by Hoda Kotb
“Anne’s sick,” Stan said to me. “You’re anchoring the evening news.”
Stop tape. That’s so beautiful. That’s the beauty of small-market television. The litmus test for who would anchor the evening news was whoever had a blazer!
Well, my heart was pounding, pounding, pounding under that blazer.
Please God, please God, please God—relax! I prayed.
When the red light came on and the floor director cued me, I began to read the teleprompter. It clearly read: “Good evening, I’m Hoda Kotb in for Anne Martin.”
I clearly read: “Good morning, I’m Hoda Kotb—”
Stan Sandroni, WXVT news director, 1987
Good morning?!
My brain became obsessed with that “Good morning.”
Did I really say “Good morning?” my brain asked, ignoring the job at hand.
Which led to another mess-up.
Now my brain was off the first mistake and latched onto the second. Which led to another and another and another.
The job at hand was way down on my brain’s list of priorities. There I was in my blazer, screaming down a hill on a toboggan, no hands.
Whaaaaaaat is haaaaaapppenning?!
When the toboggan finally rammed into the hay bales and the newscast ended, the studio emptied fast. Stan was gone. The crew quickly plucked off my microphone before any more “screw-up cooties” got on it for Anne. I was so depressed. I got out of there and drove directly to the grocery store. I didn’t really know anyone in town and I wanted some ice cream. As I walked through the aisles, a woman spotted me and walked over. In a southern accent she said, “Oh—ma—Gawd. I just saw yeeew,” she said, minus a few pearly whites. “I feel sooooo bad for yeeew.”
Yeah, well . . . how did my blazer look?
The next day, I went in and apologized to Stan. That beautiful man said he planned to give me another try that night. I did better the second time, and he eventually made me the five o’clock news anchor.
I just wanted you to know that Stan is indeed—the Man.
4
TV NEWS
Plenty of people relocate for work, but when you choose a career in television news, moving is a given. You’d better be ready to pack your bags and leave your friends every few years. The only way to move up is to move out, again and again, until you decide you’ve “arrived.” Sometimes, it’s the money, sometimes it’s the quality of life, sometimes you’re just tired of not having a home base where you can build a life with roots. My work map features pushpins in these markets:
• Greenville, Mississippi (8 months)
• Moline, Illinois (2 years)
• Fort Myers, Florida (21/2 years)
• New Orleans, Louisiana (6 years)
• New York City (present)
After years of working in local markets, I arrived at the network, NBC News, in the spring of 1998. The Peacock and the Big Apple were my new what and where—quite a dream team in my eyes. What was the dream team that got me there? Luck and timing.
In early September 1997, I was very happily living in New Orleans and working at the powerhouse station WWL-TV, anchoring the ten o’clock news. That’s when Elena Nachmanoff, one of the vice presidents at NBC News, saw some of my work and asked me to fly to New York City for an interview.
Here are two important facts: (1) I happened to be in contract negotiations at the time to re-sign with WWL, and (2) the only job that would ever get me to leave WWL was one at the network.
So, I hopped on a plane to New York wearing what I thought was so NYC. Looking back, it was actually an outdated, shoulder-pad-laden suit that was so ugly. When I arrived in the city, standing inside 30 Rock made my knees weak. I was incredibly nervous. Over the course of a few hours, the Dateline NBC folks took me around to meet everyone, I went through an interview, and then flew home. The experience was surreal and the opportunity was huge. My contract with WWL was ending and the pressure to re-sign was increasing by the day. You can imagine my frustration when an entire week passed after my network interview, with no word.
Finally, Elena called.
“They’re not sure you can handle it,” she said.
Dateline executives were unsure as to whether I could handle the program’s long format style of reporting. In local television, you write stories that may last two minutes on tape. Dateline stories require at least fifteen minutes, and more often the full hour. Elena said they wanted to fly me back again to do a test. They would give me two crews, a story, and twenty-four hours to put it together. Yikes! Not only was I worried about that, I was still trying to stave off WWL. I knew it was business, but hated having to be secretive. I felt like I was cheating on a boyfriend.
