Kansas City native and Star alum named new host of NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’
When she was barely a teenager growing up in Kansas City, Juana Summers knew she wanted to be a journalist.
“I’ve been able to do the thing I set out to do when I was 13 for so many years now,” she told The Star. “I am just so excited and thrilled to get to work.”
On Wednesday, Summers was named the newest co-host of National Public Radio’s popular afternoon news program, “All Things Considered,” as well as the daily news podcast “Consider This.”
Her first day as host will be June 27.
Summers’ love of journalism began at St. Teresa’s Academy.
“My freshman year of high school, I took journalism as an elective and then sophomore year, I made it onto the student newspaper,” the Dart, she said. “By then it pretty much clicked for me. … I wanted to be a journalist.”
“I really credit St. Teresa’s and Eric Thomas, the teacher who was running the journalism program at the time, for giving me that opportunity to really hone in on what I wanted too,” she said.
Summers also was a writer for The Kansas City Star’s former Teen Star program.
“It’s the kind of experience that makes you think that you’re the kind of person who could one day be their colleague,” she said. “As a young Black woman, there weren’t a lot of faces like mine when I was growing up in publications like The Star or elsewhere, so it was just incredibly empowering.”
After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 2009, Summers joined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as an intern before returning to The Star to cover politics as part of the Midwest Democracy Project.
“What was so cool about working at The Star was getting to work with veteran reporters that I had grown up reading,” she said. “One of the things that I remember most was getting to work with Steve Kraske, when he was at the paper, Dave Helling, to cover the Missouri Senate race and actually being able to go out into the field under their supervision, and talk to voters and cover election night for The Star.”
(Kraske is now host of his own news show on KCUR public radio. Helling now writes for The Star’s Opinion pages.)
Summers then moved to the East Coast, first working as a fellow for Politico.
“That kind of started my move into national politics, which is what I’ve largely been covering since 2010,” she said.
Most recently, Summers has worked as a political correspondent for NPR.
“I focus on race, justice and politics,” she said. “I also have a very special interest in covering young people and young voters.”
Sarah Gilbert, NPR’s vice president for news programming, said in a news release: “Juana emerged as the top candidate after a rigorous national search that included both internal and external candidates — propelled by her authoritative reporting expertise, her versatile journalistic talent, and her drive to explore and interrogate the most challenging questions of the moment.”
Summers will join Ailsa Chang, Mary Louise Kelly and Ari Shapiro in hosting both shows, according to the news release. She replaces Audie Cornish, who left in January.
“NPR is a place that’s creating space for a lot of new voices and that is open to telling a wide range of stories,” Summers said. “I’m super excited to experiment, and to be a leader in this space, and hopefully to make more people like me, who are growing up in places like Kansas City, feel like NPR can be a news home for them.”