She is the latest host to join NewsNation. Katie Pavlich is set to make her mark in the outlet’s 10 PM ET timeslot when she takes over the program next week.
“I love current events. I love watching how things unfold, and I love having a front row seat to history,” Katie Pavlich told Barrett Media.
One major topic she is looking to tackle?
“I think there’s a lot of room there with our show to try and find some interesting businesses and small businesses and talk about their stories and even with the policies that are happening in Washington, D.C. and being implemented,” Pavilch beamed with excitement. “How [the laws made in Washington] affect [small businesses] more broadly. Having some firsthand experience with that will certainly help drive the right questions.”
The first-hand experience Pavlich is talking about: growing up the daughter of teachers turned small-business owners. “My mom was a professor, and my dad was a public school teacher for 35 years, but they also started these car washes from the ground up,” Pavlich, the former editor of TownHall.com, recalled.
“We literally broke ground on the first one, and then we ended up building a second one. So it was really interesting to watch that whole process with building the business physically and then hiring employees.” Pavlich is no stranger to working hard. She didn’t just watch her parents hire employees; she worked at the car wash too: “cleaning out the vacuums and shoveling pits when it was freezing outside” it was all a right of passage for the now prime-time host from Arizona.
Yes, you read that right, freezing cold in Arizona. It’s one of the many misconceptions Pavlich is looking to fix. “I grew up in the Northern part of Arizona, where the elevation is very high, and you get a lot of snow,” Pavlich postulated. “So it would be January, and I was out there with my brother, and we were doing our car wash chores.”
The hard work at the car washes also translated to knowing how to work hard in school, and be aware about the events going on in the world around her, too. She attended the University of Arizona, where she intended to study sports broadcasting. However, Pavlich said it wasn’t until the “Young America Foundation Conference that the light bulb finally went off and I was like, Oh, of course I should be going into political media.”
She’s spent the last 16 years learning the ins and outs of Washington. “I’ve seen a lot of different things happen, and it’s been really exciting to be in the middle of it all from the nation’s capital,” Pavlich said.
It’s more than just her blue-collar upbringing, which gives Pavlich a unique perspective, but also her love of travel. “I’ve been in 30 countries. I’ve been to five continents and 48 U.S. States,” she noted, calling it a blessing to travel so much. It’s also given her the ability to “meet all kinds of different people, see and hear from different perspectives.”
Pavlich added, “I think travel is such a great way to educate yourself [because] it’s one thing to read about things and even read two sides of a story, and to read two different perspectives or hear two different perspectives. But when you go visit a town… and just talk to people and understand the way that people live, I think, is a great way to understand humanity and to be a little [more understanding] when it comes to having tough discussions about big issues and why they live their lives the way they do.”
She also believes traveling internationally is: “Super important because it really makes you appreciate, at least for me, that I’m an American and I have the rights that I do and the freedoms that I do and how American policy impacts foreign policy.”
All that foreign policy often trickles down to those in the armed services, a group of Americans Pavlich plans on honoring weekly. Calling it R.E.D. Friday, Pavlich, a two-time New York Times best-selling author, said “RED” is an acronym for, “Remember Everyone Deployed.”
Her plan is to “try and feature videos from our men and women in uniform who are deployed either overseas or they are assigned a post somewhere in the United States, because you have to move all the time for that as well and that’s a sacrifice.”
Katie Pavlich went on to say her show will feature those in the services, “what their name is, what they’re doing, so they can say hi to their family and just let them know that we appreciate what they’re doing for us every day so that we can be safe and free.”
For those looking to follow in Pavlich’s footsteps, she suggests, “Come to Washington, D.C., put your head down and work hard.”
But it’s not for the faint of heart. “Everything’s happening so fast,” Pavlich avowed. “I always joke about how one year in D.C. feels like seven because you’re getting so much done even in just a day. There’s so much opportunity and even if you just came here for a couple of years, you could work and go work in your local media outlet as well.”
Pavlich is also on the board of the National Journalism Center through the Young America Foundation. She often also advises youngsters to “Say yes, be factual first, opinion second [because] everyone has an opinion.”
She also encouraged, “You can really cut your teeth on some real journalism. I started my career as an investigative reporter and wrote a book about a scandal that was happening in the Justice Department when I first moved to D.C. So, you know, working hard, saying yes, and staying humble, I think, is a good way to succeed in media.”
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Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
