UNC alumnus Carl Kasell speaks on his radio career

When Carl Kasell was 7 years old, he would play with his grandma’s record player and pretend he was speaking on the radio.

He would make up commercials and news and then play a record. And then he would play that record again.

At an event Tuesday night, Kasell, a UNC alumnus and National Public Radio newscaster, told a crowd of about 250 how he’d wanted to be on the radio as long as he can remember.

Kasell was a news announcer for NPR’s “Morning Edition” for 30 years and now works as an ambassador for NPR and the judge and scorekeeper for its quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”

He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame as well as the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame, and he won the Leo C. Lee Friend of Public Radio News Award in 1996.

Kasell said his dream of being on the radio was first realized when he was 16, when he was selected to read a weekly 15-minute segment at his local radio station in Goldsboro. That summer, the station offered him a part-time job.

“Wow, I was happy,” he said. “They paid me. I’d pay them if I’d had the money.”

When Kasell was a student at UNC, he was part of the original staff of WUNC, which he said is his fondest memory of his days at Chapel Hill.

“I learned so much,” he said. “I was in seventh heaven.”

Kasell went on to be the news director at WAVA radio station in Arlington, Va., where he hired news anchor and talk show host Katie Couric as an intern one summer when she was in college.

Kasell said that when Couric graduated, she came looking for a job at NPR, where Kasell was working, but NPR didn’t have a position for her.

He said many years later, Couric asked him why NPR didn’t hire her.

“I said, ‘Katie, we did you a favor.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I think you did.’”

Kasell said Couric still credits him for her successful career in broadcasting.

One of the most memorable stories Kasell said he covered at NPR was 9/11.

Jordan Preuss, a senior biology major, asked Kasell how he dealt with the emotional impact of covering tough stories.

“I never thought emotionally about anything I was reporting,” Kasell said.

“Sometimes you don’t have time. It’s when you finish and go home and sit down and watch it on TV that you realize what really happened.”

Sophomore journalism major Conway Wilcox said she was intrigued to hear how Kasell covered events like 9/11.

“It was interesting how you have to feel emotionless.”

Kasell said what he loved the most about reporting the news was the chance to report history every morning.

“I like that — choosing stories you’re going to lead with, being able to write those stories and compact them into five minutes and knowing that you’ve done a good job,” he said.

“I like that very much.”

Contact the desk editor at university@dailytarheel.com.