Staff reflections - Earning their trust

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, August 13th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

As our week of anniversary coverage draws to a close, we’ll leave you with a few final thoughts from three members of the WORLD Radio team. And we’ll start with the voice you’ve heard just about every day for the last eight years.

KENT COVINGTON: Hi, this is Kent Covington. And thinking back on all of the years here with The World and Everything in It, there’s been a lot of fun memories, a few embarrassing ones. I think one time I referred to Nikki Haley as the governor of South Korea, as opposed to the governor of South Carolina. So that was fun.

And another embarrassing memory that I have was going back to the early days. In the early days of The World and Everything in It was very much like working at a startup business where it's a very small team, you're working long hours, everybody were six different hats. And it was a lot of fun, but also hard work, running around like chickens with our heads cut off to get the program out the door each day.

I just remember one interview I did with somebody in Washington, D.C., for a particular story. And we were doing a lot of phone interviews at that time. We would interview people by telephone. We don't do that very much anymore because the sound quality is better online. But I was working from a home studio. And first thing I wanted to do was turn off call waiting so that in the middle of the interview, we were not interrupted by an incoming call. So I forget what the code is. It's something you dial something like Star 69 or whatever, and then dial the phone number and that makes sure that the call waiting is turned off and you're not going to be interrupted.

Well, the problem is I entered the wrong code. And not long after the interview, the guest contacted me and said, hey, I've been getting calls from people asking for you. Now this was really confusing to me, because I was not even aware of the existence of the call forwarding feature. But I had entered the wrong code. I had turned on call forwarding, and I inadvertently forwarded all of my calls to the guest.

So that's one of those fun stories over the years, embarrassing moments. But there's been a lot of, there have been a few of those embarrassing moments but it's all been a lot of fun.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Hi, this is Anna Johansen Brown. I started working for WORLD three years ago and one of my first assignments was covering the one year anniversary of the Sutherland Springs shooting.

It was a tiny church in a tiny community in Texas, where a gunman walked in on a Sunday morning and killed 27 people. And one year later WORLD wanted to cover how the community had coped with that level of trauma. And for some unfathomable reason, they sent me fresh out of WJI to do this story.

I remember being absolutely terrified about the responsibility, going to this community, and asking people to relive, literally the worst day of their lives, while they stared into my massive microphone. It felt incredibly daunting. But there were a couple of specific individuals I wanted to talk to.

First, the pastor of the church who lost his daughter that day. The worship leader who had been paralyzed in the shooting. And the church member who went after the shooter and stopped him as he ran from the church. But I wasn't sure if I would be able to talk to any of them, if they would be available, or if they would even be willing to talk to me. So I remember praying desperately that God would bring me to just the right people, the people whose stories and perspectives He wanted me to share with listeners.

Sunday morning, I went to the church and attended a morning service. And I saw God very clearly answer that prayer. Because the pastor in his morning announcements told everyone that he would be in meetings the rest of the day, so unavailable for me to interview. The worship pastor was out sick that morning, so I knew I would not be able to talk to him. But as we filed out of the church after the service, that last person on my list, the man who stopped the shooter, he was standing at the sanctuary door literally greeting people as they filed out. And I had to grin because God had made it so abundantly clear who we wanted me to talk to that day.

By the end of the weekend, I was able to talk with multiple survivors who trusted me to tell their stories, which is always humbling, no matter what topic I'm reporting on. And sometimes it's a really daunting responsibility. But I'm so grateful, knowing that God will guide me through that and provide people and stories and interviews. And I'm so grateful for WORLD, that enables me to go out and tell those people’s stories.

MARY REICHARD: Mary Reichard here. And my reflection reveals to me God’s Providence and also His sense of humor.

First, some quick name drops: Marvin Olasky picked me along with nine others for the very first WJI course for mid-career people back in 2011. It was just astounding to me! Two people from that class remain friends: Michael Cochrane and Laura Edgehill. Now both have moved on from World, but our friendships haven’t.

That Nick Eicher plucked me from obscurity to do radio still blows my mind. And when the incomparable Joseph Slife moved on from World, Nick made me the offer to co-host. And when I got around to asking about vacation time, Nick mumbled something about well, “for now this is a start up”, and then I heard the phrase, “probably not.” That was not a deterrent and I said okay! And I’ve never looked back.

Our early news guys Kent Covington and Jim Henry had to teach me everything about news writing. We had to fit entire stories about war, disease, and corruption into 45 seconds. Sometimes it took me all day just to do that!

Kristen Flavin actually moved in with my family to teach me how to edit audio. So everyone was all in to make this thing go!

In spring of 2020, Jenny Rough and I were at the Supreme Court. She was writing a story about sewage systems. And she thought how creative would it be to begin that radio piece with the sound of a toilet flush at the Supreme Court? So I asked a passing employee whether he could get us some sound from an in-chambers porcelain throne.

He said no, so Jenny and I improvised. But apparently he reported us to the public information office, because the next day a reprimand awaited us from that office. Whoops!

Well, anyway, during telephonic oral arguments soon after, somewhere, somehow, right in the middle of Barr v American Association of Political Consultants, the sound of a toilet flushing! And to this day, it’s still a mystery as to who did that. But somehow, that seemed like justice to me!

I’m so grateful for this job and I’m grateful every day for the opportunity God’s given me.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.