The Story Behind the News with Jen Maxfield, Author and Emmy-Award Winning Reporter and Anchor
About this episode:
Jen Maxfield is an Emmy-award winning reporter and anchor at NBC New York with over twenty years of experience. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she teaches broadcast journalism. Maxfield’s first book, More After the Break: A Reporter Returns to Ten Unforgettable News Stories, will be published by Greenleaf Book Group in July of 2022. More After the Break was an instant Amazon bestseller when it became available for preorders this winter. Her anchoring and reporting were part of NBC-NY’s COVID 19 coverage that was awarded the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award in 2021, recognized as the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
Topics Discussed:
Why Jen chose a career in broadcast journalism and how she got her first job in the field
How rejection has helped her stay motivated throughout her career
Why she believes treating others as equals is the best way to lead
Why meeting new people is her favorite part of her job
About Jen:
Jen Maxfield is an Emmy-award winning reporter and anchor who started at NBC New York in 2013. She also worked for Eyewitness News in New York as a reporter and substitute anchor for ten years. Before joining WABC in 2002, she worked for WIXT in Syracuse, NY and WIVT in Binghamton, NY as an anchor and reporter.
Maxfield is an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she teaches broadcast journalism. She received a B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in political science from Columbia College in 1999 and an MS from the School of Journalism in 2000.
Maxfield’s first book, More After the Break: A Reporter Returns to Ten Unforgettable News Stories will be published by Greenleaf Book Group in July of 2022. More After the Break was an instant Amazon bestseller when it became available for preorders this winter. Maxfield revisits the most memorable stories she has covered during her two-decade career, describing in heart-pounding detail how the events unfolded through the eyewitness perspectives and her own. Returning to the families years-- even decades-- after their stories were featured on the news gives Maxfield an opportunity to ask the burning question she had always pondered: what happened after the live truck pulled away?
Throughout her career in TV news, Maxfield has reported live from news events in New York City and beyond. She was on the ground during Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and reported live from Florida after Hurricane Francis and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. She was at the State Capitol in Trenton when Governor Jim McGreevey resigned, covered the 2004 Republican convention in New York City, and was reporting live from a bar in Newark, New Jersey when President Barack Obama won his second term in 2016. She interviewed survivors following the “Miracle on the Hudson” plane landing and was part of NBC NY’s coverage of the 2016 NYC/NJ terror attacks. She won a local news Emmy in 2018 for her live coverage of a plane crash in Teterboro, New Jersey. Her anchoring and reporting were part of NBC-NY’s COVID 19 coverage that was awarded the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award in 2021, recognized as the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. Maxfield has had the opportunity to meet tens of thousands of people covering news events over a wide range of topics, including politics, schools, criminal justice, health, business, weather, and human interest stories
Maxfield began her career in journalism as an undergraduate student at Columbia College, where she wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator. She started an internship at CNN at the United Nations her sophomore year and promptly changed her career goal from sports medicine physician to journalist. She and her husband Scott live in New Jersey with their three children and their dog, Rocket.
Read a raw, unedited transcript of this episode:
Thank you for joining us, Jen. Share with us who you are about your early career experiences and what inspired you and gave you the courage to write and publish. More after the break.
Melanie, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I should start by saying that despite the fact that I've been a TV news reporter for the last 22 years, my first career aspiration was to be a doctor, just like my dad and I went to college as a pre-med student, but I had an internship with CNN at the United Nations. I wrote for the school paper if I was interested in journalism. And it was that one experience of working with Gary Tuchman, who's a correspondent for CNN. And he let me do everything in this internship. I used to write CNN radio stories and go to news conferences and ask questions. And I knew that that was the career for me. So I switched gears and worked for CNN as an undergrad student. And then after grad school, I got my first job in Binghamton, New York, and that was my big break. And I think a great story to tell people is when I was looking for my first job, I had graduated from Columbia Journalism School and I had a resume tape. And I sent out the tape to 65 news directors all around the country asking them to give me my first job. And I did not get a single call back from all of those tapes. And so the advice of a friend and mentor, I started going on a road trip in upstate New York and I called the news directors and say, I just so happened to be in town. Would you be able to meet with me? And the news director of Binghamton, New York, did, and he gave me the job. And I'm still very grateful for that first break. But it goes to show you that you really have to persevere, especially on that first job, because it's just so challenging to break through.
