NBC’s Holt adds empathetic commentaries to news anchor role

NEW YORK (AP) — During a tough news year with a pandemic, racial unrest and blood-sport politics, NBC’s Lester Holt has concluded that telling stories isn’t enough. The “NBC Nightly News” anchor occasionally ends his broadcasts now with commentaries, an unusual departure for network evening newscasts that have a lengthy track record of playing it straight. Holt’s commentaries trend toward the non-controversial, with a central theme of trying to find common ground that will pull Americans together. When he first started, Holt worried that audiences would feel that he was overstepping his bounds, but he’s found that there was hunger for an empathetic voice.