswoman and served as a senior advisor to President Obama. Laura co-anchors Saturday TODAY , and is raising two children with her husband, Tony Balkissoon.

Peter Alexander

Alexander has co-anchored Saturday TODAY since 2018, and is also the chief White House correspondent for NBC News . He regularly uses his platform to report on Usher Syndrome, a genetic disorder which affects his sister, Rebecca. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award.

Alexander is married to WJLA-TV anchor Alison Starling, with whom he shares two daughters.

Watch TODAY weekday mornings on NBC.

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How Do You Get on the Today Show 4th Hour With Kathie Lee & Hoda?

In: public relations - how to pitch these tv programs by: sabina hitchen.

The Today Show fourth hour with Kathie Lee and Hoda has become quite a showcase for interesting, unique or must-have products. How to get on the Today Show 4th hour has become a top goal for most small businesses selling product (like this little granola company Hudson Henry who used the Tin Shingle membership program to help her land a spot on the show!).

Nearly daily, Kathie  Lee & Hoda place different products from indie brands to creations from national and international corporations on their table. During their hour long segment, they periodically pick one up, show it off, talk about what it is, and mention where to buy it. The Today Show has a large, loyal audience and getting a plug by either of these two women can bring you instant validation, and the ultimate goal, a possible spike in sales.

So how do you get your product on this hour of the Today Show ?  As with everything in public relations, nothing is ever guaranteed.  However, after placing products at the Today Show myself, as well as speaking directly with the producer of the fourth hour Today Show segment, we have a few tips that will help you pitch the Today Show fourth hour. Follow them, and you just may land this coveted spot like this Tin Shingle member did .

HAVE A UNIQUE OR INTERESTING PRODUCT THAT THEIR VIEWING DEMOGRAPHIC WILL ENJOY  Let's start at the most basic. Your brand must be something that makes for good conversation and a good visual.  Your product or service must also be something that their viewers could relate to and may be interested in.  We've seen the Katie Lee & Hoda promote everything from a humanitarian fashion brand with t-shirts that donate a portion of their sales to Africa, to designer wallpaper, to a hidden wine pouch you can wear in your bra, to razors that dispense shaving cream upon contact with your legs.  Some of our own Tin Shingle members including Hudson Henry Baking Co , Fretzels , Gemma Redux , Magnolia PR's client Right Bank Babies , and fashion expert Kathryn Finney have also found themselves on the program in the past couple years - so don't give up - it is an attainable goal!  As you can see, they cover a large range of products and genres, but all have something special about them.

It's often best to familiarize with not only the types of products a show covers, but how they cover them and what their show's "formula" or style is on a daily basis.  To figure out the formula for the Today Show, check out their daily blog (a must in my opinion if you want to be on it - as you must KNOW what you are pitching).  Not only will you figure out the formula, but because the producers are often the ones writing these blogs, you'll get to know who they are, what they like to cover and their style.

3 Media Pitches and You're Out

Pitching is actually made up of the "three strikes rule".  In other words, no matter who you are pitching, or how (phone, email, fax, carrier pigeon) after giving it a go three times and sending you best pitch to them, if you still haven't received a response, move on, at least for a month or two or until you have new information, products or a new story angle.  Otherwise you run the risk of being seen as a pest, and this could hurt your chances of future placement with the outlet.

In the case of the Today Show, stick to email pitches.  Today Show producers are much too busy to chat with you about your product (just imagine if every small business or entrepreneur called them about their breakthrough product, nothing would ever get done).  Instead, craft a brief, to the point, and captivating email that introduces you and your product, links to a photo of it or your website online, explains what it does briefly and how it could benefit their viewers is in bullet points,  gives the price and where to buy, says thank you, and then ends.  This should all be done in at most, a short paragraph and bullet points.  If you can't explain why your product rocks in less than that space, it's time to sign up for some pr coaching and to work on your elevator pitch.

