Too Long Didn’t Listen is for all of you movers and shakers, who either don’t have time to dive into full episodes, or simply prefer to skim the highlights.

We don’t want anyone missing out on the wonderful stories and fascinating insights shared by the colorful guests we host on Bring A Friend, the Parlay House podcast. So here’s the first in a series of snack-sized episode rundowns:

My Friend Making News with Jessica Aguirre

We’re kicking off Bring A Friend Season 6 with a BANG! Join us in listening to the episode in full, or read on for our highlights, as Jessica delves into the world of news anchoring, journalism, and shares anecdotal experiences about aging with this ever-changing industry across her 25-year long career.

About Jessica

Jessica Aguirre is the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. evening anchor at NBC Bay Area News and an Emmy award winning journalist. Jessica has been a prime-time, evening anchor in the Bay Area for over 20 years. She began her career at the Spanish Language network, Univision, while attending the University of Miami. Before arriving in the Bay Area in 1998 she anchored and reported in Los Angeles and Miami, conducting investigative work that earned her multiple Emmys as well as an Associated Press award.

Most recently Jessica was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Silver Circle for twenty-five years of excellence in television journalism. Jessica resides in the East Bay, with her two daughters. Her devotion to learning, supporting children and local charities has her routinely on the lecture circuit in the Bay Area discussing education, gender equity and minority advancement in the workplace. Jessica also serves on the board of Watermark, the Bay Area’s largest membership organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in leadership positions.

Introvert or Extrovert? Extrovert.

What does Jessica wish people knew about her? That for an extrovert I’m surprisingly quiet. I could spend the whole day by myself, not talk to anyone, and sit and read all day long.

What’s the hardest lesson the world keeps putting in front of Jessica? That I can’t make other people do something they don’t want to do.

What’s Jessica’s perfect snack? The perfect snack for me is crackers and butter.

Key Moments

“So much of what has changed about journalism over the last 40 years has been the technology aspect of it, the access to it, and the corporate machine of it. Just from a hands-on perspective – when I first started I was in college, I started in my sophomore year working in a television station – and back then we had paper prompters, where you would put paper on a rolling machine and someone would crank it. And versions of paper that had been typed on would flow through and you would have to tape them together. Now, it’s an electronic voice-operated prompter, which no one even mans.”

“What hasn’t changed are the elements of telling a story, of gathering the truth, of being able to do investigative journalism and tell someone’s story. The way you tell someone’s story today, regardless of technology or advancements is the same. The truth of journalism hasn’t changed.”

“We have to separate what are pundits and what is opinion news from what is news. Unfortunately, I think those lines have gotten completely blurred. As a viewer – you can’t tell – with the onset of cable news, which has been a great boon to being able to cover news 24/7 and being able to have access to that, but we are kidding ourselves if we don’t look at cable news outlets like CNN or like Fox and realize that they have their slants.”

“We are living in a world where everybody wants to look at the news from their own opinion, so that they can reinforce what their own political beliefs are, what their own standards are.”

“The perceptions that people had of me, as a young Latina woman, are so different from the perceptions that people have of me now. When I first started in television in the late ‘80s, when I was in college and starting to be a reporter, what I would hear from different agents and news directors was ‘You’re going to do great in mainstream English-language TV, because you’re a light-skinned Hispanic.’ They would literally say this to me ‘You’re a light-skinned Hispanic, you do need to straighten your hair, though.’”

“It is crazy the standard that we have for women, but if you step back and look at it, it is a standard that is consistent from when we were younger. There seems to be, that there is no place, at any age, for a woman to be treated with respect as she is. There is a sweet spot in which people want you to be that is almost impossible, and that is really evident when you are older.”

“I think what I do is very serious, but I never take myself too seriously. Because, that doesn’t allow you to learn. If I can’t laugh at my own mistakes or the things that I’ve done – and I’ve taught that to my kids, and I grew up in a family like that – then I can’t find common ground. I think as a society we’ve kind of lost our ability to laugh. We just want to be hardcore all the time. And just because you’re laughing, it doesn’t mean you’re not learning something.”

“Remember that no matter what the story is, the story is about people. No matter what the issue is, whether it is poverty or crime, it all goes back to the same thing. All of these things are things that happen to people, they impact people. So ultimately, you are always telling a story about someone’s suffering or win or struggle. And you can’t forget that. In the end, it’s all about human connection.”