Frank Langfitt
Frank Langfitt is NPR's London correspondent. He covers the UK and Ireland, as well as stories elsewhere in Europe.
Langfitt arrived in London in June 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He's been busy ever since, covering the most tumultuous period in British politics in decades. Langfitt has reported on everything from Brexit's economic impact, Chinese influence campaigns and terror attacks to the renewed push for Scottish independence, political tensions in Northern Ireland and Megxit. Langfitt has contributed to NPR podcasts, including Consider This, The Indicator from Planet Money, Code Switch and Pop Culture Happy Hour. He also appears on the BBC and PBS Newshour.
Previously, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent covering China. Based in Shanghai, he drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. As part of the series, Langfitt drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a wedding chauffeur. He expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette).
While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous "black jails" — secret detention centers — as well as his own travails taking China's driver's test, which he failed three times.
Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from Sudan, covered the civil war in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of General Motors. His story with producer Brian Reed of how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on This American Life and has been taught in business schools at Yale, Penn and NYU.
In 2008, Langfitt covered the Beijing Olympics as a member of NPR's team, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. Langfitt's print and visual journalism have also been honored by the Overseas Press Association and the White House News Photographers Association.
Before coming to NPR, Langfitt spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun, covering a swath of Asia from East Timor to the Khyber Pass.
Langfitt spent his early years in journalism stringing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and living in Hazard, Kentucky, where he covered the state's Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
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Digital nomads from the U.S. who roam the world say their time abroad allows them to recognize — and even appreciate — aspects of American life and the privilege of American identity.
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Sometimes history lies hidden just around the corner. Just south of Washington, D.C., is a graveyard with more than 100 wooden ships that date to World War I -- the Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay.
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A new collection of essays by New Yorker writer Evan Osnos, The Haves and Have-Yachts, provides rich research and material for the conversation about extreme wealth in America today. -
Last weekend's military parade and No Kings rallies could be seen as an example of a DIVIDED America… a moment where our differences were placed in pretty stark relief. But reporting from both places on the same day… you see something different.
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A 33-mile trip from one protest in Annapolis, Md., to the parade grandstand in front of the White House was like a journey between two different countries. -
Saturday's military parade in Washington D.C. and the national "No Kings" protests created a split-screen moment for a divided nation.
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A parade kicks off today celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Army. But some people are uneasy about a display of hardware often associated with authoritarian regimes.
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People in 15 of 24 countries downgraded ratings of the U.S., according to the survey of more than 28,000. Majorities in almost every country surveyed describe Trump as "arrogant" and "dangerous." -
Many in Virginia's Culpeper County are unhappy with the president's pardon of a sheriff convicted of bribery. Trump called him a victim "persecuted by the Radical Left 'monsters' and 'left for dead.'" -
President Trump pardoned a corrupt, former Virginia sheriff last week, saying he was a victim of the Biden administration. But as NPR's Frank Langfitt reports, many of the sheriff's constituents oppose the pardon.
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The academy in Emmitsburg, Md., is often described as the national war college for firefighting. It offers training that ranges from leadership to how to conduct fire, arson and blast investigations. -
Emmitsburg is home to the National Fire Academy, effectively the war college for U.S. firefighters. The Trump administration's decision to halt classes has some townspeople pondering their votes.