Look at this Pitching Example:  

Hi Terrence (a Today Show Producer),

This is (FIRST NAME here) from (BUSINESS NAME here) how are you?  I just wanted to share the BUSINESS NAME car seat cover with you for consideration on the 4th hour with Kathie Lee & Hoda, which you can find at (WEBSITE here).  BUSINESS NAME is every mother's savior!  It's a  removable, washable car seat cover that is the cure for carsickness cleanups, leaking diapers, spills and crumbs in your car seat.  Some more info about BUSINESS NAME:

* Price * Where to Buy * Unique Selling Point * Reason it's a must-have * Quick Testimonial

Thanks Terrence, we'd love to make travel and life better for moms and dads on the go!  Would love to send you a sample or more information.  Here's to Happy-mess!

FIRST NAME here

See how short that was?  Everything is covered and the producers can quickly find out everything they need to know in order to make a decision.

Also - in this pitch, don't attach anything to the email unless they are expecting an attachment.  Otherwise they may delete it as spam.

Pitching Kathie Lee & Hoda Segment As a Professional or Service Provider

This segment is more often than not packed with hot topics, news of the day, gossip, celebrity or well known guests, or products.  If you have a great segment idea, you're free to pitch away as an expert, but if you do, be sure you have been in the media on TV before, have a reel (aka a video of yourself on TV), a headshot, a well planned out topic that is timely with what is going on now. Recognize that you're going to be up against national authors, experts, magazine editors and others who they often rely on for tips, and so forth. You can do it!

I Have The Best Product for the Kathie Lee & Hoda Show - What's The Best Way to Contact Someone at NBC?

Unless the producer and you have perfect mental telepathy in the next couple of days, it's going to be hard to get it on air. So how do you figure out who to pitch?

First, let's talk about what won't work:

•  Sending packages blindly into NBC.   This is a no-no.  Producers are inundated with products, media kits and other packages weekly - some they requested and some they didn't.  The last thing you need to do is send un-requested items to them.  Not only is this a way to guarantee you won't be getting samples back, but it's not doing the producer any favors, it's just cluttering their workspace.  If they want something, they will ask for it.  
•  Calling the Today Show assignment desk or main studio lines and asking for "the producer who works in on the 4th hour".  The chances of this working these days are slim to none.  They'll most likely ask for a name at the least and an extension number if they're being especially guarded.  Because this entire process is a waste of your valuable time, here are ways that WILL help you track down that producer:  

Doing your homework when it comes to the Today Show means: watching the show, checking the credits at the end of the program, following the Today Show blog (hint: most producers blog about their segment following the show, a great way to figure out who does what and what types of stories they cover on a daily basis), using the magic of Google search, and another powerful one many don't go for right away - just asking around!  Whether it's a friend, colleague, Facebook or you asking a contact who works in another division of NBC for some help.  

AND FINALLY... There is still one more highly effective way to get your brand, product, expertise or company in front of not only the Today Show, but like several other top local and national outlets, it's rarely discussed....no I'm not talking about getting a publicist (though this will probably help, it won't guarantee a spot on the show)...instead I'm talking about the last recommendation I have to help with your quest for not only the Today Show:  focusing on getting your brand's story out to other outlets whether they be local or national that don't compete with the Today Show.  The logic behind this is twofold: 

• First, it reminds you not to spend all of your valuable pr campaign time focused solely on the Today Show - there are several other fish out there in the media sea. 
• Second, it's important to keep in mind that the producers of the Today Show and other national television outlets find many of their stories via other newspapers, television programs, local news stories and these days, over social media.  The more you build buzz in places like these, the more likely someone from the Today Show, Oprah, CNBC - you name it - will hear about you and consider you for their own programming. Membership with Tin Shingle can help you do just that via our benefits in Community and Social Sharing.

Tin Shingle's DIY PR Membership Program

The Today Show is not as far away from you as you may think - especially if your product is a great fit!  Just think - for five days a week these women need interesting finds to talk about, chances are yours could be the one!  Especially if you follow these tips!

