Going Through It

INTRO:

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: I had been a good high school student, had gone to a great college, had gone to a first job where everyone loved me and promoted me. Had moved on to another job where everybody loved me and promoted me. And went straight into my first on-air job where people were like, “Meh. She actually is just...average.” And so I just knew that that was not a place that I wanted to stay.

ANN FRIEDMAN: Soledad O’Brien is a veteran broadcast journalist who has traveled across the world reporting on breaking news stories like Hurricane Katrina, the London terrorist attacks, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. She has also investigated some of America’s most complex issues in her award-winning coverage of race and politics.

But before all the accolades, she started out where most of us do: at entry level. She was the least experienced on-air reporter at her San Francisco newsroom in the mid-nineties, but that wasn’t the problem. Soledad never doubted her skills. The problem was everyone around her. They didn’t share her values—or value her. And she had to decide whether to keep trying to prove herself to them...or not.

I’m Ann Friedman, and this Going Through It: is a show about how hard it can be to figure out when to quit and when to keep going.

On this episode: When your employer doesn’t share your values—or value you—how do you know when it’s time to leave?

FRIEDMAN: What was one of your early experiences with a co-worker who didn’t share your values?

O’BRIEN: That was my experience at WBZ-TV. I used to do the morning show, associate producer on the morning show, so from 5:00 to 7:00 I'd be doing the morning show. And then the Today Show would start and I'd run into the morning meeting. And every time I came into the morning meeting at 7:05 or whatever, you know, I was late. There was a guy, John was his name. And he would say, “Oh, I guess we're running on colored people’s time.”

FRIEDMAN: Oh wow.

O’BRIEN: And I was so mad. Like I used to sit home and think about ways—you know, when I walk in, I'm gonna say this or, when I do this, I'm gonna do that. He took up so much of my psychic energy.

I always tell people that story because I want them to not waste their time on those people around them who are just fucking with them. Right? Like that guy, he just was fucking with me and he knew it, he could get under my skin. He wasn't my boss, he was a colleague, he was a co-worker, he had no power over me. And I spent a lot of energy coming up with snarky retorts or trying to figure out, well if he does this, then I'll do that. Or trying to not sit near him in the cafeteria. I mean such a waste of my time. God, I wish I had that time back. What a fucking waste of my time.

And then one day, I left. I went off to this new job. And literally, I never saw him again.

FRIEDMAN: So most of us know you as an on-air reporter and a host. When did that part of your career start?

O’BRIEN: I was hired to work at KRON-TV in San Francisco as a new reporter. I had been a producer at NBC News and actually the way I got the job was that people at NBC News knew that I had a goal of being a reporter and sort of pushed me toward the job. And really paved the way, cleared the path for me to get that job. The upside, of course, was that I got to be a reporter in a big market coming from the network, which was amazing and a little bit unheard of. The downside was that I had never been on camera before.

FRIEDMAN: Were you prepared for it to be a big challenge?

O’BRIEN: I didn't realize how hard doing live television would be. It just didn't come naturally to me. I didn't really realize just how anxiety-provoking it would be to have to do it under the pressure of someone tossing to you on live TV. The first one didn't go well.

FRIEDMAN: What happened?

O’BRIEN: They sent me to a bar to cover the San Francisco Giants getting into the playoffs. Which is an indication of how low you are on the totem pole—when you don't get to go to the game, you get to go to a bar to cover people who didn't get to go to the game either. [laughs]

So I was interviewing people for my piece and they were drinking because it was a bar. A lot of day drinking, and interviewing people, and drinking, and drinking. Once they tossed to me, you know, “Soledad O'Brien is live at Joe's Pub with the very latest.” I sort of realize like, “Wow everyone’s really drunk.” And I didn't know that you shouldn't have people behind you ever in a live shot. Like you can't have people you can't see. Because the lights of the live shot turn people into raging assholes. And someone reached out and grabbed me on the ass and pinched me. For my first live shot. And I just completely freaked out. I literally stuttered and I couldn't get a word out. So they cut to my package and then they came back to me, and I was able to sort of wrap it up. But it was a disaster. It was a disaster. In fact my boss at the time, who was a news director named Al Holzer, he brought me into his office and said something like, “You know, Santa Barbara. Now that's a good market.”