Oh, my God—does he know I went out of town this weekend?!
Once again back in hallowed 30 Rock, I received from Dateline a producer, two crews (which I’d never had before), and a stack of papers outlining my story. It was basically a tale of Gotcha versus Gotcha. A Bronx guy named Jimmy Schillaci called Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s radio program to complain about what he felt was a red-light sting, run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. He’d not only been issued a ticket while driving by the zoo, Schillaci claimed he had videotaped proof that the police were indeed messing with the red lights. Well, that’s when the mayor’s office dug up a thirteen-year-old traffic violation and a decades-old rap sheet on Schillaci. Game on.
Dateline set up interviews for me with Schillaci and also with a public advocate from the mayor’s office. With what felt like way too many coworkers, I conducted my interviews and shot a standup at the zoo. When we were finished, I went back to the hotel to write the story. I was freaking out. The network job of my dreams was on the line and all my lines sounded awful—crappy writing, disjointed tale-telling. I was panicking. I paced, I took showers—anything to try to calm down. I eventually went back to 30 Rock to begin looking at my sound bites in the edit bay to complete my story.
That’s when Mother Teresa died. Yep. A huge story broke across the world as I was putting together my very important tale of traffic lights and who’s zoomin’ who. Guess who got the red light now? “Stop what you’re doing. We’ve got breaking news here,” editors told me. “We need these bays.”
Dateline told me to fly home. The clock would restart and I could finish my story back in New Orleans. Yes! In my pajamas, at my computer, at home, the process was so much more relaxed. Conveniently, I could fax Dateline my completed script, but I’d have to cut my audio track at WWL and send it. Argh. Once again, I felt like a weasel.
The next step was yet another trip back to New York. This third time was to “screen” the story I had written. What a nightmare: me, several senior producers, and Dateline’s head honcho, Neal Shapiro, in a dark room, watching and listening to my “long format” story. Silently, they critiqued with pens on paper.
“Okay. Thank you.” And then I was flying back to New Orleans.
WWL was all over me about re-signing. What could I do? I had zero leverage to get a fast answer from the network. Imagine how ridiculous that would sound:
HODA:
“Hey, listen, guys—my station wants to know if I’ll re-sign, so can you let me know ASAP?”
NETWORK:
“Did Local say something? Did you hear Local say something?”
The network knew there were 18,000 other Hodas in local markets who wanted the job, so no, Local did not say anything. She simply sat in her apartment and waited.
After a few days, I assumed I did not get the gig. I figured I’d re-sign with WWL, which would be a great life. And that’s when the phone rang.
“Hoda?” said Elena.
“Yeah.”
“This is Elena Nachmanoff.”
“Hello.”
She said, “You got it.”
Pause.
“Put it in a sentence,” I smiled. I wanted to remember the moment.
She played along. “You are a correspondent at Dateline NBC.”
&nbs
p; Thankkkk yooooou!!!
I hung up, called my mom, and told her the news. I could hear her yelling to her coworkers in the Library of Congress. (Can you imagine? Yelling in the library?)
“My daughter—is a correspondent—for NBC News!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
I had planted the flag.
If you’re wondering what it was like for me to tell WWL I was leaving, it stunk. It really stunk. As with any breakup, things didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. The greatest love affairs create the greatest pain when they end. I told my general manager and then my news director. I wished it all felt better, but we all took it hard. Colleagues and residents alike would ask, “How can you leave us?” Ugh. Insert knife and twist. And by that I mean I’m holding the knife. How could I leave? Some decisions just aren’t going to let you get away clean, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
I agreed to stay through February ratings. My role as a decision-maker in the newsroom faded, and I began to make the break from my home of six years. When I left, the station threw me an unbelievably fun and meaningful going-away party. Today, my relationship with WWL is strong. It will always be the station where I learned the most and that I loved the deepest.