Tools You'll Need To For A Better Pitch Kathie Lee & Hoda

Tin Shingle designed a membership program for business owners, artists and makers that teaches the best ways of pitching the media, and provides contacts to people at different media outlets through our unique DIY PR Membership Program . Once you unlock membership, you can have instant access to Editorial Calendars, an All-Access pass to all of our Online Classes a connection to a trusted community of other businesses who are going through what you are experiencing as you grow your brand.

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Tin Shingle's free newsletter gives you marketing ideas in social networking, SEO and PR, sign up for it here!

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Career Spotlight: Assignment Editor

By NBCU Academy

What does an assignment editor do? A longtime assignment manager for NBC4 Washington shares how his team covers breaking news.

At the heart of every newsroom is an assignment desk, where assignment editors figure out what news stories to cover around the clock. They make constant phone calls, listen to police radios and sift through emails to get news tips and background information from officials and the public. They contribute to editorial meetings with reporters, editors and producers. But breaking news can rewrite coverage plans at any point of the day.  

Charlie Bragale, an assignment manager who has worked at WRC-TV in Washington since 1988, has seen many changes in technology , but his assignment desk has always been crucial to newsgathering. He calls his assignment editors “off-air reporters,” talking to sources and conveying updates to news crews and production staff.  

“I compare the assignment editor to a flight controller. I’m trying to land five 747s, a couple of A380s and a couple 737s in a blinding rainstorm,” Bragale said. “100% of my day is talking on the phone, networking with people, trying to get people to talk to me and check in.” 

Bragale talks about the work of an assignment editor in the video above and shares more remarks below.  

What are some tips to being a good assignment editor?

Be curious, be a risk taker and instinctively know what you’re doing right. You see something, go chase after it. We don’t run away from bad news or good news — we run towards everything. 

Success is collaborating with everybody.  We’re just a cog in the wheels of what we do every day. Collaboration is key.  

Your workspace is surrounded by walkie-talkies tuned in to a bunch of police and emergency medical scanners. Isn’t it confusing to listen to all that at once?

Don’t be intimidated by this. This is just white noise. Just listen for keywords, the intensity in the voice, the impact of the event. 

What are some memorable stories you worked on?

I covered a guy who pulled out an AR-15 and shot up the front of the White House [in October 1994] — that was a [Saturday] afternoon, we were running AFC football.  

The phone rings, a guy with a heavy accent says, “Do you speak Portuguese?” And I was like, “Yes, I’m from Brazil.” A Brazilian tourist, videotaping the White House with his family, captured the moment that guy shot at the White House. Back then, we had no cellphones, so I sent a courier to pick him up and look at the video. One of my colleagues ran over, grabbed the video and took it downstairs. They broke into AFC football to show the guy shooting the White House — that’s how important it was.  

[On 9/11,] we knew about the planes that struck the World Trade Center. But then I heard a plane hit the Pentagon. I heard that officer, the chill in his voice — we knew it was [a related attack]. We were ready, directing people everywhere, because we knew Washington.

You’ve worked at the same assignment desk for 36 years. What keeps you going?

This is gonna sound mushy, but I grew up here in Washington, two blocks from the TV station. As a child riding my bike through this park, past Channel 4 to the Catholic school on Massachusetts Avenue, I would always tell my brothers, “One day, I’m going to work at that place.” To represent the community and work at this incredible organization, in my job which I love, is an honor. 

Gallery: Scenes from Charlie Bragale’s Career

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TV News Check

Broadcast Industry News - Television, Cable, On-demand

The Assignment Editor 2.0: More Collaboration, Newer Tools

Assignment editors, stalwarts of the TV newsroom, are evolving into a more digitally centric, collaborative and decentralized force, and their time-honed skills of scrutiny and being the newsroom’s trusted gatekeepers are more important than ever. Above, the assignment desk at KNTV-KSTS San Francisco. ( Photo by Gonzo Rojas )

Back in the late 1990s and early ’00s, when Cater Lee was a reporter for the likes of KNBC and KCAL in Los Angeles, the assignment desk was centrally located in the newsroom. Its editor likely spent extensive time across their day scrolling through police scanners, reading press releases and fielding tipster calls to identify news stories. From it emerged a dictation of Lee’s day.

