NBC Nightly News Anchor Lester Holt on His ‘Inspiring America’ Segments

Hi Guideposts—I’m Lester Holt, anchor of NBC Nightly News, and I’m on the September cover of Guideposts. One of the features we do on our broadcast every night we call Inspiring America, and it’s just that: It’s stories that inspire us. We have traveled all over the country to find stories that make us feel good about who we are as a people, to make us feel good about each other and to highlight people who are doing great things for their communities. A lot of the stuff we cover on a daily basis can be dark, it can be frightening, it can be divisive. These are the stories of our time, and as a journalist, of course, they are important to me, but it’s also important to give people a lift, to make them know and reassure them that everything is ok, that there are more good people than bad people, there are more positive people than negative people, and there are people doing remarkable things. So we send our correspondents all over the country to find these stories. People come to us with story ideas, and we field many of them and like to feature them. These are not throw-away, fluff feature stories; these are an integral part of our broadcast that people tell us are very important to them. I get stopped all the time by people who are saying, “Thank you for giving me something to smile about or to think about” or “It gave me an idea to do something special for my community.” So we’re appreciative of that kind of support and we’re appreciative of all our viewers of Nightly News.