Journalist Ali Rogin on Growing Up in a Rock-and-Roll Family

"The E Street Band broke up [for a decade] when I was two years old. My dad got the Conan gig when I was six, and that was as 9 to 5 as a rock-and-roll drummer was about to get. What was wonderful about that was my dad would drive into work like all my other friends' parents. As I got older and became interested in some of the musical guests, my brother and I would go in and visit. I saw Blink-182, my brother saw Slipknot. We were so lucky we were able to have access to that."

"The Conan show was in the studio across the hall from the local news program. I had always known I wanted to do something that incorporated television. We often tell this story in my family about when I was in fourth grade, for a school project, I made a video where I was a news reporter reporting from the Crusades in the Middle Ages. As I got older, I realized that I was gravitating toward news and politics. I got my start as an intern on NBC Nightly News. I just fell in love with the pace, the content, the ability to interview newsmakers."

Ali Rogin grew up surrounded by rock musicians in Monmouth County, New Jersey, with neighbors like Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi. Her father, Max Weinberg, played drums for Bruce Springsteen and later became Conan O'Brien's bandleader, a role that normalized studio work and allowed family access to musical guests. Childhood visits to television studios sparked an interest in combining television and reporting. A fourth-grade video project simulated news reporting, and an internship on NBC Nightly News led to a passion for the pace, content, and interviewing central to a journalism career.

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