“My story was already decided for me before I walked into the door,” says Lee, who’s now VP of news and content at Spectrum News 1 in Southern California and Texas.

Purveyors of the newsroom’s assignment desk today, however, are typically less head coach and more quarterback, fronting colorful offenses filled with audibles, option plays and other collaborative trickery that’s designed to always push the ball forward. In other words, story dispersal in a newsroom has increasingly become a team effort, with reporters and producers having more of a say in what makes it to broadcast. Digital technology has also chipped away at the relevance of many dinosaur-era tools assignment editors used to rely on so heavily.

But as the job changes, assignment editors remain a dedicated folk, dug into the frontlines of journalism’s war with mis- and disinformation, while doing their best to help generate broadcasts with wider-reaching community impact. Always, they’re relegated to behind-the-scenes grunt work, and rarely do they get their due.

“Assignment editors are absolutely underappreciated in their role in a newsroom,” says Julie Wolfe, news director at Tegna’s NBC affiliate KING Seattle. “The biggest way to tell the difference is when you work in a newsroom that has a poor assignment desk and then you work in a newsroom with a strong assignment desk.”

The capable assignment editor, she observes, will “know all the information”: facts to support a package’s viability, sources that a reporter can contact to round it out, and whether a story is worth any airtime to begin with.

A presence like that in a newsroom matches the significance of an engine in a car, as one assignment editor puts it. Wolfe says assignment editors are like “orchestral conductors,” while additional metaphors that float through interviews stem from human biology. One editor calls the assignment desk the newsroom’s brain; others liken the role’s import to that of the heart or central nervous system, for it’s the assignment editor who pumps data to the farthest reaches of the newsroom, which of course now stretches well beyond the walls of an office building.

Social’s Key Role

Along with an innate sense of what makes for a quality newscast, to effectively manage the assignment desk, editors need top-flight organizational and communication skills, just as they have for decades. These days, familiarity with the social media universe is of equal consequence.

While his team of 10 assignment editors won’t be getting rid of their police scanners anytime soon, Gonzo Rojas, assignment manager at NBC-owned KNTV and Telemundo 48 (KSTS) in the San Francisco Bay Area, marvels at Twitter’s near-supplanting of relatively old-timey technology.

“Twitter’s huge,” he says. “When it comes to breaking news, often we’ll see it on Twitter now before we hear it on police scanners, which is just incredible.”

Darren Whitehead, digital desk lead at another Tegna NBC affiliate, KUSA Denver, says Colorado police scanners are encrypted, but monitoring Twitter helps him pick up the slack.

“Most of the ways that the police departments and fire departments are communicating with us is they’re putting out [updates] on social media, and usually it’s not immediate, it’s well after something has happened,” Whitehead says. “We get calls from people in the community being, like, ‘What the hell is going on down the block from me?’ Then we have to call [the responsible agency], and then they tweet out to everyone — without calling us back — all the information.”

Assignment editors set up Tweet Deck channels, or Social News Desk dashboards, where they follow various government agencies, other news sources like the Associated Press and additional relevant accounts where prospective stories may pop up. Dataminr alerts help inform assignment editors, too; neighborhood-focused Reddit forums and community-based apps like Nextdoor can sometimes supply story ideas as well.

Then, there are community-related Facebook groups, which one assignment editor says she joins using a public profile associated with their news team position. Another longtime story assigner says she taps younger newsroom colleagues to examine Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms they might be more comfortable navigating through.

Scrutiny’s Imperative

Like in the past with press releases — though assignment editors still lift stories from those on occasion — they can’t take what’s written online at face value. The same can be said for what citizen tipsters tell the assignment editor over the phone or in emails, as well as what public information officers say.

“People ask me what the hell I do, and I always tell them, ‘Well, the assignment desk is usually ‘first response,’” Whitehead says. “You gotta sift through the bullshit.”

