Current.org | Derek McGinty profiled, 1994

Derek McGinty
Before long, the talk chair belonged to him

The NPR talk show host who moved to CBS in 1998 was profiled in Current, Dec. 12, 1994, before NPR picked up his local Washington, D.C. program.

By Karen Everhart Bedford

At noon on a recent Friday, Derek McGinty took the host's chair at the head of an oblong table in WAMU's new sunlit, mauve-colored studio. Local politics was the topic of the hour, as it is midday on Fridays, when the discussion consistently draws a big audience that includes D.C. pols, city leaders and members of Congress.

"We've said the city has financial problems so many times now that I hardly feel as though a repeat is necessary, but I will say it again--the city has serious financial problems and they are getting worse," McGinty emphasized as he opened the discussion of D.C.'s latest worries and introduced his guests.

It wasn't long before the irrepressible Mark Plotkin, WAMU's political analyst, launched a round of characteristic joshing.

"You know Vince McCraw, the most-often-asked-guest predating McGinty, is not just a lowly reporter anymore," Plotkin said wryly, refering to a studio guest smiling at him from across the table. "He is the assistant city editor of the Washington Times, so you're talking about somebody of much loftier position . . . and I don't think you showed him the proper deference, in terms of introducing him."

"I'm sorry, Vince," McGinty responded collegially. "On the other hand, I may have shown too much deference to Mark Plotkin. I did not say anything mean to him at the top of the hour--obviously now a mistake."

"Yes," laughed McCraw.

"Okay, so editor McCraw and soon-to-be-gone Plotkin, what's the deal on the city's finances? Where are we now? How bad have things gotten?" McGinty asks, launching a discussion of impending cutbacks in trash collection and closing of recreation facilities.

McGinty, whose weekday talk show was recognized this year as public radio's top local public affairs program in CPB's annual awards, obviously was in his element. As the on-air conversation turned serious, he contributed his own political observations, throwing them out for responses from his colleagues 'round the table, leaning way back in his chair and gulping down Diet Coke, then returning to the mike to say more.

The reporter-turned-talk-show-host knows Capitol Hill, but he enjoys these weekly discussions about city politics most of all. "It is my favorite show," he told Current. "It's always fun, and you never know who's going to call." Mayor-elect Marion Barry, City Council Chairman David Clarke, Rep. Pete Stark (a D.C. defender on the Hill) have been known to call in out of the blue to participate in the weekly discussions.

Balance of news and eclecticism

Local politics and monthly chats with "the computer guys" are regular features of The Derek McGinty Show, but the show's scope is broad in a sometimes off-beat way. McGinty has conducted cheese tastings on the air, interviewed wacky performance artists, welcomed musicians to play a few songs in between his questions.

"We've tried hard to strive for our own little niche," said Ellen Silva, who produced the show for two years before recently joining NPR's Talk of the Nation team. "We tried to maintain a balance between doing news stories, arts stories and little eclectic pieces now and then that give the show its flavor."

McGinty's on-air persona, Silva and other observers agreed, contributes largely to the show's success. "Derek is very charming, and he has a great sense of humor," said Susan O'Connell, Silva's successor as producer. "He has a gift for cutting right to the heart of the issue."

WAMU Program Director Steve Palmer, who hired McGinty more than three years ago, listed several qualities that make McGinty successful at his work. "He's a very good listener. He's got an inquisitive mind, and he asks the questions that most people would want someone to ask."

"He is a major talent," added Silva. "He has a way of engaging guests which is really unsurpassed, next to somebody like Terry Gross."

Such qualities were in strong evidence during a recent interview with conservative commentator George Will. As his guest expounded on the theory that the root cause of today's social pathologies is public policies such as sex education in schools, generous welfare programs and judicial leniency, McGinty paused to ask: "Couldn't you make the same argument though that those same social problems began to explode in the '70s when the ability of people with high school educations to get middle-class jobs began to decline . . . that that was the change that made our cities places that are just not safe to be in some places?"

"That's part of the problem," Will acknowledged, offering an anecdote about meeting with a group of older black men in Chicago who worked in factories that have closed. "That's true, there's an element of truth in that."

Father knows best

A native Washingtonian who earned his degree in communications at American University, WAMU's licensee, McGinty didn't have to leave his hometown to pursue a career in journalism. His early experience included jobs at ABC Radio News and WTOP-AM, a leading commercial news station in the Washington market. He covered the city for United Press International and Capitol Hill for Howard University's WHUR-FM, where he also cohosted an interview program.

It was the six-year stint at WHUR that prepared him best for his current job, McGinty said, although work as a talk show host, or in public radio, were definitely not in his career plans.

His father did see him in radio, though. Once McGinty started doing interviews at WHUR, his father told him, "You know, you're good at that. You need to focus on that," the son recalled. "I said, 'No, no, no. News, news, news. I want to be a reporter.' "

"When I got into it, I liked this better," he added. At 35, with a long career still ahead of him, McGinty now doubts that he can ever return to a straight news job.

When, at the suggestion of a fellow classmate at A.U., he applied to host what was then an evening talk show on WAMU, McGinty didn't contemplate that he would be working in public broadcasting. "My first thought was, 'How much does it pay?' and 'Will I like it?' . . . The idea that it was different because it was public didn't really hit me."

Now that he's into the job, he likes being at a station that's not "pressurized by ratings" and allows him to cover topics unheard on the rest of the dial. "There's no other place I know of that would put on hour-long program of talk about what we talked about today--images of blacks in white women's literature," McGinty explained. "I don't know where it's going to happen if it's not public radio."

Since The Derek McGinty Show moved to its noon, two-hour slot following Diane Rehm's talk show, as part of a 1992 schedule overhaul, the program and the station have seen dramatic increases in its audiences. Arbitron ratings consistently put McGinty's audience in the range of 70,000 to 80,000, Palmer said, although it has hit the "high water mark" of 103,000. Increases in pledge responses to the show during the station's fall 1994 membership drive were "very healthy and fairly dramatic."

When Palmer auditioned McGinty, he recognized that, despite his lack of experience in talk radio, McGinty was "comfortable in the chair."

"I felt he had the basic qualities to grow into an exceptional talk show host; I didn't expect that he'd do it so rapidly," he added. Palmer anticipated it would take the new host a couple of years to climb the learning curve, but it took McGinty a few months.

"I thought from the beginning that he just had it," recalled Silva, who joined the show in its infancy and contributed mightily to shaping it. "He just has it--that little it."

And although McGinty, who will guest-host Talk of the Nation on Dec. 26 [1994], expresses uncertainty about where he's going next, Silva sees big things in his future. "He could be the next Ted Koppel."