Caught on Tape: The Start of My Career as a Storyteller

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be able to go back in time and see a video journal of yourself from the first few years of your career – like, actually doing your job? Something that not only recorded what you looked like, or how you sounded, but also captured your skill level on day one and then demonstrated how you continued to mature and improve week after week, month after month? Then I guess the bigger question is: if such a magical time capsule existed, would you even want to watch it? Or would it be too cringy to endure?

I actually have this record of the first five years of my own career as a television news reporter and anchor, starting in 2000, in the form of a big box of VHS “save tapes” that has been taking up storage space and moving around the country with me since I left TV news in 2005. Not only was I a journalist, I have always been a dedicated journaler – a chronicler of moments – and while I certainly didn’t record every day of my news career, I was pretty good about regularly saving the “big moments” from my roles at two local CBS affiliates: the best live shots, the “sweeps” series, the first times I filled in on the anchor desk for any particular show (noon, 5 pm, 6 pm, 10 pm), or my debut as the main anchor of the new 9 pm newscast. I saved stories that made me feel deeply, either good or bad, or included especially creative standups (the part in the middle of a recorded news “package” when you actually see the reporter telling part of the story on camera). I captured that one crazy day that our sports reporters were all tied up and I was asked to write and report a short sports segment. I recorded funny behind-the-scenes newsroom moments (nothing beats the camaraderie of a TV newsroom). Heck, I even saved some of my biggest on-air mistakes! I guess I assumed there would be either a good laugh or a good lesson in them later (FYI...I was wrong about the good laugh part).?But up until recently, my answer to the question “do I want to watch the tapes?” was a solid no.

My Forgotten Former Identity

At first, it was just too soon to look back at everything I’d left behind and wonder whether or not I’d made the right decision to give up the life (and crazy hours) of a journalist when I became a mom. I still worried that it might be the only profession I’d ever be successful at. Then, when I’d finally settled into a new career in corporate communications, enough time had passed that it was mortifying to see myself a few years younger, sporting terrible hair and outfits that were definitely no longer in style (if they ever really were). After a few more years, we stopped using a VCR at home, which would have made it a huge hassle to even try to watch the tapes. But ultimately, I think the biggest thing that has kept me from reconnecting with my forgotten “former identity” all these years, is that I’d convinced myself that this reporter and anchor – “Kate Scott” (my actual married name at the time) – had little connection to my life today. She was just an irrelevant fragment of my past.??

Almost no one in my current life – as in, people I regularly see or interact with outside of social media – knows me as a TV personality. Some don’t know about that part of my career at all. Some people know about it, but still can’t imagine me as a news anchor because they never actually saw me on television. My own husband and kids fall into that category. My kids simply hadn’t been born yet. And I didn’t start dating my husband until a couple years post-career change, after my first marriage ended in divorce. Of course, I’ve told him about that part of my life. And I remember once around 2009, he and some friends convinced me, after a few drinks, to pull out a news tape and play it for them. But just a few minutes of their shocked expressions and laughter was enough for me to seal up the tape vault again. Eventually that part of my career was relegated to just a few lines at the very bottom of my resume – lines that I’ve rarely been asked much about on job interviews and subsequent employers have never seemed that interested in. So why should I care now about things that “Kate Scott” accomplished 20 years ago?

Learning to Embrace my TV News Past

I honestly wasn’t sure if I cared or not, but the meticulous documentarian in me wouldn’t let me just trash my news footage either. Since I know that VHS tapes decay over time (and some of mine are now 20+ years old) – and because I was sick of moving this heavy box around – I finally decided to digitize them all earlier this year. In the process, I started to watch the footage – really watch it – for the first time. I have spent quite a few evenings over the past six months journeying through this video history of my TV news past and remembering things that I haven’t thought about in two decades. And let me tell you – it has been a trip!

First of all, it’s just weird to see yourself as a different person, with a completely different identity – not just in name, but in your entire public-facing persona. I’m now so used to being behind-the-scenes…being the person who develops the messages for other speakers or trains others to be better communicators…that it’s strange to recall a time when I was someone that people wanted to see and hear from. It’s crazy to see myself pop up in different news or charity event promos that I don’t even remember filming!