While they may have always prioritized backing up facts, with sources, data and other means, assignment editors in 2022 say there is an added emphasis on getting story facts unquestionably correct.

“There are some stations that report solely off of what they hear on the scanners. We are not that station,” says Jamila Elder, assignment editor at WRAL, Capitol Broadcasting’s NBC affiliate in Raleigh, N.C. “You dig deep, you reach out to your contacts and you wait until you get [your information] confirmed, even though your competition station may be reporting it. As an assignment editor that’s very frustrating because we’re very competitive; you want to get the information and you want to get it first, [but] we would rather wait and get it right, than to report it first and get it wrong.”

Experience Matters

In many cases, as one assignment editor puts it, newsies “fall into” their positions at the assignment desk. The experience they bring with them, often as a reporter or anchor, serves them well in the role.

Prior to Ruthanne Gordon becoming senior planning manager for Nexstar’s WXIN (Fox)-WTTV (CBS) Indianapolis, she was an assignment editor for 33 years. Before that, she was a reporter and anchor for more than five years, bringing with her to the assignment desk an assortment of connections from her front-of-the-camera days that she continues to call upon. Her phone book has only ballooned bigger throughout her 45 years in news.

“I have quite a Rolodex,” Gordon says, “I think that’s what they wanted when I came to this position as senior planning manager.” Cops she first met doing stand-ups, she says, “are now the commanders here in town, so I’ve kept those cell numbers, and that’s where I have an advantage.”

Working as a journalist before manning the assignment desk also helps cultivate that vital instinct of what makes for a compelling newscast. However, the assignment desk is also a prime location for industry newbies to break in and learn — a lot — on the fly.

“You gotta pay your dues by working the weekends,” Elder says. “That was where I learned the most because you don’t have a lot of managers, so you have to make those on-the-spot decisions. So, I was able to make those mistakes on that weekend shift, but I was also able to learn from those mistakes and learn how to make good news decisions.”

“This is a great way of starting and learning,” Gordon says of the assignment desk gig. Calling it a way to “fast-track” those new to the industry, she adds: “You can jump off of this and go produce a show [or] jump in a truck and go do an interview.”

Kendra Gilbert, senior assignment editor at KING, had no experience in a TV newsroom before hopping into the assignment desk chair at a station in her home market of Fresno, Calif. Fresh out of college, she struggled to find work in print journalism, her focus of study in school. But that degree still meant she could sniff out a good story and, combining that sense with strong organizational and communication skills, she was confident she could fill the seat just fine.

She’s held an assignment editor position at one West Coast station or another for nine years running. She says to excel in the role one has to be comfortable working in “a fast-paced environment,” and have the ability to “turn on a dime” and “focus on one thing and switch to another.”

Collaboration Grows

Elder statesman Gordon says of the assignment editor job demands: “It keeps me young.” Both she and the more youthful Gilbert say the position has also become more collaborative in recent years.

“We do sort of have that gatekeeper role,” Gilbert says. Still, she continues, “there’s always this two-way exchange of information between the desk and the reporters.”

Assignment editors consider reporter strengths, areas of interest and experience when deciding in whose hands a story will be entrusted. But they also field pitches from reporters and engage in broad conversations about the day’s items of interest with various members of the team.

“Nobody runs on their own in here; we have a tight-knit group [and] we back each other up,” Gordon says of the group at her Nexstar stations. “If we have spot news … we all jump in, and that’s the key to a really good assignment desk. You give and take, and you have that flexibility that at the end of the day, we’ve covered it, we’ve got it, we’ve got angles that nobody else has thought of.”

Not only does the team effort behind story assignment potentially add layers and depth to an eventual package, but it reinforces the integrity of the news it delivers across an entire broadcast, day in, day out.

In the constant struggle to identify mis- and disinformation, while also presenting stories in appropriate context, “that is where a collective, collaborative culture of a newsroom saves you,” KING’s Wolfe says. “If you are, as a team, having editorial checks, conversations, diverse viewpoints, bringing different people in, then you can catch those things and catch yourself and find the right story.

