Last week, WJR 760 announced that JR Morning host Guy Gordon was exiting the station , with Lloyd Jackson and Jamie Edmonds remaining to host the daypart.

It was quite a surprising announcement, given that Gordon was viewed as the key figure of the trio that took over for venerable morning host Paul W. Smith in 2023.

So, with the news that Gordon has departed the morning show, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to hear how Lloyd Jackson and Jamie Edmonds sounded during an interview — on a rather interview-heavy morning show — after seeing the WJR 760 morning show go from three hosts down to two.

I picked out an interview from last week when Jackson and Edmonds welcomed a reporter from The Detroit News to the show to talk about the large class sizes being faced by Michigan schools. Generally, I try to explain why I picked the interviews that I did. For this one, I’m not all that interested in the subject matter, truthfully, so I feel like that will help focus my attention on the interview style of the JR Morning hosts more than anything.

Edmonds began the segment as the driver, pointing out some of the data shared by the Detroit News investigation. She opened up the interview with by being stuck in what I labeled the “‘talk about’ trap.” By starting a question with “Talk about”, first of all, you’re not even asking a question. But secondly, that’s a demand. And a leading demand at that. Is it the simplest way to get information out of someone? Absolutely. “Do this,” isn’t hard to discern or decipher. But a question can be, which is why I’ll always advocate for the most succinct questions possible.

However, Jamie Edmonds was able to pull her proverbial interviewing foot out of the talk about trap quickly. After using “talk about” to set up her question, she did ask, “What was the most egregious” thing that the investigation found. It’s a nice save. And it’s also a nice place to start the interview. Of the things I want to know as a listener, the juiciest, most salacious and potentially controversial findings are what I’d want to hear about most, right? So that’s a good save by Edmonds.

After the answer from the reporter, Lloyd Jackson jumped in with a good question for contextualization. He pointed out that the reporting shows that the issue wasn’t strictly limited to certain socioeconomic situations. He then asked, “What does the geographic spread tell us about how widespread this is?”

I love contextualization questions, especially when discussing data. Because while numbers never live, people do. And people can use numbers to paint a picture or a narrative that looks like it is data-driven, but can be misconstrued. But that data can’t be misconstrued when you’re asked to put it into perspective. So, I thought that was another win by the WJR 760 morning host.

The good interview continued when Edmonds asked Craig Mauger of The Detroit News about the reaction to the story from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). To me, this is the next logical step in the discussion by the JR Morning hosts. Lay out the data, contextualize the data, then figure out what the reaction to the problem has been by elected officials. Now, that reaction part is important because it is coming from the top elected official in the state. As a listener, if I’m in tune to this discussion, and I want to know what is being done to rectify this problem, I want to know how the governor responded. So it’s another great query by Jamie Edmonds.

After the guest laid out Whitmer’s reaction, the next question from Lloyd Jackson was music to my ears: “Is the state legislature ready to act?”

I don’t know the last time I was this giddy listening to an interview for this weekly feature. Succinct, one-sentence questions are as rare as Bigfoot sightings in news/talk radio interviews. But the WJR 760 morning host just knocked that question out of the park, because — again — it’s the perfect question at the perfect time.

The only argument against that question you could make is that it’s a closed question. And while I disagree slightly, I can hear that argument. Because if the answer is “no”, that tells the listener all they need to hear about the situation and the failings of government officials. On the flip side, if the answer is “yes,” the guest is going to expound upon the point anyway. So while I will almost universally decry closed questions, I think this one is situated perfectly.

The final question of the interview came from Jamie Edmonds, who asked what educators are saying to The Detroit News about the topic. It’s another contextualization question, because if those people who are directly affected by the situation don’t view it as a five-alarm fire, why should anyone else? So it’s another important question to ask.

Overall, I genuinely think the conversation by the WJR 760 hosts deserves a ton of praise. One, for asking fantastic, brief, mostly open-ended questions without toiling on details that didn’t matter. Secondly, because the JR Morning show underwent a pretty dramatic shift in recent weeks. But you wouldn’t be able to know that by listening to the work that Lloyd Jackson and Jamie Edmonds did during this interview.

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