MIAMI WAS A great news market for a young reporter. It had crime, immigration, hurricanes, a lush ecosystem under constant threat—once I covered a story about the Everglades from a pontoon boat. Local stories were often national news. It was action central, which made Miami a feeder for the big leagues. So many reporters who’d learned the ropes in South Florida went on to long careers as network correspondents.
By the time I left CNN, I had a number of features under my belt. What I didn’t have were the chops that come with covering spot news, jumping in the back of a van and hauling ass to a live shot, churning out two stories a day. In other words, I was a rookie, and treated that way. For one of my first stories, I remember dashing out with a cameraman named Carlos Rigau. I pointed at the protest we were covering and said, “Hey, Carlos, can you zoom in?” Then: “Hey, Carlos, can you pan over here?” If looks could kill…he clearly wasn’t enthralled by the new girl literally calling the shots.
I’m not being modest when I say I was terrible live. I just couldn’t get over people who could stand there and talk off-the-cuff in full sentences, without notes, hitting their “roll cue” （the words that signal the director to roll the tape）。 If I wanted to do this for a living, I had to get some experience, pronto.
They put me on the night beat, where I got plenty of opportunities to go live: two dead drug dealers who’d been stuffed in the trunk of a car （a fellow reporter described the corpses moldering in the Miami heat as smelling like “rotten chicken”）; an uprising at the Krome Detention Center, where undocumented workers were warehoused; crazed Dolphins fans before a big game, mugging and jumping around behind me （I finally understood why newspeople called TV cameras “asshole magnets”）。 I went live from fires, home invasions, DOAs on the interstate （proving the adage “If it bleeds, it leads”）， and slowly but surely got more comfortable.
As much as I loved breaking news, I was happiest sinking my teeth into in-depth features. I did a story on the pathology of shoplifters, and another on child-abuse laws that in some cases wrongly separated kids from their families. But the one that will live in infamy was about the homeless in Miami. Whatever you do, please, I beg you, don’t google it.
It was an era of enterprising stunt journalism, of reporters strapping on “fat suits” and going undercover. I made the boneheaded decision to infiltrate the homeless subculture by pretending to be part of it. That meant buying dingy clothes at the Salvation Army, having my face spackled with wrinkle makeup, donning a curly wig, a knit cap （with a fork stuck in it, for some reason）， plus ripped knee-high hose. Then I loaded up a shopping cart with my supposed worldly goods and pushed it down the street, asking passersby for spare change.
It gets worse. I cleaned windshields and dived for pennies in a hotel fountain. At one point I stretched out flat on the sidewalk. I waited in line with other homeless people for a free meal （and pronounced it fairly tasty）。 Under the Miami sun, my makeup started to melt; one man I met at the shelter asked me if I was a burn victim. By nightfall, things got a little tense when someone challenged me about who I was and suggested I might be muscling in on his turf. When he reached into his pocket, the cameraman rushed over, blasting us with light.
I was desperate to go deep on important stories. And, yes, I pointed out how difficult it was to get into a shelter （which required an ID） and how dangerous this life was. But it was just so poorly done, an insult to homeless people everywhere. The spectacle of me shuffling around the mean streets of Miami in costume was bad enough, although some of the writing was even worse: “This is the American dream gone bad,” I noted gravely. “These people only wish they weren’t awake.”
I don’t even know what that means. I’ll be atoning for that piece for the rest of my days.
ALL IN ALL, I loved being at WTVJ. Tammi Leader （aka Tammi from Miami） and Lisa Gregorisch, who ran the Broward bureau, would become lifelong friends. But after two years I was nearing the deadline I’d set for myself—to become a network correspondent by the time I turned 30. And I couldn’t see myself settling down in Miami.
There’d been a few nibbles, so I decided to get an agent who could help me figure things out. It just so happened the woman I hired was dating the general manager at a TV station （that kind of cross-pollination was typical of the news business）。 Even better, the station was WRC in Washington, DC—a local shop in another news-making city. I interviewed with the GM and the news director. They offered me a job as a general-assignment reporter, bumping up my salary from $45,000 to $60,000 a year. I packed up my apartment, loaded my gray Persian, Frank, into his cat carrier, and headed north.