MSNBC’s Chris Jansing, is profiled in today’s Wall Street Journal. Ralph Gardner declares Jansing is “one of the hardest-working women in television journalism.”
Ms. Jansing, who lives in Chelsea, grew up in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, on Lake Erie, the youngest of 12 children. She remembers sitting at the dining room table as a child when she heard a woman who visited regularly refer to her mother as “Mom.” “I said, ‘Why are you calling her mom?’ She said, ‘Because I’m your sister.’ She’d moved out of the house when I was a baby. I learned early on you need to ask a lot of questions.”
Jansing turned that inquisitiveness into a career. First in radio, then local TV in Albany, NY and for the last 14 years at MSNBC and NBC News. She talks about the big stories she’s covered: the Columbine shootings, the Bush/Gore recount, and 9/11. “For weeks after I was basically seven hours a day on MSNBC,” she said. On a related note, during our recent MediaBeat interview, Jansing told us about her most fulfilling assignment.
(Photo: Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal)