This is an excerpt from the January issue of New York Family magazine.
No news is too small for the Holt family. When they get a whiff of activity, Lester Holt and his son Stefan Holt leap into action.
Both currently anchors for NBC—Lester for “Dateline” and “Nightly News,” and Stefan for WNBC—they recounted rushing from a family gathering toward sirens in the Flatiron District two years ago (Lester says that just by listening to the number of sirens, he could tell something big was happening). That night, the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava was on fire; on the spot, Lester and Stefan started taking video and reporting. It wasn’t the sort of story national news was going to cover, but the self-proclaimed “news nerds” didn’t mind: They saw a story and felt the urge to share. Though this specific event was recent, Stefan has long loved the journalism world his father inhabits.
“When I was a kid, I had the news bug too,” Stefan, 31, says. “[When] Dad was running out on a story or we heard sirens, I wanted to tag along.”
Though Stefan pursued a political science degree at Pepperdine University before beginning his reporting career, Lester notes that he always showed an interest in current events (Lester explained the Gulf War to him in kid-friendly terms when he was roughly 3 years old).
“So many mornings he would get up at 4:30am with me and come down to Studio 1A on a Saturday—what teenager does that, I don’t know, but he did,” Lester recalls. “He got to know the crews, he hung out, got to understand a little bit about how we put a broadcast on the air.”
For the full interview with Lester and Stefan Holt from New York Family magazine, click here.