5
THE NETWORK
In April of 1998, I began work at Dateline. But before I shot one single inch of videotape, they made me over. And by “they,” I mean Lisa Jeer. Lisa is the person NBC calls in to make new hires network ready. She took one look at me, adjusted her sunglasses, and sighed. And sighed again. Everything about Lisa was angular—her hair, her clothes, and her need to perform a 180 on me. She told me we’d start with my wardrobe and then we’d fix—“that.” (Her pointer finger was swirling around my general face and hair.) Because “this” and “that” are not my sensitive areas, I was actually not offended and vaguely excited. She told me she was coming over to my apartment.
Immediately, she saw trouble.
“No. No. No. No. No,” Lisa said, as her two fingers flipped each hanger down the metal rod. She was standing in front of my closet, sorting through what were apparently the most unworthy clothes in the city.
“No. No. No.” She stopped at a cowering black blazer. “Maybe with a good tailor.” She pulled it out and hung it like squirrel pelt on the closet’s panel door.
Lisa sighed again. “We’re going to Saks.”
When we got to the department store, Lisa was in her element. She was the Chief of the Fashion Police and I was Barney Fife. I trailed behind, catching clothes in her wake as she pulled them off racks and shelves.
“Now go put those pants on,” the chief commanded.
Once in the dressing room, I realized Lisa had made a mistake. Good Lord! The pants were skin tight!
“I’m not coming out.”
“Get out here.”
Squeak, squeak, squeak. The pants and I came hobbling out.
“You’re getting those.”
“What?!”
“You’re getting those pants. You’ve been wearing clothes that are four sizes too big. You’re getting those pants.”
Lisa picked out more squeaky pants and fitted blazers, too. Based on what she’d seen in my closet, Lisa did not want to take any chances. She snapped photos of each outfit I was to wear, and warned, as if it was a matter of national security, “Never stray from these photos.”
My God. I actually required a clothing scrapbook. Lisa took pictures of items that mixed and matched and worked together. She even labeled some of the photos:
CASUAL (you’re interviewing someone on a farm)
The photo featured a denim shirt, black jeans, black belt with a silver buckle, silver earrings. (Good thing she didn’t see my overalls in the closet, right?)
Next, was some sort of a makeup pie chart: Stay in these color zones, for God’s sake! Again, as if directed at a Navy Seal on a mission.
Then, a trip to the hair salon. Now, you know my hair is a sensitive area for me. So, you’d think I would have laid down the law with the chief at this point. But I didn’t. Oddly, I just went with the flow, plus no one was listening to me anyway.
I met Lisa and Elena at the trendsetting Mark Garrison Salon. The two ladies, Mark, and my hair had a fine time. I was acrylic. No one cared about my insider knowledge of my own hair. The only reason I needed to be there that day was because my hair was attached to my body. Apparently, the big-city folks knew best. And you know what? They really did, from head to toe.
So, from Day One, the network has broadened my knowledge of refining the exterior “package.” But, in a more impactful way, working at Dateline has also taught me some very important life lessons.
The first is this: Stone Phillips is—so—incredibly—hot. He just is.
The second lesson: Life at the network can be unbelievably glamorous (covering the Olympic Games and the Emmy Awards), or it can be extremely unglamorous.
6
HOT ZONES
In September 2001, Dateline sent me to Pakistan to develop a series called Why They Hate Us. It was basically a look into that region’s perception of Americans. When we arrived in Pakistan, the first thing we saw was a large, loud protest. Pakistanis were chanting and burning effigies of then-President George Bush. It was perfect footage for our series. We had to shoot it. Now, we were an all-female team. Me, the sound girl, the girl producer, the female translator, and our photographer, who was so girlie that he’d be the first to tell you he was one of the gals. So, all us girls began to cover the protest, with everything burning and the chanting heating up.
“Zaboo! Zaba-zoo!” yelled the protesters.
Our translator lived in Pakistan but was British. Very well dressed and by-the-book, she immediately began to get agitated.
“This is quite haw-stile,” she said, huffing and puffing in an English accent.
I agreed but explained, “Yeah, I know . . . but this is what we do.”