FRIEDMAN: Oh wow.

O’BRIEN: Everybody knew I hadn’t done a live shot. In fact I called my boss—my previous boss after that basically crying, saying like, “Oh my god, I screwed up my first live shot ever.” And he said, “You know, whatever you do, don't quit.” He said, “Make them fire you if they have to. But these jobs are hard to get. Do not walk away.”

FRIEDMAN: Was there a time where you were tempted to walk away? Something that happened to shake your confidence?

O’BRIEN: I remember one of my first weeks there a little bit after my live shot, one of the reporters—she was actually a reporter and a producer—I was walking down the hall and there was a group of people, probably four or five, who were all chatting and talking about somebody who was completely underqualified for the job. And they were talking about me! But I didn't realize it. And I walked up on them and you could tell immediately because everybody was very embarrassed.

In some ways they weren't wrong. I had never done live TV. Being dropped into the deep end of the pool and being asked to swim, I hadn't expected that. So it was a very rough start and it was really embarrassing. But it's a learnable skill. And I worked very hard to try to figure it out.

And I realized, oh this is going to be very different than where I come from because I don't think any place I had been before thought of me as unqualified or unable to do the work. I just always had a really good reputation of being a really hard worker and willing to do the work and willing to learn. So that was kind of a start of like, oh I see how this is going to be.

FRIEDMAN: Once you had that realization, how did you move forward?

O’BRIEN: I didn't have a lot of friends in the newsroom. I had some but I literally was out in California to hang out with my boyfriend. He was an investment banker, and he was working a lot of hours, so I had a lot of time to come back into the office and constantly work on my skills, which is really what saved me. I mean any time I wasn't working, I was in the office reviewing my tapes and seeing where I screwed up and seeing where I dropped the ball.

FRIEDMAN: And what did that mean for you? Late nights? Weekends?

O’BRIEN: So I would go in on Saturdays and Sundays and they had the screening machines in the newsroom. And so everybody else would be putting on a show and I would just be sitting in the corner putting headphones on and watching mistakes that I had made, things that I could do better. I knew what good TV looked like. I knew I knew what good journalism looked like. I just had to figure out how to do it myself. And for me, some of that is just understanding what I was screwing up.

FRIEDMAN: So is there a moment when things started to take a turn or got more difficult for you there?

O’BRIEN: I remember at some point I became the bureau chief for the East Bay. They didn't really have any people in the East Bay and I was it, basically, so I named myself the bureau chief. [laughs] But I kind of was the bureau chief! It was me and a photographer, great guy—Gary.

I started working covering all the stories from the East Bay. And I remember one day I came into the newsroom—I was in San Francisco even though I worked in Oakland and lived in Oakland. And I came into the newsroom and, I guess a bridge was down, because everybody who was coming in from Marin, all the executives, had to drive through Oakland to come in.

And I just remember everybody being like “oh my god I had to take my life into my hands. I just drove through Oakland.” And I just remember being so mad. Like, fuck you guys. I mean I get it. It's a joke and I have a decent sense of humor. But I get that the joke is that Oakland is dangerous and full of crime and full of shitty people. That's the point. That's the joke.

And by the way, these were all the people who were coming in specifically for the morning meeting. The whole point was to get ready to set up and strategize around the stories that they would tell. And so if every single person coming in is making a joke about how dangerous and crime-laden and ghetto-ish Oakland is, don't be surprised when every single story that is approved or is being pursued is about that.

It dawned on me that if you let other people tell your story there's a really good chance you won't even recognize yourself in your story. It really was my first instance of like, oh shit, I think this is why you need more people having a seat at the table. Because otherwise you end up with these very slanted ideas that then work their way very clearly into coverage.

