NPR reporter's job-hunting advice: You have to ask

An NPR host who discovered his true love for radio while waiting at a traffic signal told an Indianapolis audience that he got his big break through persistence.

Sam Sanders covered Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and other candidates for NPR in the 2016 election. He is host of the network’s show and podcast, “It’s Been a Minute,” which airs Sundays at 2 p.m. on WFYI 90.1, and spoke at Butler University’s Schrott Center for the Arts on April 22 as part of the station’s Listen Up series.

Sanders began listening to NPR as a teenager but became a bigger fan in the summer of 2008 as an intern in New Orleans while in graduate school.

The job required a large amount of driving, and he listened to NPR frequently. Once at a red light he was listening to a show and the host and a panel were laughing hysterically.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, they get paid to have fun and talk about cool stuff. I’m doing that,’” Sanders told the Butler audience.

“So I went back to school and I emailed about 75 people. I basically said, ‘Hi, I think I’ve decided what I want to do. I’m going to work in radio … Does anybody know anybody?’”

Through a series of emails he connected with someone at WBUR, an NPR member station in Boston, where he interned for a show called “On Point.” That led to a fellowship at NPR in 2009 and then jobs at the network including field producer and breaking news reporter.

Sanders said jobs-seekers have to be bold enough to ask for what they want and determined enough to keep trying.

“The thing about looking for a job or finding your way early on is that people don’t want to tell you this, but they should tell you:

“For a long time you’re going to get more no’s that yes’s - and that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” he said. “It helps you get better at asking the question.”

He didn’t have family or friends who could help, so he had to build his own network.

“I didn’t know how the infrastructure of this world works, but you just have to ask,” Sanders said.

“One of those email responses was what I needed. And those are the odds, a lot of the time, when you’re just starting out. You have to deal with the odds and ask for what you want.”

Sanders became a key member of NPR's election unit, got to cover the intersection of culture, pop culture and politics in the 2016 election, and has achieved his goal of getting paid to have fun. All thanks to persistence and the one email response that he needed to launch his career.

Photos: John Strauss, NPR

 By John Strauss, jcs1122@yahoo.com