These “time machine” tapes have brought back many memories of moments and even entire days that I had completely forgotten. They’ve also bolstered my memories of historic events that I remember quite well – as do most people – but had forgotten how I had experienced them as a journalist. For example, I saved hours and hours of both local and national CBS coverage of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, the September 11 attacks, and the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’d like to think that my grandkids will find it really interesting to not only watch this coverage, but also see the story angles that I was covering, and how I looked and sounded during those moments from their history books. It’s also interesting to see those events connected to the broader context of the times: What else was happening in the world, both nationally and locally? What were the hair and clothing styles? What products, movies and TV shows were being advertised during commercials? Keep in mind that my entire news career happened before most people had heard of social media, used cell phones to do anything but make calls, or had ever ordered anything from Amazon. A lot about society has changed since then!

The craziest part of this journey through the past has been the amount of perspective I’ve gained with age and experience. Now that I’m more than twice as old, I think it has been easier for me to watch and analyze that rookie journalist (aka, myself) from a more objective and less critical place. Those earliest tapes – yeah, they’re a little cringy. And her hair…my gosh, it looks like the poor girl had a five-year-long identity crisis! I see how much she wanted to look like the grown-up version of herself – whatever that was supposed to look like – but was clearly getting the message that it couldn’t include her natural curls. Unfortunately, any other style was a constant struggle. Her makeup wasn’t great either, but I can’t fault the girl for that; I’m now in my forties and still don’t understand cosmetics.

But, appearances aside, I’ve been surprised to discover that I’m really proud of that girl. I see how hard she works to hold her own next to the veteran journalists. I see how smoothly she handles live shots, even in breaking news situations when the story was changing by the minute...and how poised she looks at the anchor desk, even during her first attempts, although I know that inside she was melting with excitement. I see how much energy she brings to the youth-geared 9 pm newscast and how much fun she has reporting feature stories (which she worked hard to EARN the privilege of covering)! And most of all, I hear her storytelling. I am impressed over and over at how well she writes even at 21 – making mundane topics interesting and the really good topics riveting. If that girl was my daughter, I would be bursting with pride (now I understand how my parents always felt).

Those Bottom Lines on my Resume Represent a Strong Foundation

I didn’t leave TV news because I’d failed at it. On the contrary, I “retired” very much on my way up – at the ripe old age of 26 – because I was starting a family and thought it was what I needed to do to be a good mom. I was proud of what I’d accomplished, but also excited to step away and begin a new chapter in my life. I felt confident that if I ever did want to return to the workforce, all of that great storytelling experience would certainly help me land a corporate communications job in no time.

It turns out that I was pretty wrong about that! It was actually really hard to break into the corporate world as a former television news journalist. Most companies seemed to care more about whether I’d ever had another job writing press releases than the fact that I’d just spent the past five years reading thousands of them. To this day, I’m still grateful to the woman (now a lifelong friend) who saw value in my skills and gave me my first shot in public relations and marketing. I learned an enormous amount in that job and every corporate communications role I’ve held since – each of which has served as an essential stepping-stone to the next opportunity. And I have talked about all of those office experiences 95% more than TV news in any job interview or career discussion I’ve ever had…which perhaps led to my own personal devaluation of my journalism experience.

Happily, my “save tapes” have brought that value back to the forefront for me. After watching myself evolve over the first five years of my career, I’ve recognized that those few lines at the bottom of my resume represent the strong foundation that I built my career on. Those lines made me more poised, more enterprising, better at thinking on my feet, better at understanding what an audience wants to know, better at learning about complicated topics and translating them into easy-to-understand stories…all important skills that every company needs in a communications team. I wouldn’t be the storyteller or trainer or speaker or creative strategist that I am today without those years in television news boot camp. I’m grateful to have lived them, and I’m even more grateful that they were caught on tape. But perhaps most of all, I’m thrilled to finally get that box of VHS tapes out of my basement!