'Chris Jansing Reports' anchor talks growing in Fairport Harbor, working nearly quarter of a century for NBC News

Jun. 17—It's late on a Monday afternoon, and Chris Jansing is a couple of hours removed from hosting an MSNBC news broadcast that covered soaring inflation, mass shootings and that day's public hearing by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

The Fairport Harbor native hasn't exactly been scraping for topics to cover since "Chris Jansing Reports" debuted in late May in the cable news network's 1 p.m. weekday slot.

"I've covered pretty much all of the major stories of the last four decades, and the intensity of this period — six or seven years of nonstop, intense news — is unlike anything I've ever seen," Jansing says over the phone from New York City. "Every time we think it's going to get a little easier, it's going to let up a little bit, it doesn't. Things happen. Who would have predicted COVID?"

Jansing grew up Chris Kapostasy, the youngest of 12 children in what she calls "a very Hungarian family."

"And there are lots of Kapostasys still in the Cleveland area and certainly in Lake County, as well," says Jansing, adding that her family boasts 23 nieces and nephews and about 30 great-nieces and -nephews.

"Don't hold me to that number."

When she was growing up, her family subscribed to multiple newspapers — and her first job was delivering newspapers, she says — and were "news junkies" in general.

"My father — I actually remember as a little girl, sitting with him on the couch and watching Cleveland City Council meetings on television. We didn't live in Cleveland, but my father was very interested in politics," she says of the late Joseph Kapostasy. "He was a precinct committeeman in our little town of Fairport Harbor."

(Jansing says she was too young to remember it, but family lore says her dad took her to see then-President John F. Kennedy speak in Lake County and had her atop shoulders for the speech.)

And while the family sitting down to watch the evening news was another ritual, Jansing says she didn't initially consider the idea of being a newswoman.

"To be honest, in the early '70s, which is when I went to school, there weren't a ton of women journalists," she says. "I think Dorothy Fuldheim ... who was on local television was something of an anomaly."

So after one year at Lake Catholic High School in Mentor and two years at Fairport Harding High School, she went on to Otterbein University, in the Columbus suburb of Westerville, a year early and majored in political science.

"I always thought that I might be involved in campaigns," she says, "but I got asked to fill in at a radio station college. And I sat down and did a newscast, and I just caught the bug. It just seemed like it was what I was meant to do. Honestly, it was that quick — I never looked back."

Her drive to ask questions of people in the know landed her at NBC News almost exactly 24 years ago.

"It's allowed me to travel the world and meet extraordinary people and cover presidents and prime ministers and popes," Jansing says. "It's been an amazing adventure."

She mentions covering presidents, and three years of that adventure was as a White House correspondent — which, for a news-and-politics addict, could be as exciting as it gets.

"It is actually addicting that, every day, you walk through those gates, and you look up and you say, 'Wow, I work here ... the center of power of the United States and, arguably, the world,'" she says. "I traveled with (President) Barack Obama to dozens of countries, and then I went on the first major foreign trip with (President) Donald Trump.

"Those experiences are just unequaled. So, in that sense, being where the action is — in 'the room where it happens,' to quote ("Hamilton" creator) Lin Manuel Miranda — is heady and exciting. And it is the hardest thing I've ever done."

Still, she says, she missed other things while doing that job and is thrilled again to be based in the Big Apple, sinking her teeth into a show that bears her name.

"We're only a couple of weeks in, so we are a work in progress, and I haven't even hired my whole staff."

What does she want "Chris Jansing Reports" to be?

"Look, it's not complicated," she says. "I want this show to be fairly uncomplicated in the sense of (it's going to be) 'Big J Journalism,' a place where people can go in a world that's very divided, in a world where there's lots of opinions out there, but it will be a safe place for them to go and see a newscast — what we consider to be the facts.

"And we're not going to take sides," she continues. "We're not going to try to make things bigger or less than they are. It's really going back to basics for me and reporting the news. I am, in my heart, a reporter."

To be fair, though, the broadcast on this day was rather typical MSNBC fare, in that a first segment with a four-person panel — to react to the Jan. 6 hearing — was followed by other blocks that involved guests knowledgeable on the topic of the moment.

It would seem, then, that it's largely up to Jansing, as the anchor, to make it stand out from the pack, to give it a distinct flavor.

There's truth in that, she allows, but only to a point.

"I learned very early on — and I learned it from someone who is an icon in my business, and that is Walter Cronkite, and he said, 'You never want to be the story. It's not about you. It's about the story.' And I've never forgotten that," she says. "Having said that, I recognize that there are a lot of places that people can go and a lot more places than when I started in television and a lot more places than when I started watching the news and you had three networks and that was it. CNN didn't exist. MSNBC didn't exist. Fox (News) didn't exist. So I want people to get to know me and to understand who I am as a journalist.

"So, yes, there absolutely is that aspect of it, but I don't think about it," Jansing adds. "Day in and day out, I'm thinking, 'What's the best program I can put on the air?' 'Who are my guests — the best people to answer the question that people want answered?' And 'How did we do it in a way that people will find compelling and new?'"

As Jansing notes, this is an extremely politically divided country, and there are many choices for news consumption. And for all the folks who believe Fox News resides far out to the right on the political spectrum, there may be just as many who see MSNBC as existing just as far to the left.

"Nobody's pretending that part of our programming isn't opinion programming; it is. I would say judge it the same way you judge me as a journalist, which is, 'Is what they're telling you the truth? Is what they're telling you full and comprehensive?'

"And I would put our hosts and their smarts and their depth and their research up against everybody," she adds. "Opinion programming isn't everybody's thing, and hopefully that's why I'm here."

Not surprisingly, Jansing is looking forward to a story that will heat up over the next few months.

"I am a political junkie, and the (midterm elections) are going to be fascinating. They're going to tell us a lot about the way this country views what's important."

She hopes that will be a story that puts her back on the road — one of "the great pleasures" of her work.

"It's really necessary, I think, in journalism to get out there and just talk to people out there in the country. So I do look forward to just meeting people and talking to people and having an opportunity to sort of expand horizons."

During this conversation, Jansing talks up Fairport Harbor as a "great town" people should visit and says she is still a big supporter of Cleveland sports — she feels Guardians infielder Jose Ramirez should get serious consideration for Major League Baseball's Most Valuable Player awards and says she believes the Browns will somehow win the Super Bowl each season until the team is mathematically eliminated. Thus, it's not surprising to hear she has loved it when her travels have brought her back to Northeast Ohio, sometimes even specifically Lake County.

"My family could come out and see me — my dad could come see me or my mom. It just always was great."