Then the other thing which was part of that was they would always point me to another reporter who was about the same level. We were both kind of new reporters and she covered parts of the East Bay too. And they would always sort of say, “If you could only be more like this person.” And they point to a person who I thought was very mediocre. I mean really average. I mean, is that terrible to say? Maybe that’s terrible to say.

FRIEDMAN: No.

O’BRIEN: I just remember thinking like, wow I can't break through here. There is nobody here who thinks that I am good or even that I had potential. And maybe it was that first live shot was such a disaster that I was unsalvageable. But as I grew and got better—and again, it's a learnable skill. Anybody who starts and tries and practices and reviews their stuff gets better.

But I remember thinking like, oh there's no future here. There's really no future at a place where people don't want to have a path for you to grow. And also where their idea of a solid reporter is a person who's—yes she was solid and she was solidly, a solid C. She was a C. And I was like, wow we just don't share the same values of what good reporting could be.

FRIEDMAN: Could you be a little bit more specific maybe about the sense of that you couldn't grow within the organization? And what gave you that impression?

O’BRIEN: It was very clear that I wasn't going to grow there because they told me that. They literally would not allow me to try new things. And it was the first place I'd ever worked where I was just tolerated. I think people thought, “Meh, she’s alright.” Most places I had been, I was a superstar. And not a superstar in the quality of my work, but a superstar in that I was a hard worker. That I was a really good team member. That I tried very hard. That I made mistakes but worked on them really hard. That I was a really good, solid worker. I mean I'd come from other places where people would say, “oh my gosh, this person... if we have to stay here till 3:00 o'clock in the morning, she will be here. If we have to empty garbage cans, she will help out.” Like that's the kind of employee I was. And to get to a place where everybody’s like, “Meh, she’s alright,” was so strange for me.

But you know what I loved about it? Recognizing that you can be very successful in a context where people don't particularly like you. You don't need to be beloved and loved and supported and have people behind you pushing for you and and cheering for you and putting you in great positions and giving you opportunities. You can get a lot done even without that.

Once you realize that you don't have an opportunity at a place, you need to strategize about leaving. MSNBC had launched in 1996. And I left the station and started working at MSNBC. I knew that I was going to leave probably a year and a half, two years in. And I've always tried to leave places like “Hey, thank you so much for the opportunity. Bye.” [laughs]

It’s so funny because a girlfriend of mine, if she were here she would say to you, “I’m 100 percent in, until I’m 100 percent not in.” Who wants to work in a place where no one is articulating that they have a vision for somebody’s successful career? And if you can leave, you leave.

OUTRO:

FRIEDMAN: Soledad left KRON for MSNBC. And then left MSNBC for CNN, where she would report some of the biggest stories of her career. While she was there, she won an Emmy for her news coverage of the crisis in Haiti. And then in 2013, she left CNN to start her own production company, Starfish Media Group, where she is now CEO and host of the weekly political talk show, Matter of Fact.

CREDITS:

FRIEDMAN: Going Through It is an original series from MailChimp. And I’m your host, Ann Friedman. Thank god I have never been sent to a bar to interview drunk sports fans by my producers Eleanor Kagan, Megan Tan, Gabrielle Lewis, and Claire Tighe. This episode was edited by Joel Lovell. It was scored and mixed by Hannis Brown. Thanks to Max Linsky, for whom it’s always bro-time, and everyone at Pineapple Street Media.

TEASER:

FRIEDMAN: On the next episode: What happens when everyone loves the fact that you disrupt the stereotypes, but it’s still not easy to be the only person like you in the room?

JESSAMYN STANLEY: I was one of only two people of color and I was one of the only visibly fat people. Right off the bat, I was immediately like, “This is going to be one of those experiences where I’m the only. And I have to build my space for myself…”

FRIEDMAN: What do you do when the thing you love lives within a culture that doesn’t fully accept you? Jessamyn Stanley, who’s a body positivity advocate and a yoga teacher, tells me about how she created space for herself by going through it—and I’m not just talking about a sequence of yoga poses.