NBC Bay Area anchor Scott McGrew encourages cultivation of curiosity

“Why do some locomotives face backwards as the train moves down the tracks?”

That was one of the questions Scott McGrew, a business/technology anchor and reporter for NBC Bay Area for 20 years, asked as he engaged his audience of 35 during the MAP Speaker Series on Jan. 17 in the MAP Annex (Old Music Building).

Dressed in a white dress shirt and dark tan khakis and his script in one hand, he directed the students’ attention toward a published picture of an ordinary locomotive, as if challenging them to unravel the unspoken secrets hidden beneath the steel gray tracks.

“Freight trains often use more than one locomotive to pull the train. I assume it’s because of the weight. I have noticed oftentimes the second or third locomotive is pointed backwards and wonder why that is,” McGrew later elaborated in a post-presentation email interview. In face of many complicated explanations, he discovered a simple one: It is difficult to turn a locomotive around on the tracks.

“You can’t just pick it up like a toy. So when they are hooking trains together, they don’t bother to turn it around,” he said. “It works just as well running backwards as it does facing forwards, so they just don’t bother to fix it.”

This example, as McGrew explained, is something that few people notice or give attention to. Journalists, however, are “inherently super, super curious” and seek answers to questions like this, prompting exploration about topics generally overlooked in the world. “If you’re a curious reporter, you must find out,” he told students.

His view of modern media and the need for those in the industry to adapt resonated with students.

“I thought it was all very interesting but also extremely important to hear, especially from a specialist in that field,” said senior Alec Kruka, who helped organize the event.

McGrew, who attended Iowa State University and worked his first job as a cameraman for $250/week, knew from a young age that journalism was his true calling. Claiming to be “terrible in print journalism for writing short articles,” he used this shortcoming to his advantage and turned to TV broadcasting, which demanded speed and straightforward presentation.

Despite the minimalist approach broadcast journalism takes, the job itself entails long-term commitment to an unusual schedule. Waking up at 2:15 a.m. on weekdays, McGrew has grown accustomed to his routine, which includes a 10-minute touch-up session with “Laura Mercier and a little Smashbox” before airing, working the graveyard shift and getting off work by 11 a.m. He also hosts “Press: Here,” a weekly round table featuring Silicon Valley CEOs and entrepreneurs, on Sundays at 9 a.m. With a schedule that rarely matches up with that of his friends’, McGrew often misses out on outings like dinner plans because he is almost always in bed by 5:30 p.m.

McGrew isn’t the only one working unusual hours. A 300-people staff is constantly buzzing with ideas and activity, working different shifts in the studio for production of different parts throughout the day. McGrew noted that NBC has provided women with no shortage of opportunities — many women, including “his boss, his boss’s boss and his boss’s boss’s boss” hold important leadership roles.

Most of the staffers studied journalism for skill-based basics and a liberal arts subject, usually English or Political Science, that prepared them for real-world occurrences as journalists.

One of McGrew’s most memorable reporting experiences was going in the backseat of an F-16, flying over the Golden Gate Bridge and watching the jet refuel. He has also witnessed an execution by firing squad in Utah. Although not every experience entailed “good” news, McGrew was able to gain exposure to a variety of perspectives and knowledge.

Since moving to the Bay Area in 1998, he has gained insight into how “media directs the national conversation of STEM.” As the Silicon Valley is “small” in that everyone is connected to each other, very few people are changing the world in a huge way, rendering it analogous to the “middle of Florence, Italy, during the Renaissance.”

While technology is developing rapidly, media evolves with it as well. Print journalism has dwindled since the founding of Craigslist in 1995, which eliminated the necessity for advertisements for listings and garage sales, a major source of funding for newspapers. In the same way, the rise of Spotify and its access to over 30 million songs is replacing traditional FM radio. McGrew entertained the idea presented in the movie “Anchorman,” where a select group of people informed everyone of events happening around the world, acting as the sole source of information.

Although the movie was a satire, McGrew contended that it was somewhat representative of the truth. After the advent of the Internet, the invention of iPhones flipped our world upside-down — “we carried the news, the weather, in our pocket; we read about a local Earthquake in our social media groups before we hear it on television,” he said.

Even though technology has the potential to take over a large part of journalism, McGrew advised, we should nevertheless learn Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro because content still has to be created.

Ultimately, McGrew’s attraction to the field of journalism was not motivated by money, he said. “Make the money, don't let the money make you,” he said, quoting Macklemore & Ryan Lewis lyrics. “It’s attitude and passion. Passion makes you good at the things you do, which makes money.”

He encouraged students, whether they aspire to be journalists or not to communicate to people what they want to be when time to choose, since many have access to a network of connections that may one day provide stepping stones in their journey.

“If you want to become a marine biologist, an adult may know someone who knows someone who is a marine biologist. And they would love to help you once you tell them,” McGrew said. “Don’t ask for permission. It is you who didn’t give permission for yourself.”