Washington, D.C.’s all-news radio powerhouse WTOP has never faced a news cycle quite like this one, and afternoon anchor Shawn Anderson knows it better than most.
For years, Anderson has helmed afternoon drive at one of the country’s most-listened-to news stations. And lately, “afternoon drive” might as well be a misnomer. The news doesn’t slow down at 5 PM. It barely pauses.
Anderson traces the relentless pace back to a specific moment two summers ago.
“Basically, from the time Joe Biden had that disastrous debate with Donald Trump two years ago this month until now, we haven’t had a slow day, period,” Anderson said.
Things only accelerated from there. And the return of Donald Trump to the White House turned a fast current into a full-on torrent.
“It only accelerated once Donald Trump became president,” the longtime WTOP afternoon anchor said. That reality forced Anderson and the WTOP team to adapt — and adapt fast. Covering the Trump administration means triaging the news on the fly, sometimes choosing four or five major stories out of seven that break on a single day.
Learning to Run a Different Race
Anderson reached for an athletic analogy when describing what it felt like to suddenly operate at this speed.
“It was like being a miler in track and field and having to learn how to run a marathon at world-record speed,” Anderson said. “That was the ramp-up from a news standpoint, and we had to learn very quickly how to keep our heads above water.”
That adjustment didn’t happen overnight, but it didn’t take long either.
“It probably took us a few weeks to get used to that pace and realize that was going to be the pace we’d have to work at for the foreseeable future,” the WTOP anchor shared. Now, operating at that velocity is simply the job.
Part of what makes the pace so demanding is the willingness to abandon a plan the moment circumstances change. Anderson said the team stays on a “swivel” — meeting at the start of each day to map out coverage, then tearing up that map when something bigger breaks.
“We might have to drop something we would normally cover because something new has superseded it,” Anderson said. “We’re not set in stone every day on what we do.”
That flexibility comes with trade-offs, though. Stories that would’ve led a broadcast in a slower news environment sometimes don’t make air at all. “Sometimes it feels like things slip through the cracks that, in a normal news cycle, you might report on,” Anderson said. “It might even be your lead story. But so many other things have happened that you just have to move on.”
Staying Local — and Staying Balanced
Perhaps the most distinct pressure Anderson faces isn’t speed — it’s balance. WTOP serves Washington, D.C., a market where “local news” and “federal government news” can blur together in ways they don’t anywhere else. Anderson’s aware of that tension and works hard to keep WTOP from tipping too far in either direction.
“We are at our best at WTOP when we are balanced between local and national, between politics and other issues, and between the bad stories and the good stories we want to tell,” Anderson said. That balance has grown even more critical as other local outlets scale back. With The Washington Post pulling away from community coverage, WTOP has stepped into that gap. “We’ve become one of the go-to outlets for local news,” Anderson said. “We’re very aware of that mission.”
Maintaining that mission in a politically charged climate isn’t easy. Anderson’s frank about the reality that unbiased coverage draws complaints from every direction — and says that’s actually a sign the station’s doing something right.
“When people complain from both sides of the spectrum, we know we’re doing our jobs correctly,” the WTOP anchor shared. “We get those kinds of complaints.”
Audience reactions have grown louder and more frequent over the course of Anderson’s career — and more politically charged. Still, he doesn’t see that as a reason to drift toward any particular lane. “Unbiased coverage is a mantra here, and everybody is well aware of that,” Anderson said. The path forward, in his view, is straightforward even if it isn’t easy: “You just have to ignore the noise a little bit, get the facts straight, and move forward in an unbiased way.”
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
