Fear and Flunking My Screen Test

There are a lot of things I am good at. Jeopardy is not one of them. I panic when I have to answer questions involving names, dates, historical or pop cultural references. I am seized with fear and I freeze. And it is mortifying. Once at a small dinner with friends we were playing charades. I blanked on the name of our Vice President. I was completely unable to remember Dan Quayle's name. It was years ago and to this day I remember the look of utter astonishment on my partner's face. It didn't help that he was the utterly brilliant, intellectually and creatively, husband of my best friend. But I can't help it. Fear just gets the best of me in those kinds of situations.

A few years ago, after a hiatus of nearly two years from my career as a television news anchor and reporter, I was offered a part-time job as a freelance reporter at NBC News and a substitute anchor on their cable network MSNBC. I was itching to get back on the air, and this seemed ideal. Until they told me about their "screen test." The anxiety of returning to live TV after so much time off was significant, but it paled next to the anxiety that a test like this provoked. Breaking news was never my forte. Although I had done a lot of live TV news, it involved very little breaking news. So I did not have a vast reservoir of experience to draw on.

The purpose of the test was to see how I would handle breaking news. I sat alone in a dark studio with only a camera and camera operator. I was asked to read prompter copy as I normally would. Then in my ear a voice said, "The pope had a heart attack." I was really startled. This is not how it would typically happen in a real breaking news situation. You would have a little more time to process and react. A producer would typically begin with a "warning": "We are getting some reports from Vatican City that Pope John Paul II is being rushed to the hospital . . . we will get back to you in a minute when we are ready to break into programming." When you get the go-ahead, you interrupt the current programming, report what you know, provide the source, and then offer a minute or so of context. That is what I was supposed to do when I heard: "Pope had a heart attack." But being put on the spot like that was way too much like Jeopardy for me. I froze mid-sentence. Not the best thing to do as you are reading news copy into a single camera. Of course, I forgot the Pope's name. I forgot his age, his last hospital stay for pneumonia just the month before. I panicked. Then moments later in my ear, "Helicopter down in Fallujah." That one I handled a bit better. I knew where Fallujah was and fortunately remembered the Iraq war. But that was a short-lived victory. There were a few more disasters. Then finally, the clincher, "Reports of a corpse believed to be Jimmy Hoffa surfacing in Secaucus." Oh God, remind me again when Jimmy Hoffa went missing? What was his son's name? He was a mob boss right? Get me out of here now!! I want to go home.

With that, it was over. The talent executive, Donnabeth, who had been gushing over my resume, and my results on the written news writing test I had been given earlier, came out and without saying a word, very politely ushered me into her office. I packed up my things and left. I was really confused. What had just happened? This was nothing like really being on the air. I knew it was a disaster. My inability to overcome my momentary panic caused me to flunk my screen test. I had clearly blown my chance to get back on the air. I was devastated.

The next day I got a call from her boss, who ran the network, and who fortunately was a former mentor and friend. "Well, you failed your screen test," he said. I could feel the pounding in my ears. "But don't worry about it. I talked Donnabeth into letting you go on the air with us. I know when you are in the studio, in 'the chair,' sitting next to a co-anchor, it will come back to you like riding a bike. You just don't forget years of experience like that. But here is what you have to do differently...." He went on to offer some great, concrete advice that had nothing to do with breaking news and everything to do with presenting the news in a warm, relaxed, and friendly manner that was in sync with the tone of his network.

I was incredibly relieved that I avoided catastrophe, but now even more anxious about getting back in the anchor chair. So I went back to school for a day. I hired a media coach and spent an afternoon dusting off the cobwebs. I practiced in a safe place without an audience. Frankly, that alone made all the difference in the world. It was an important reminder of what I could do instead of what I couldn't. When I finally did go back on the air, my timing was a little off, but just as my boss had predicted, it was like riding a bike. With just a little more time in the chair, I would be up to speed.

-- Excerpted from On Becoming Fearless . . . In Love, Work, and Life

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