Joe Fryer, NBC News' jack-of-all-trades, is his social studies class's newest celebrity

Growing up in Minnesota, Joe Fryer watched the Today show every morning on his favorite station, KARE 11, the NBC affiliate.

“I watched it when I was a teenager – when Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel hosted the show,” he recalls. “So I always dreamed of being on the show, because I knew at a young age in fifth grade that I wanted to be a TV reporter.”

Fryer's dream came true, and more so. He is the latest addition to Today’s weekend line-up, appearing alongside Laura Jarrett and Peter Alexander on Saturday Today. Not only that but Fryer is also an NBC News NOW Anchor, a correspondent reporting for Today, Nightly News, and MSNBC.

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If you believe in fate, then Fryer being a jack-of-all-trades at NBC seemed to be pre-determined. As if he didn’t get enough of Today at home, his favorite show followed him to school.

“When I was in junior high, we would watch the beginning of the show every day in our social studies class,” Fryer remembers. “The teacher recorded it and would play the news section of the show as a way to get our current events lesson for that day.”

Fryer said that one of the show’s reporters became sort of a cult figure to him and his classmates. “Every time they’d cut away to a report from Jim Miklaszewski, our class would cheer. He became like a celebrity in our social studies class.”

And now, Fryer has become an NBC celebrity in his own right.

After he aced his social studies class, Fryer earned a degree from the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He is being inducted into the school’s “Hall of Achievement” next month.

For Fryer, college wasn’t all fun and games. Partly due to hiding his sexuality, Fryer suffered from depression and feelings of loneliness. He finally came out to his mom in 1997, and she gently told him that she knew he was gay.

Early in his career, while he was out personally, he hit a roadblock with his sexuality professionally.

"I remember working at a TV station in the late 90s when local community leaders were discussing a 'fairness ordinance' to protect LGBTQ individuals from discrimination in employment and housing," Fryer recounted. "I suggested it as a story to cover, but the response from an assignment editor stuck with me: 'Gay rights? I don’t give a damn about gay rights.' It was a moment that made me realize I couldn't be open about my identity at work and that stories about my community might not be welcomed."

But in 2012, being gay worked to Fryer’s benefit when he covered a referendum on same-sex marriage in Washington state while at KING-TV in Seattle. “We could kind of tell there was a decent chance it was actually going to pass, and it was early on election day and we needed all hands on deck, and I was supposed to cover the congressional races, but I sensed something bigger.”

Fryer went to his boss and told him that in the evening, when the results came in, history could be made. “I said that when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, I wanted to just do a story where we literally cover the day from sun-up to sunset, and what it's like through the eyes of the people who have been working on this issue of gay marriage, and even those people who oppose LGBTQ rights, because that's all part of the story. I wanted to tell the story through all those eyes. And he said, yes. He said, ‘I would like you to do that,’ and literally took me off of political coverage for the day along with my photo journalist. And we did that and we told that story, and it became our lead story for two days.”

Fryer, like most television journalists, worked his way up the ladder at network affiliates around the country,. In 2013, he was assigned by NBC to cover a breaking news story taking place in San Diego.

Reporting on the saga of Hannah Anderson, a Californian teenager abducted by a family acquaintance suspected of killing her mother and brother, Fryer reported daily on the unfolding of developments. What began as a missing person case and a tragic double homicide evolved into a nationwide Amber Alert, and with Hannah's safe recovery. His comprehensive coverage was featured on Today, Nightly News," and MSNBC, And soon after he became a network correspondent based out of Los Angeles.

“I understood that my break came with some talent, but also being at the right place at the right time,” Fryer said with some understatement. “I made the jump to LA as a correspondent for seven years, and then during the pandemic in 2020, I came to New York to launch Morning News Now, the morning show on the streaming platform NBC News NOW. And now, being on Today Weekend it’s been so personally and professionally remarkable.”

Fryer keeps busy all week, anchoring on NBC News NOW streaming Monday through Friday and then taking a seat at the big chair as an anchor on the weekends. He also keeps in mind the importance of representation. “I hear from people all the time who talk about how much it means to see an openly gay man on television news. And the power of that.”

“What really strikes me is when people, especially those who are older than me, say that they weren't out of the closet, or that they were in the process of coming out, and that when they see someone on television , whether it's me on the news, or someone who's an actor or someone who is on Broadway or someone who's in the music industry, it really does make them feel that much more at ease about living their truth."