on-air?” I’d asked her.
“Oh Dad, they’re probably just gonna make me go get coffee.”
Clearly, she had no expectations. But the station did. They saw “it.” She called me after she’d been there about ten days, bursting with excitement.
“Dad, I’m doing a package!” she said. “It’s going to be on at the six! I just finished, and I think it’s going to be really good!”
“What’s a package?” I asked. “And what’s the six? Does that mean you’re going to be on TV?”
Indeed she was. In the months to come, she would playfully admonish me for confusing a “package” with a “stand up.” (In broadcasting vernacular, a “package” is a report in which the correspondent narrates around video and interview excerpts, while a “stand up” is when a correspondent stands at a news location and talks directly to camera, live or taped.)
Barbara and I watched WDBJ that evening, breathless. There was Alison, doing a story about a camp for diabetic kids. She looked great, professional, like a veteran correspondent. Our hearts were bursting with pride. Barbara and I couldn’t stop smiling, and we gave each other high-fives until our palms stung.
Proud Dad posted that clip on Facebook, and looking back, I think it was my all-time favorite. Watching our daughter take the first confident, practiced steps toward her dream was an experience like no other. I would give anything to relive it.
Alison went on to do five more packages until one of the reporters complained that an intern was doing all their work. I will always wonder if the complainer was the one who ended up killing her.
On her last day as an intern, we took a picture of her sitting at the anchor desk. Like the photo in front of CNN, it was another prescient “I’ll be here one day” moment.
As her final semester at JMU wound down, Alison used the video from WDBJ for an audition reel to send to prospective employers in the TV news field. She graduated in December, a semester early, with genuine professional experience and an impressive list of accomplishments, but she had sent out her audition reel in November. She had a few criteria: The station had to be a top 100 market, it couldn’t be anyplace cold, and it would preferably be close to home and/or family. She sent out just six packages. A couple of stations didn’t reply, a couple said they needed someone with more experience, and two wanted to talk.
One was a station in College Station, Texas. It was farther away from me and Barbara, but close enough to the rest of the family in Texas. She had a phone interview with the news director who promised a follow-up in a week or two.
The other that wanted to talk was WCTI in New Bern, North Carolina. It was a top 100 station, reasonably close, and in a great area. The news director, Scott Nichols, received Alison’s reel on a Tuesday and called her Friday. The interview went well. He asked her for references and said he’d be back in touch with her soon.
He called her references over the weekend and called her back on Monday, offering her a job as a reporter for the Greenville, North Carolina, viewing area. She would be working alongside another reporter, although that situation would change a week after she arrived.
After getting the news, she called me, breathless.
“Dad, he offered me the job! He even said I’d be making $24,000 a year!”
She had won the lottery.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I said, ‘Don’t you need to see me in person?’ He said, ‘No, I see everything I need to see from your reel and your résumé. You don’t have to decide right away, you can think about it for a few days, but we really want you.’ I was so stunned I just said, ‘OK, let me think about it.’”
“How do you feel about it?” I asked.
“I like it,” she said.
“Then, Scooter, call him back and accept the job. It sounds like the perfect start for you.”
And so she did. Alison had a job in television two weeks before she got her diploma. She graduated on December 15, 2012, started with WCTI the day after Christmas, and was immediately thrown into trial by fire, doing a stand up her very first day. I’ve heard from pros in the business that what she pulled off rarely happens, if ever. But Scott Nichols saw “it.”
Scott wanted her to spend a month in New Bern learning the ropes at the station before heading to Greenville. The problem was, there was little to no temporary housing that she (or I) could really afford. I called around for her before finding a unique arrangement: she spent January in an assisted living community. She had a pretty nice apartment, and of course it was quiet. I joked with her that she should join the residents for dinner and enjoy those cooked-to-death green beans. She drew the line at that, but was grateful for a nice cheap place to live for a while.
Two weeks later, after several packages and stand ups, Scott said he wanted to meet with her.
“My original plan was to have you working alongside a reporter in Greenville,” he told her, “and you can still do that if you want. But after watching your work, I’ve got another opportunity I’d like you to consider. Our bureau reporter in Jacksonville is leaving. How would you like to run your own show there?”
Alison jumped at the chance. Now she was a twenty-two-year-old bureau chief with her own veteran cameraman working for the number one station in the market. She covered hard news, but in Jacksonville it generally revolved around these kinds of stories:
“Marine Comes Home to Hero’s Welcome,” or
“Marine Shakes Baby to Death,” or
“Big Meth Lab Bust.”
A year in, recognizing her ability, Scott gave her an opportunity to be the fill-in anchor. Barbara and I watched the first episode at home, watched her sitting at an anchor desk for the first time. We were giddy with joy, and it marked the moment that Alison knew she wanted to be a full-time anchor.
When the noon anchor position became available, Alison lobbied hard, but the job went to another deserving candidate. She was disappointed, and she knew her options were limited. The other anchors at the station had been there for a long time and had established roots in the community. They weren’t going anywhere. It was time to move up and move on.
As she was preparing her reel, Tim Saunders, a reporter from WDBJ, gave her a call. He said they had a couple of interesting prospects in the works and that Kelly Zuber, the news director, wanted to talk to her. Kelly told her they wanted to create a regional reporting position that was based in Martinsville. As always, Alison asked me what I thought.
“I could live at home and save a lot of money,” she said.
“Yeah, Scooter, you could. But as much as we’d love to have you back home, and even if they paid you more money, this would be a step back for you.”
Alison agreed. She thanked Kelly and declined the offer.
Kelly called her back a day later.
Melissa Gaona, the “Mornin’” reporter, had been promoted to anchor. Would Alison be interested in taking her old position? The job was mostly fluff reporting and spanned the station’s entire viewing radius. She would work