“That’s why I think having a diverse newsroom is so key, because different people are going to see different things and think about different questions and weigh that story against their own experience …. Whether it’s a big newsroom or a small newsroom, getting people together to talk about stories is just really, really important.” she says.

Decentralized Approach

One would be hard-pressed to find a more profound example of the increasingly collaborative nature the assignment editor’s job has assumed over the past handful of years than the organizational structure at Lee’s Southern California Spectrum News channel.

In an effort to cover the market’s five counties, across a sprawling megalopolis, her channel employs an assignment editor manager and four individual assignment editors, each of whom are primarily stationed in different parts of the region: north, south, east and west. They report to the station’s office in El Segundo once per week on a rotating basis, but otherwise they’re out in the field, working closely with reporters as they scour for stories and continually develop relationships with sources.

Lee says the more decentralized arrangement allows for her newsroom to be less “reactive” — as others have been historically — and more “proactive,” engaging in “enterprise storytelling.”

“Of course, we still react, because there’s breaking news,” Lee says, “but when there is real enterprise storytelling, you’re working in advance, working your sources and your community and really becoming experts on the ground, and it’s been an amazing collaboration.

“That’s what has gotten lost, is the idea that, really, journalists should have their ears on the ground, they should be developing beats and sources, and they should be working with assignment editors — story planners — to figure out the best way to tell those stories together,” she says. “It’s been a really exciting team approach to newsgathering.”

Seeking Deeper Impact

Whether they’ve been part of an experiment in cutting-edge structural invention or traditionally clock into the newsroom and sit at a stationary desk throughout their shift, assignment editors bear the brunt of the responsibility to shuttle broadcasts away from coverage of police blotter-discovered stories, such as shootings, robberies, and fires. Today’s consumers are craving more from their TV news, and stories with farther-reaching impact have to be sought out by those tasked with assigning them to reporters.

“We definitely are trying to be mindful of stories that are affecting more people in our community,” says WRAL’s Elder. “Gone are the days of ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ That was old school.”

Still, it’s not entirely true that crime and property destruction should completely be dismissed. “When it comes to your family’s safety, the safety of your business, being able to walk down the sidewalk in your city, that is super-relevant to our viewers,” Wolfe says. “The idea that crime is not relevant is the wrong approach. The right approach is: How do we add information and context? How do we stand for truth and hold people accountable? What does the data tell us about that crime? That’s where the impactful stories are.”

Weighing all these factors in choosing stories, maintaining a constantly updated contact database with identifying tags, ensuring that reports are factually concrete and so many other responsibilities, the assignment editor job is certainly not for everybody. But those who do it well can honorably take tremendous pride in their work, which, if nothing else, is undeniably relentless.

“You should never be bored on the assignment desk,” KING’s Gilbert says. “It’s not a place where you can complete one task and then kick back and say, ‘I’ve done it for the day.’ You should always be busy.”

About Michael Stahl

Michael Stahl is a journalist from New York City who’s covered a range of topics for Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, Bloomberg, the Village Voice, Quartz, Vice, InsideHook, Narratively and many other publications. You can see more of his work at www.michaelstahlwrites.com and connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-stahl-writes/.

Reader Interactions

Mar 8, 2022 at 9:11 am

Great write up. I would add one piece of perspective on the ‘parts of the body’ metaphor. In my experience, the Assignment Desk can be the hands reaching out in the dark, or the ears listening for the important ‘sounds’ or the ‘eyes’ looking toward the horizon. All in addition to being part of ‘the brain.’ Ruthanne nailed it. The key is that a video based, broadcast/digital newsroom must have a desk, producers, reporters, and managers that act in a symbiotic relationship. Each must be able to quickly shift based on the news department’s overall vision, and always support each other.

