First Person Singular


The hard press


David Gregory, 40, Washington // Journalist and moderator of “Meet the Press”


interview by robin rose Parker


i think it’s the greatest job in journalism. I leapt at the chance to do [it], but having to succeed Tim [Russert] after he died was clearly the most difficult thing to do. It was a very delicate time. What I knew, even on day one, is that somehow this is going to have to become my own and that “Meet the Press” was going to have to go in a different direction ultimately. All I thought about doing initially was finding my comfort zone. And you know what? That took a little longer than even I thought it would. There was a moment in time where I just sort of got over that, and I could walk onto that set and say, “No, no, this is okay. This is my program now. I have permission to do it, and it’s okay.” People come on the program with


something that they want to say but even more that they don’t want to say. I remember early on, interviewing Secretary [Robert] Gates, and I asked him to compare Obama and Bush, since he’d worked for both of them. Now, in my preparation, I knew that he did not (Continued on Page 6)


{ Who Knew Name this local figure Born in the District in 1957 + Producer, writer and story editor for the


HBO series “The Wire” + Won Peabody and AFI awards + Author of more than a dozen crime novels set in and around Washington + Was called “the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world” by Esquire magazine = (Answer: See next page)


november 14, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 5


PHOTOGRAPH BY BENJAMIN C. TANKERSLEY


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