Frank Langfitt

Frank Langfitt is NPR's Roving National Correspondent. He has covered everything from threats to democracy and the use of inflatable animals as political props to America's biggest croquet tournament, its oldest fiddler's convention and the creative process behind Born to Run.

He can be reached via encrypted message at franklangfittnpr.82 on Signal.

Previously, Langfitt worked on the Investigations team, where he and a reporting partner discovered that a Chinese celebrity-dissident featured in dozens of news stories was – in fact – an accused conman.

Langfitt spent nearly two decades as an international correspondent reporting from more than 50 countries and territories where he covered history in the making.
Langfitt was reporting in Ukraine when Russia invaded in February, 2022. He covered battlefield tactics, Europe's political response, the impact of Western weapons, Finland's and Sweden's push to join NATO and the war's effect on front-line states, such as Moldova and Poland.

Langfitt arrived as NPR's correspondent in London in June, 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He went on to cover the most tumultuous period in British public life in decades, including five prime ministers and the death of the Queen.

It was not all hard work. In 2022, Langfitt won an Edward R. Murrow award for a journey across London exploring the evolution of the English pub.

Before Europe, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent in China, where he covered the first term of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Based in Shanghai, Langfitt drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. As part of the series, he drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a wedding chauffeur. Langfitt expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China.

While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous "black jails" — secret detention centers — as well as his own struggles taking China's driver's test, which he failed three times.

Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He covered the civil war in Somalia, helped track elephants in South Sudan and interviewed imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.

Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler. His story with producer Brian Reed on how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on This American Life.

Langfitt also won an Edward R. Murrow award for NPR's team coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, an Overseas Press Award for The Baltimore Sun's team coverage of environmental pollution in China and a citation from the White House News Photographers Association for documenting the destruction of a Beijing neighborhood.

Before coming to NPR, Langfitt spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun, covering a swath of Asia from East Timor to the Khyber Pass.
Langfitt began his journalism career as a stringer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He then moved to Hazard, Kentucky, where he covered the state's Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.