I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
January 19, 2009
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Having lived in the South all my life, I thought my move to Columbia, South Carolina to be a TV news reporter wouldn’t be all that much of a shock to my system. After all, it was less than four hours away from my hometown of Atlanta, so I reasoned to myself that it couldn’t be all that different from where I had grown up.
And it was true- Columbia wasn’t so different from Atlanta-
If we’re talking about Atlanta in, say, 1965.
Columbians seemed mired in the past, filled with people who looked back rather than forward- particularly when it came to race relations.
Although the city was more than 50% black, the confederate flag still flew atop the statehouse in Columbia’s downtown, offending more than half of the people who lived beneath it.
The outdated attitudes about race caused a lot of tension in the city. And so did the heat. Columbia is called the Armpit of the South for a reason- the city is flat and breezeless, the humidity is generally at 100% in the summer time, and temperatures often climb to three digits. Going outside could be compared to walking into someone’s mouth.
But despite the miserable conditions, I was determined to prove that I could be the best reporter in the market. In college, my broadcast news professor had told us that if we wanted to get to network, we had to dress like network and act like network, no matter how small the news market. And that’s exactly what I did.
Each day, I showed up in a fancy suit. Each day, I pitched a story idea they couldn’t refuse. Each day, I went to the equipment room, grabbed an enormous news camera, a tripod that weighed the same as a mid-sized piece of tree trunk, cumbersome batteries, a lighting kit in a large duffel bag, and extra tapes. And each day, I set out in a garishly sloganed news van with all that equipment and generally, another reporter in the passenger seat, so that I could shoot not one but two news stories for that night’s newscast.
Looking back now, I don’t even know how I did it. I do know I was miserable. But again, failure was not an option. I would sweat through my fancy suits within an hour of getting outside. I would arrive at interviews bedraggled and weighed down by all the equipment and my interview subjects would end up rushing to my aid, helping me carry all my gear and making sympathetic noises. I can only imagine how I must have looked to them!
The newsroom staff totally took advantage of my absurd desire to please. After I had finished shooting and editing and writing and reporting for nine straight hours, the producers would send me out on “spot news.” At first, I was sent alone to cover house fires and shootings.
I’d put on my Keds (my one concession to being a photographer) and slog out into the late afternoon storms, the camera and tripod strapped to my body like two albatrosses, perhaps walking in ankle deep water to shoot flash floods, or shielding my eyes from ash floating out of an apartment fire, or looking nervously around as I tried to figure out exactly where a stabbing had taken place a few hours earlier.
More than once, I’d find myself in such a dangerous part of town that I’d lock all the doors to the news van and prop the camera in an open window to get my video. The whole thing was absurd, really. But I did what I had to do.
Eventually, the pretense of “spot” news was given up altogether. The news desk began sending me out on ridiculous stories that happened well after my shift had officially ended. I was told to get a sound bite from a speaker at a Rotary Club dinner 45 minutes away from the station. Or video of a stray puppy that had befriended a bird on the back porch of an elderly woman’s house. I remember routinely working 12 to 14-hour days in the miserable heat, and crying sometimes from exhaustion and despair as the news desk radioed me in the van and sent me on yet another ridiculous assignment. And then I’d start laughing, imagining what people must have been thinking as they passed the bawling woman in the news van on the interstate.
The physical toll my new job was taking was bad. Emotionally, it was no better. The other reporters simply didn’t like me. For one thing, I was a college grad starting out in a mid-sized market. The consensus was that I hadn’t properly paid my dues in a smaller town. I’m sure they were concerned, too, that the producers would begin wondering why the other reporters couldn’t shoot their own stories, just like I did.
Of course I didn’t take any of that into consideration at the time. All I knew was that the women at my first job, whom I had thought would be my brand new friends, all pretty much seemed to hate me.
There were exceptions- The two main news anchors were kind to me, and so was the reporter for the 11pm newscast- as she recalled in the comments of part one, she was getting plenty of hazing from co-workers as well. And the morning anchor, Jeanine, was also very nice. I looked forward to the days when I got assigned to shoot her stories- We’d ride around town and she’d counsel me on how to ignore the bitches in the newsroom and focus instead on my own career.
This went on for two months, until a day when the evening newscast anchors, who were acting as interim news directors, called me into their office. They wanted me to do a screen test. As an anchor.
I went down into the studio, sat down at the news desk and read from the teleprompter. Afterward, they called me into their office again. They wanted to move me to the morning anchor position, and demote Jeanine to reporter. I would start the next morning. They’d have Jeanine come in and train me.
There it was- the opportunity I’d been waiting for. And the cost was one of my only allies in the newsroom. I came in at 4am the next morning to learn how to write, produce and anchor the local morning cut-ins, which aired every thirty minutes throughout Good Morning America. When I opened the door to the newsroom, Jeanine was waiting for me. She was sitting on a desk, arms crossed.
“You’re on your own,” she said flatly. And then she walked out.
To be continued.
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