In a time of increasing polarization and culture war, longtime TV and radio personality Leslie Marshall wants us all to lose the divide.
Marshall, a Northeast graduate, is a Fox News contributor, Democratic strategist and decorated broadcaster. She is one of the most successful women to make a name for herself in an industry that remains largely male-dominated – an industry with there is no shortage of stories about the obstacles women face.
Beginning his broadcasting career in the late 1980s, when the “shock jock” radio format was beginning to take over, Marshall competed for air time alongside a strong group of male radio talent: Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh (who she once topped in the ratings). a quarter in the early 1990s, she says) and among them Larry King.
One day, she sent King 36 cassettes containing material he criticized on lined paper, with meticulous notes for each cassette. The best advice she received from someone in the radio industry was hidden in these notes: “Always be true to yourself,” King told Marshall. “Never lie about what you believe. »
It’s this philosophy of sticking to your guns that has been the key to Marshall’s success. But so is the willingness to venture into enemy territory and trade blows, which is part of the job description of Democratic strategist on Fox News. For more than 16 years, what sustained Marshall during live televised debates was the knowledge that she and her interviewees, once the cameras stopped, could put aside their differences and go out to lunch.
“When you see a Democrat and a Republican laughing together today, it’s now front-page news,” Marshall said. Northeast Global News.
“People always ask me why I chose Fox if I’m liberal,” she says of the job, which she accepted at the request of Roger Ailes. “In truth, I was always treated with respect there. No one tells me what to say or not to say.
Marshall’s criticisms of the current civil status in the United States, it is not just nostalgia for a more centrist politics. Decorum, as reflected in the broader culture and modeled by the country’s leaders, is an important feature of democratic debate, she says. She believes the breakdown in decorum has made it more difficult for people “to hear what the other side is saying,” she says. Worse, at a time when political debate has become almost entirely virtualized, this has pushed America deeper into its respective information echo chambers.
Although she acknowledges that politicians like Donald Trump are largely — and perhaps disproportionately — responsible for deteriorating civil standards, both parties bear some responsibility, she says.
Start of his career in the late 1980s
When she arrived on the scene, Marshall wasn’t focused on mending partisan lines. It was simply about getting people to talk about “anything and everything” – the material that drives life: “I really wanted to be a woman, Phil Donahue,” she said. “I didn’t want to get into politics; I didn’t want to do news – at the time.
Marshall had a promising start on radio. In the late 1980s, she had the opportunity to sit Jerry Wichner, the soporific late-night voice of Florida’s east coast. The weekend show came from WNWS, a 50,000 watt station located in Miami.
Unsure if she possessed the verbosity required to fill the entire show, Marshall remembers feeling nervous before the show. She recalls that there was a problem of People magazine on the desk in front of her. She slid it in and read the cover story; it was about time Zsa Zsa Gabor slapped a Beverly Hills cop. She read the story live and improvised her reaction to the situation.
Almost forgetting to give the station’s phone number, when she finished her take, the lines lit up with callers.
“To me, it was the equivalent of a comedian making fun of a joke,” she says. “Complete strangers call me to tell me about My opinion – and share their opinions with me. After that, I was hooked.
That night, from Miami, Marshall called his parents in Somerset, Massachusetts. “I said – and I cried – that I had just found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” Marshall says.
It was this fateful broadcast that ultimately landed Marshall his own weekend show in Miami, the Leslie Marshall Show, which took place from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. In 1990, she was then hired full-time by WGR in Buffalo, where the show aired weekdays. In 1992, Marshall became the youngest radio personality to syndicate when she replaced Tom Snyder as host of the ABC satellite radio network.
Touting her ability to attract speakers from across the political spectrum, Marshall familiarized herself with the issues that mattered most to America and used her platform to foster robust conversation and debate around them. “The easy phone calls are abortion, gun control and capital punishment,” she says.
But more than just a gift of gab, Marshall’s interest in radio was spurred by a desire to talk, as she put it, about issues of justice. As a self-described independent in the 1980s and 1990s, this passion for justice encompassed a wide range of issues championed by both parties.
When it came to creating her own brand, Marshall was advised against what, in both spheres of politics and radio, amounted to unmarketable neutrality – that is, remaining independent. She says that as a “fence keeper,” she simply couldn’t compete with the conservative, male group filled with firebrands and agitators, like Limbaugh, who commanded legions of listeners.
“I’m not kidding, I read, I think it was 600 pages: the Democratic platform, the Republican platform and the Libertarian platform – bless them; theirs was about 45 pages at the time,” Marshall says. “And I decided, based on the program, that I had more in common with Democrats, and I became a Democrat then and have been a Democrat ever since.”
Although she now professionally advocates for the more mainstream Democratic view – primarily on television – she often does so by stripping away partisan packaging and digging deeper to the heart of the issues. It’s a skill she’s cultivated over her many years in radio.
“If I don’t feel anything about a topic, I can’t talk about it for several hours,” she says. “And almost every topic I discuss has an element of justice. »
Choose the northeast
“I liked that the city was your campus,” Marshall says of his decision to pursue an undergraduate degree at Northeastern. “I wasn’t looking for a school in a more rural area with rows and rows of fraternities and sororities. It wasn’t my thing. I wanted a municipal school.
Marshall envisioned himself at Northeastern long before he got there. She hung out with friends in Speare Hall on weekends, looking forward to dining in the cafeteria with the other students.
“I wanted to major in communications because I wanted to get into broadcasting,” she says. “I got financial aid and, between, you know, Pell Grants, National Direct Student Loans, Co-op or Work Study, they allowed me to go without having to wait at the table until ‘at three in the morning.’
She remembers meeting Michael Woodnick, who taught at Northeastern from 1965 to 2009. She says her classes filled up quickly. Woodnick welcomed Marshall, who was visiting campus with his father, into his walk-in office.
“And the first thing he said when we sat down was, ‘I was about to have lunch, would you like to have half of my sandwich?’ “, says Marshall. “It was just that little bit of personalization that I felt like I wasn’t getting from other colleges.”
It turned out that Woodnick and Marshall shared a birthday. That afternoon, she was sold on the idea of becoming a Husky.
“For me, Northeastern was more of a true representation of real life,” Marshall says. “It was just great preparation for life.”
Tanner Stening is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Send him an email to t.stening@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @tstening90.
