I am very good friends with waking up in the dark,” says Alex Witt, anchor of MSNBC’s Weekends with Alex Witt, who has learned to enjoy her very off-peak commute from Bronxville to Manhattan. Arriving when the weekday workforce is home in bed, “I feel like the city is mine,” she says.
Witt is clearly wide-awake by the time she arrives at the studio, adeptly tackling on-air whatever topic comes to the fore. “It is incumbent on me to stay up on so many important issues — gun control, immigration, NATO, trade, North Korea — some days, given the contradictions in Washington politics, I feel like I have a case of mental whiplash,” she says. But Witt is energized by today’s accelerated news cycle. “The faster the information is coming at me, the sharper my focus becomes. That’s what I love about live broadcasting,” she explains.
“The faster the information is coming at me, the sharper my focus becomes. That’s what I love about live broadcasting.”
Witt’s network hasn’t escaped the anti-media fray. How does she feel about being accused of peddling fake news? “You must hold truth and fact above everything else,” Witt says, “and hope that at some point, disbelievers will stop and listen with both ears.”
The self-proclaimed “easygoing SoCal girl” (she was born in Los Angeles and graduated from USC) is an interesting mix of intensity and cool: She used to be in a rock band called Mrs. Robinson, started by Westchester moms; she’s an avid downhill skier; a SoulCycle devotee; and enjoys tweeting photos of her cat, Tigger.
As an on-camera talent who originally set out to work behind the scenes, Witt says, “I don’t concern myself with me; I’m all about the news. I don’t aspire to have the public recognition that comes with being on camera. I might be the weirdest person ever to end up on TV.”
