By Lia Davis

Kevin Tibbles believes that to tell a good story, besides reporting on the facts, you have to tell it in a language that people understand and need to make it interesting. For him, he believes that even “one little extra thing” could take a story from good to great.

NBC News’ Kevin Tibbles is a correspondent currently based in Chicago. He contributes regularly to “NBC News with Lester Holt,” “Today,” “MSNBC,” and “Meet the Press.”

Tibbles is from Canada and attended Ryerson University where he received his degree in Journalism. He knew he wanted to become a journalist after meeting a family friend  was who a newspaperman.

“Whenever we visited his house he had a bunch of newspaper front pages hanging on the wall in his den,” said Tibbles. “I was so fascinated that I used to study these things and think about how far away these places were.”

Besides thinking about all of the places he could travel to, he knew he wanted to meet different people.

“I wanted to see everything and meet people. I thought it was important to find out if people were like me, different than me. I thought it was important to find out whether people in different parts of the world had different aspirations.”

Before coming to Chicago, he was a foreign correspondent for NBC based in London. His work has provided him the opportunity to travel to Afghanistan, Rwanda, Iceland, Thailand, and Dubai among other places. It was in Afghanistan that he covered a young boy’s story that he said still affects him to this day. The boy was employed by a candy maker and had to walk five to six miles to work every day.  He lived in a mud hut with his family and was regularly abused because he was a member of a minority group. No one else in his family was able to work, so the responsibility of providing was on him.

“He was so determined to look after the people he cared about. He endured a tremendous amount of hardship just to help them out,” said Tibbles.

He believes that since he is not from America, he can see what other people do not see when it comes to his reporting. His background allows him to pick up on stories that other journalists may not.

Tibbles considers the best part of being a journalist is being able to meet people.

“I’ve been so fortunate in 40 years of doing this that I’ve never lost faith in other people despite of what they do to other people or what I’m told about them.”

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