Jun 13, 2022 at 9:24 am

I never knew how to write beautifully when I needed it, I spent Sleepless nights to write At least a more or less beautiful text, but as a result, I began to turn to similar writing services and my life became much easier and the texts are much better, because on such services the text professionals write, you just have to learn the text

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Polls show Harris gaining after the presidential debate

She's up to a 61-in-100 chance of winning, per the 538 forecast.

A constant refrain in political analysis is, essentially, that nothing matters. Sometimes, it can feel like not even a massive gaffe or scandal can affect how voters feel about a candidate, and not even major news events can move public opinion on issues.

But sometimes, things do matter. Presidential debates are one of those things . Last week's debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump produced fewer policy specifics than voters wanted , but along the way Harris succeeded in painting Trump in a bad light . In the week since the debate, polls have shown a slight increase in support for the Democratic nominee. As a result, on Monday, Sept. 16, Harris's chance of winning the election according to 538's forecasting model reached 61-in-100 — surpassing her previous high from Aug. 26.

If we look at all the polls that have been conducted entirely after the debate and compare them with each firm's pre-debate survey, Harris has made small gains in most of them. Harris gained 1 percentage point on margin according to an Ipsos/Reuters national poll released late last week; 2 points in RMG Research's polling; 2 points according to Morning Consult ; 2 points according to Big Village ; and 1 point according to SoCal Strategies . The only exceptions are Leger , Redfield & Wilton Strategies and Ipsos/ABC News , whose post-debate polls showed Harris losing 1 point, standing pat and standing pat, respectively, compared with their last surveys.

538's averages of national and state polls agree that Harris has made marginal gains since the debate. As of 9 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Sept. 17, Harris leads Trump by an average of 2.9 points in national polls , up ever so slightly from her 2.5-point lead on debate day. That 0.4-point gain is considerably smaller than the average post-debate change in election polls going back to 1952 — but then again, with polarization, most changes in opinion are smaller now. Notably, Harris is still down about 1 point from her late-August high in national polls.

In national polls, the real boon for Harris is not that she has gained four-tenths of a percent of support; it's that she has put a stop to Trump's gains. Before last week, Trump was gaining about half a point of popular-vote margin nationally on Harris since late August. If he had continued on that path, he would have been favored to win the race in 538's forecast by later this month — perhaps as soon as this week. Instead, Harris is the one who has modestly improved her chances of winning the race.

But because presidential elections are decided by the Electoral College, it's the state polls, not national polls, that really matter. And in addition to the national polls we've already mentioned, state polls also show real gains for Harris. In New Hampshire, a poll from Saint Anselm College Survey Center found Harris up by 8 points over Trump, 2 points better than Harris's pre-debate average in the state. Polls in Alaska , Arkansas and New Mexico also came in above average. A poll from the right-leaning Trafalgar Group released Monday showed Harris up by 2 points in Nevada. Polls from InsiderAdvantage and the highly rated Marquette University Law School found Harris up by 2 and 5 points, respectively, among likely voters in Wisconsin. And on Sunday, the always-closely-watched Selzer & Co./Des Moines Register poll showed Trump leading Harris by just 4 points in Iowa, a state our model had been expecting Trump to win by 8.

And yes, shifts in non-swing states matter, even if Harris is unlikely to win them in the end. Polling movement is often correlated from state to state, meaning that if Harris is gaining in Iowa and Arkansas — not to mention nationally — she's probably also gaining in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

All of this nets out to a pretty sizable shift toward Harris in our election forecast (which can be a bit more aggressive than our polling averages in reacting to correlated movement in polls). Our model's predictions for the final margin between the two candidates in the big seven swing states are about 1 point better for Harris today than they were last week. Our forecast in Wisconsin has gone from Harris+2 to Harris+3; in Michigan, from Harris+1.5 to Harris+2.2; in Pennsylvania and Nevada, from Harris+0.1 to Harris+1.5; and in Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, from Trump+1 to Harris +0.2.

