Frank Langfitt
Frank Langfitt is NPR's London correspondent. He covers the UK and Ireland, as well as stories elsewhere in Europe.
Langfitt arrived in London in June 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He's been busy ever since, covering the most tumultuous period in British politics in decades. Langfitt has reported on everything from Brexit's economic impact, and terror attacks to the renewed push for , political tensions in and Megxit. Langfitt has contributed to NPR podcasts, including , , and . He also appears on the BBC and PBS Newshour.
Previously, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent covering China. Based in Shanghai, he 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, Langfitt drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a . He expanded his reporting into a book, (Public Affairs, Hachette).
While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous 鈥� secret detention centers 鈥� as well as his own travails taking , which he failed three times.
Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from , covered the in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned , who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of General Motors. His story with producer Brian Reed of how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on and has been taught in business schools at Yale, Penn and NYU.
In 2008, Langfitt covered the Beijing Olympics as a member of NPR's team, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. Langfitt's print and visual journalism have also been honored by the Overseas Press Association and the White House News Photographers Association.
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 spent his early years in journalism stringing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and living in 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.
-
North Korea's decision to close off a joint North-South industrial complex is a potential financial disaster for some of the more than 100 South Korean businesses that have invested there. -
"It's like a joke," one retiree in Seoul says of the North's daily provocations. His view is shared by many South Koreans, who believe leaders in the North are trying to extort more aid from other nations and are trying to bolster their own positions. -
The discovery of thousands of dead pigs floating in the waters around Shanghai has turned up disturbing reports: of pig dumping and the sale of meat from diseased animals among pig farmers. In the village where some of the pigs came from, we found serial denials. -
China's so-called fan subtitle groups are trying to change the country's thinking. Every week, thousands of young Chinese gather online to translate popular TV shows like The Newsroom into Mandarin. Some do it for fun, but others see it as a subtle way to introduce new ideas about free thought and questioning authority into Chinese society. -
Reporting in China is sometimes a cat-and-mouse game with authorities, who want to keep journalists far from the scene when unrest breaks out. -
China has transformed itself in recent years. But for an NPR reporter now on his second tour of the country, some things, like re-education through labor camps, remain the same. -
In China, authorities can send people to re-education through labor camps for years without trial. Beijing says it is considering reforms to the notorious system, though it's not clear what that might mean. The people who know the camps best 鈥� former prisoners 鈥� say closing them is long overdue. -
The Chinese military unit allegedly behind cyberattacks on U.S. firms works out of a nondescript office tower in a Shanghai neighborhood that's modern, but considered a little bland. -
It's the entrepreneurs' dream: tapping into China's market of 1.3 billion people. That dream fueled the efforts of two Chinese-American MBAs to take the soft-pretzel franchise 鈥� a staple of U.S. shopping malls 鈥� to China. Cultural and financial barriers, however, led to a far more challenging reality.
-
Hollywood blockbusters usually do well in China. But last year, Lost in Thailand, a scrappy, slapstick comedy that cost less than $5 million to make, raked in $200 million in just seven weeks. It's now the highest-grossing Chinese film ever. It begins a limited run in the U.S. on Friday.
