Chris Jansing ’78 thought she’d already made it big before she even left Westerville.
Thanks to a kind endorsement from a professor, The Westerville News and Public Opinion — the town’s newspaper at the time — had hired her as a reporter while she was still a student at Otterbein. She covered a city council meeting for her first assignment, diligently taking notes in a room filled with cigarette smoke as decisions that impacted the school she was attending and the community where she lived were made right in front of her. She wrote her story, then went home to her sorority house. The assignment paid $10.
“I will never forget the feeling when I got that newspaper, and my story was on the front page,” Jansing said. “I thought, ‘Well, if it ends here, I’ve done something.’”
But it didn’t end there. Jansing is well into her fifth decade in journalism, now serving as the anchor of her own show five days a week at 12 p.m. on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). She has reported live from the scene of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nelson Mandela’s final days in South Africa, and several Olympic Games, among countless other historical events. She’s won two Emmy Awards, and in 2016, she was inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame.
She has a resume that would be incomprehensible to the version of her that first set foot on Otterbein’s campus more than 50 years ago. A native of the tiny lakeside village of Fairport Harbor, OH, Jansing remembers being amazed simply meeting international students for the first time at Otterbein and hearing them speak in different languages about lives very different from her own. She chose Political Science for her major at first but had “no idea” what career goals she wanted to pursue.
She knew she wanted to learn, though. And for a young student with obvious talent and a deep well of curiosity, Otterbein was the perfect place for her to thrive.
“It’s remarkable to think that going to Otterbein opened up so many worlds to me that I didn’t even know existed, so many opportunities that I didn’t know were out there, and so many professors who saw enough in me to take time with me,” Jansing said. “I think that’s the brilliance of a liberal arts education.”
The tools Jansing acquired during her time at Otterbein — including work with The Tan and Cardinal, or “T&C,” and WOBN — not only helped her get noticed early in her career for radio and television jobs in New York, but has also sustained her for decades in a journalism industry that has changed drastically in the time she’s been working.
Jansing returned to campus in 2016 to talk to a Senior Year Experience class, High Stakes Politics: The 2016 Presidential Election.
“The formula for real truth-telling is not complicated,” Jansing said. “Work hard. Develop sources. Know how to tell a story, how to write. All those things that I learned way back in 1977, ’78 still hold true for me today.”
Building her career around those principles has made Jansing feel a powerful connection to the generation of journalists she came of age admiring — figures like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting on Watergate was portrayed in the film All The President’s Men while Jansing was still in college, and who have since appeared as guests on Jansing’s show.
Just as meaningfully to her, though, the persistence of those principles helps her feel connected to younger generations today. Jansing is no stranger to Otterbein’s campus, having returned at least four times in official capacities since she landed her first national broadcasting role in 1998. She was the Commencement Speaker for the Class of 2011 and visited a classroom of Otterbein students to hold a wide-ranging discussion about the impending presidential election in 2016.
When she speaks to college students today, she hopes to instill in them a desire to know what’s happening in their community, and the ways they can be active in it. Jansing’s biggest goal on college campuses, though, is no different than it was 50 years ago — to learn.
“Young people have often been catalysts for change,” Jansing said. “I get so much back from them in learning what their real interest are, what motivates them, and what frustrates them … I’m lucky that I’ve had the chance to go back to Otterbein, and be invited to other college campuses, and learn something, and hopefully give back a little bit.”
Past stories about Chris Jansing ’78:
- Towers Winter 1989: Political Junkie Finds Nirvana as TV Anchor
- Fall 1998: There’s a New Peacock in the Big Apple • page 18 Chris Kapostasy Jansing ’78 is spreading her wings at Rockefeller Center and NBC
- Spring and Summer 2003: MSNBC Anchor Returns “Home” to Share, Teach
- Spring 2011: Chris Jansing to Speak at 2011 Commencement
- Spring 2012: Summit Brings National Leaders Together: Otterbein’s campus became a collaborative space where participants shared, imagined and planned pathways for women’s social, political and economic mobility. Plans were presented at a Town Hall meeting hosted by MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing ’78
- Fall 2016: White House Correspondent Returns to the ’Bein: Otterbein alumna and NBC Senior White House Correspondent Chris Kapostasy Jansing ’78 returned to campus on Oct. 13 to talk to Otterbein students to see how millennials feel about the presidential election. In a Towers Hall classroom, Jansing talked with students with differing political affiliations from many majors, including members of Associate Professor La Trice Washington’s Senior Year Experience class, “High Stakes Politics: The 2016 Presidential Election.”