The chanting crescendoed, “Zaboo!! Zaba-zoo!!” The slashing sticks got closer.
Again from the Brit, “This is haw-stile . . . it’s naught good . . . we’ve gaught to go!”
I reassured her that this was how we covered the news, and if she’d feel more comfortable in the van, then she should please, go ahead and go.
She stamped her Prada shoe, extremely upset.
“ZABOO! ZABBAZZOOOOOOO!”—even louder and closer now.
Finally, I said to her, “What are they chanting?”
Disgusted, she blurted out, “They are chawnting, “Get these whores out of heah!”
Hmmm. “Who are the whores?” I asked.
She snarled, “You! You ah the whores!”
Oh. Us girls had better get out of here, right? Cheerio, mates. I would learn a lot at Dateline, often in hot zones around the globe.
• • •
As I’ve mentioned, my childhood included frequent trips to Egypt, a year in Nigeria, and an overall exposure to cultures across the globe. As a result, my eyes are now kaleidoscopes—they see the many shapes and colors that are the world. That has made my travels for work less intimidating. But not always easy.
When the Iraq War began in March of 2003, I was one of many correspondents asked to head to the Middle East for NBC News. Before we left, the network wanted us to get “schooled” on reporting in a war zone. They flew us to the hills of Virginia for a three-day training camp, where leaders did their best to create situations we might encounter in war.
One challenge began with us getting blindfolded. We were then instructed to walk in a straight line. This skill would come in handy, for instance, in a sandstorm where we’d experience a sand blackout. Boy, did I walk in circles! It was very hard. (Try this at home this weekend.) There was also a building at the camp that was specially rigged with all sorts of booby traps. They told us what clues to look for—strings and pieces of wire. Bombs were set off and we were asked to estimate how far away we thought the explosives were located. And did the bombs release gas or anthrax? Then there was the bag-o
ver-the-head trick. It started with leaders loading us onto a bus. They warned us to be prepared for anything and to stay alert. Suddenly, gunfire broke out and a slew of men came out of nowhere and boarded the bus, screaming. “Put your heads down! Put your heads down!” they yelled. (I knew it was fake, but oddly enough, it was still scary.) The men took canvas bags and plunged them down over our heads. The worst part was the tightening of the bag’s drawstring around my neck. I’ve got a bit of claustrophobia, so this was extra disturbing. One by one, they shoved us off the bus. As I said, they told us early on to focus on how things were unfolding—to be aware of our surroundings. But I’ll tell you, with my head in a bag, I was distracted and focused only on trying to breathe. And they kept popping me in the back of the head. (Stop it!) We were now off the bus with our heads bagged—in the dark. Listening. They began screaming at us again, describing what they were going to do to us and warning us not to move. To keep the male journalists from running, they pulled their pants down around their ankles to serve as leg cuffs. In the meantime, I could hear people (and by that, I mean me) hyperventilating in their sacks. Next, we heard a car door slam, then a vehicle peeling out. One of the reporters asked if everyone was okay. “Shut up! Shut up!” Whoops. Some of our “captors” were still there and screaming at us. Afterward, the leaders debriefed us on the facts we’d gathered: How many people were on the scene? What direction did they go? Where were they from?
Mostly I learned this: If I ever get “sacked” again, I should not respond the way I did. I tried to suck as much oxygen as I could from within my bag. Bad approach. Instead, I learned I should bite a corner of the bag so I breathe in fresh air from the outside, not panic-laden carbon dioxide trapped inside the bag. What a fun fact, eh? You’re welcome.
Now, onto the real deal.
Turkey
My network assignment for the Iraq War was to fly to Turkey and cover our troops entering Iraq using the Incirlik Air Base. This is home to the 39th Air Base Wing, located strategically in southern Turkey close to the border of Syria—then Iraq. Here was the sticky wicket: the Turkish government was not convinced it wanted U.S. planes and personnel using its land and airspace to access the war. So, NBC set me up on the roof of an abandoned building to do live shots. The theme was, “Is Turkey going to let us in, or not?”