>My First Year in TV News, Part I

>

When people find out that I used to be on the news, they get the impression that I had a very glamorous job.

The truth is, it wasn’t glamorous at all. Particularly in the beginning. In fact, back then you could say it was about the most unglamorous job I could have chosen.

Six months out of college, I got a job (after unrelentingly harrassing a certain craptastic news director) as a one-man-band reporter. That meant that I would have to shoot, write and edit my own stories. I knew it would be hard, but I’d had a lot of practice doing all of those things in college, and I was ready.

What I wasn’t ready for was arriving in Columbia to find a station with six reporters, none of whom could or would operate a camera, and one photographer. I also wasn’t prepared for that photographer to show me around the equipment room and then act surprised when I was given a desk in the newsroom with the other reporters. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for the number of new co-workers who introduced themselves and then said, “Thank God you’re here. We really needed another photographer!”

“Oh, I’m not the new photographer,” I told each of them politely. “I’m just going to be shooting my own stories.” Several doubtful looks later, I headed into the news director’s office.

“How’s it going?” he asked mildly.

“Fine,” I said, “Except that they all think I’m the new photographer.”

“Well, that’s because they’re not used to one-man-bands here,” he assured me. “They don’t know what to make of you.”

Satisfied by his answer, I went back into the newsroom. For the first few days, I drove around shooting minor stories and writing copy for the anchors to read, but I did no reporting. This was okay, I reasoned to myself, because they were just making sure I knew how to use the equipment.

And then my news director was fired.

Probably, at least in part, because he hired me.

I was to learn that he had lied to me about the whole one-man-band thing. And he had lied to everyone else in the newsroom, too, telling them that I would be shooting stories for the other reporters and implying that I had been a photographer at CNN before I came to Columbia. (The truth was, as he very well knew, that I had interned at CNN, and hadn’t been allowed near a camera.)

My co-workers informed me that they didn’t need another reporter. They needed a photographer. And so I could either lug a 30-pound camera around all day and shoot video for other reporters… or I could go back home to Atlanta.

I went back to my apartment that evening and cried myself to sleep.

And then I got up the next morning with a plan.

That day, I came in an hour before anyone else and began making calls. By the time the clock struck nine and the morning editorial meeting began, I was ready. At first, the meeting started off like every other meeting.

“Does anyone have any story ideas?” the assignment editor asked.

The reporters and producers all sat in bored silence. Generally, the assignment editor would sigh and then begin paging through his stack of newspaper articles and press releases, doling out stories to the reporters like they were baby birds waiting for a bit of worm.

But on this morning, I spoke up.

“I have something,” I squeaked.

Everyone looked at me in shock.

“Uh, you know that woman who just got out of jail after being falsely imprisoned for six months? I found her. She said she’d do an interview with me at 10:30.”

The other reporters’ faces hardened. No one had been able to find this woman. And everyone wanted that interview.

“We need you to shoot stories for us,” the leader of the reporting pack said icily. She was a 100-pound, pockmarked bulldog of a woman and I was a little afraid of her.

“Well, we’ve gotta have that story,” the assignment editor said, trying not to smile. It was clearly the first time anyone else had brought a story idea to the table in months. Perhaps years.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” he said, after thinking for a moment. “You can do that story IF you shoot and edit someone else’s story, too.”

Now anyone who works in news knows that this is asking a hell of a lot from a person, particularly when that person weighs 115 pounds and is wearing a brand new, shantung silk suit from Neiman’s and it’s 103 degrees and 100% humidity outside. But I could not fail at my first job. I just couldn’t.

“I’ll do it,” I said. And so began what I now remember fondly as The Summer of Hell.

To be Continued

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.