In fact, the polls are so (comparatively) good for Harris that the model is actually forecasting a national popular vote that is more Democratic than the current national polling average. Our model calculates an implied national popular vote based on estimated turnout in each state, and today that number is closer to Harris+4.2 than Harris's 2.9-point lead in national polls. This echoes 2012, when state polls looked better for President Barack Obama than national polls did (Obama ended up beating his national polling average over Republican nominee Mitt Romney by more than 3 points ).

This difference between the national electorate in the national polls and the one implied by state polls may sound small, but in fact 1.5 points could end up deciding the whole election. The forecasted margin between Harris and Trump is currently equal to or smaller than 1.5 points in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — a bloc that is together worth 68 electoral votes.

In the 2020 election, now-President Joe Biden ended up needing to win the national popular vote by at least 3.8 points (assuming a uniform national swing) in order to carry enough states to win 270 electoral votes. This year, thanks to her stronger standing in state polls than in national ones, our forecast thinks Harris needs to win the national popular vote by only about 2.1 points in order to be favored to win. However, that still means the Electoral College will probably help Trump, meaning that it's essential for Harris to maintain her current lead in the northern battleground states especially. That's why our forecast gives Harris a 61-in-100 chance of winning instead of 72-in-100 (her current chances of winning the national popular vote).

Ultimately, though, it is still early days: We have seven weeks left until Election Day, and many major firms have yet to release any post-debate data. We will have to keep watching the data to see how Harris's and Trump's chances change. As history has shown, campaign events can unearth new information, reinforce perceptions of candidates, or deprive underdogs of a last chance to shake up the campaign. That's truer than ever in tightly contested national elections, regardless of higher levels of polarization. 538's polling averages and election forecasting model will continue to update with the latest polls as they are released.

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Mom stumped by 1st grader's homework asks internet for help. Do you know the answer?

After a woman in the United Kingdom was left stumped by her first grader’s homework assignment, she turned to Facebook for help.

“At first I thought I was losing my mind. I was like, ‘What am I missing here?’” So I posted in a group with loads of moms hoping they would have the answer,” Laura Rathbone, 40, who lives in Buckinghamshire, England, tells TODAY.com .

It turns out Rathbone wasn't the only one scratching her head.

This was the task Rathbone’s 6-year-old daughter, Lilly-Mo, was asked to complete: “Which word is the odd one out?” The choices were: friend, toothbrush, silver, desk, and egg. 

“I would say toothbrush as it’s the only one with 2 syllables?” one person replied. 

Added another, “As a teacher myself I actually think this is an interesting piece of homework. I would imagine designed to encourage thought, reasoning and probably discussion at home.”

Other responses included:

• “You can only eat an egg…”
• “Toothbrush is the only word without an E."
• “Friend because it’s a person and not an object."
• "“??!!????!????!?!???!!"
• "Friend because it’s the only word that can not be phonetically sounded out. All others you can. Given its phonic homework that is what I would say it is checking.
• "Silver. The others are nouns."
• Just say the dog ate it 

“Everybody had different theories, and it was quite interesting!” Rathbone says. “I really enjoyed reading all of the comments.”

The next day, Rathbone reached out to Lilly-Mo’s teacher, who explained that the children had just started learning about nouns — and that the correct answer was ... silver!

Rathbone notes that silver is both an adjective and noun, which makes it confusing. 

Try this exercise with your Facebook friends and see what they say!

“I also asked about this in my parents WhatsApp chat and no one had the same answer,” Rathbone says. "It's a real brain teaser!"

Rachel Paula Abrahamson is a lifestyle reporter who writes for the parenting, health and shop verticals. Her bylines have appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and elsewhere. Rachel lives in the Boston area with her husband and their two daughters. Follow her on Instagram .

September 16, 2024 PBS News Hour full episode

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Monday on the News Hour...

Monday on the News Hour, a second apparent assassination attempt on former President Trump raises questions about Secret Service protection. TikTok fights for its existence in court by challenging a law that would ban the app in the United States. Plus, on another deadly day in Gaza, the United Nations coordinator for relief discusses the dire circumstances there.

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