Anchor Favors Personal Interest Stories

Naturally interested in observing the larger world and wanting to share news about good people and good stories, she eventually succeeded as a tv broadcaster despite her parents’ concerns. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

UP was born in India to parents who immigrated to the United States when she was a baby. Her father was a scientist when the family lived in India; her mother was a homemaker before and after they moved to the U.S. After arriving in their new country, UP’s father joined a research group in biomedicine. 

CHILDHOOD INTERESTS TOWARD AN ADULT CAREER

In her younger years, UP filled a diary with her thoughts on world affairs. During high school, UP worked as a part-time reporter for the local city newspaper, which provided the opportunity for her to interview one of her heroes from the world of television news broadcasting: Walter Cronkite, then the anchor of “CBS Evening News.”

EDUCATION

Following her high school graduation, UP enrolled in a well-regarded university, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism. While a full-time university student, UP worked at a local tv station.

FIRST ADULT CAREER JOB

UP’s first job within her chosen career path was working as a news broadcaster for a regional television station, where she won one local Emmy Award before she moved to a larger city for an opportunity to work as an anchor on the 10 p.m. newscast while concurrently working as a reporter for another television show, “Evening Magazine”. 

CHALLENGE – PARENTS’ OBJECTIONS TO CHILD’S CAREER DECISION

UP’s parents were concerned that journalism was an unsafe and unsteady career choice, preferring that she be a doctor or a lawyer. “They had a hard time accepting that this was an actual career for a woman,” she later recalled. So, UP hired a ‘swami’ to speak to her parents.

(Editor’s note – In the Hindu religion practiced widely in India, a swami is a male religious teacher; some definitions are broader: “an honorary title given to a male or female ascetic who has chosen the path of renunciation of worldly life – like a nun – or has been initiated into a religious monastic order.”)

UP wisely chose a swami who was already well-known to her parents, to help them see that television journalism was not just a short-term fantasy but actually a real, (usually) safe and stable, long-term career.

CHALLENGE – SOMETIMES PARENTS DON’T NEED TO KNOW THE WHOLE TRUTH

After utilizing an intervention technique (the swami) to persuade her parents that her chosen career path was safe, UP was in a supermarket to interview a subject for a later broadcast. While there, the supermarket was the scene of a robbery! UP was unharmed but needless to say, she failed to mention to her parents that she was at the scene of a crime, though fortunately not a victim. 

CAREER TAKES OFF WHILE MAINTAINING HIGH STANDARDS

UP’s success in a small tv market earned her opportunity for a job in a larger tv market, which led to notice by a national television network, which was expanding its regional and national tv coverage and offered a tv anchor position to UP, who accepted and was able to interview a wide range of newsmakers and celebrities for tv news, including the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and Senator John McCain. 

“She took her role very seriously, wanted to know that all the information had been confirmed and that she was speaking factually,” said a former national news network vice president of weekend news and programming. He added: “She went through the scripts meticulously and rightly gave us producers hell if the information wasn’t correct.”

CHALLENGE – CHOOSING TIME AWAY TO RAISE A FAMILY

Some jobs and careers are compatible with taking time away to raise a family while preserving the opportunity to return to work if you choose to do so. Television reporting is such a career. 

When UP was married and became pregnant with the couple’s first child, she told her network management that she would take time away from broadcasting, beyond the minimal time then required by federal law, to allow birth and early, but limited, stay-at-home` parenting (‘maternity leave’); instead, UP had decided, even before her daughter’s birth, that she would remain unemployed until her child was able to attend nursery school, presumably at age 3 or 4. 

Fortunately, UP’s husband was sufficiently employed for the family to be able to afford to have only one income to cover their expenses and lifestyle. 

Four years later, UP found a new opportunity to continue her tv broadcasting career, this time in a new city where the family happily moved to accommodate the husband’s new job. 

CAREER SATISFACTION

After gaining self-confidence in her ability to be a tv news presenter and moving to a larger ‘market’ to practice her craft, UP earned two more local Emmys as an anchor for her tv news reports. She preferred human interest stories. “I’m a conduit to help people,” she told the local newspaper, “I don’t want to sound too sentimental. But that’s what I’m about. I want to use my celebrity to help people.”

A fellow news professional said of UP: “She felt, in our culture, where so much had become negative, there was a need for uplifting stories.”