But I love that initiative. You didn't necessarily listen. You just kept going so often thinking we're going to experience a no can hold us back from anything we're working towards accomplishing.
It's true, and rejection in some ways is really a great motivator. I had already experienced some of that in high school. I was a good student I was a student athlete and I applied to a bunch of colleges and I got rejected from almost all of them. And so I already had experienced some of that. And part of what happened was that by experiencing the rejection, I never got complacent, I was never comfortable, and I always was on my A-game and wanted to do better, I think, because I was afraid that things would get taken away if I didn't. And bring that mindset to things where I tried to never get too settled and I'm always pushing myself. So while it's very uncomfortable in the moment to experience that rejection and it's really soul crushing in some cases, I do think that after you get over the initial shock, it does serve as a great motivator. That's so true. And what a great lesson to learn so early in your career, because I'm sure that that has stayed with you.
Definitely. I still get rejected for things to this day. somebody might decide not to do an interview with me or now that I wrote the book, a bookstore might decide that they're not interested in having me for a book signing. I think to myself, if I'm not getting rejected from something, then that means I'm not trying hard enough. Because if you're stretching yourself and trying to achieve something new and different, if you're not getting rejected, you're still in your comfort zone. Once you start getting rejected from things that shows that you're really pushing yourself
So true. What gave you the courage to write your book? I always wanted to write a book and I do love to write. One of the things I realized in the process of talking to people about the book is that not everybody realizes that I write my own scripts at work. So when you see me out reporting on a story live from the scene, everything that I'm saying to you, I've written myself and the piece that I put together on the news is something that I've written, and I loved that part of the job. But a normal TV news script is 250 words. It's about 90 seconds long. My book is 70,000 words. So that was the original mountain that I had to climb, to be able to make that transition between writing something that's 90 seconds long versus writing something that's 250 pages long. But just like everything else, you do a little bit every day, and first you have 200 words, and if 500, then you have a thousand and it starts building up. And my confidence grew as I saw that word count go up and I felt okay, I can do this. And that's not to say there weren't days when I was writing the book that I wasn't pulling my hair out and thinking, Oh, the words are never going to come out right? Or People are calling me back. And I don't know if this story is going to work in this format, but it did wind up working as the book. And \ what I'm touching on in this book are a lot of themes that people think about, which is you see these stories that are at the center of the newscast. They're trending on Twitter. They're on the home page of those news websites. And then we move on to the next story. But we never go back to tell you what happened to the people at the center of these news events. That's so true. You're right. We see the headlines and then we don't know what happens next. How did you choose the people in your stories?
There were some people that I was already in contact with, perhaps through social media. And so those people were pretty easy for me to seek out. And I had been following their family stories in the wake of the story that had gotten them on our newscast in the first place. And I thought, I'd really love to catch up with them, but just because I moved on to a different assignment didn't mean that I stopped thinking about a lot of the families that I've covered on the news. And sometimes it'll come to me when I'm in my car and I drive past the place where I met them. Sometimes I even dream about news stories and people who I've interviewed. So I know that they're still in my subconscious. part of the inspiration to write the book was just natural curiosity for me to figure out what wound up happening to these families. But I suspect that if I was feeling that curiosity, many other people in the community were feeling that as well, and that they're curious to know whatever happens to people once the live trucks pull away.
Can you briefly share one of the stories
I actually was just speaking with Tamika who is the subject of Chapter five of my book. And she's such a remarkable woman. She was in an abusive relationship and she got a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend. And she thought that was enough to keep her safe. But it wasn't. six weeks after she gave birth to their child together, he broke into her mother's house and stabbed her 27 times. And it was so awful. And the only reason she survived that attack is because her two year old daughter lay down on her mother to give her a hug. And Tamika survived because that two year old stopped the bleeding because of the way that she was giving her the hug. So, Tamika, story of survival is such a miracle in and of itself. I was working back in March of 2012, and we got a call into the newsroom, a tip that a woman had been stabbed by her ex-boyfriend. She was in intensive care in the hospital and that she wanted to go on the news about it. So I was assigned the story and I went and spoke with Tamika. And I'll never forget being at the side of her hospital bed and seeing what he had done to her and hearing about everything she had done to try to stop it. And it still wasn't enough. And thankfully, he was arrested and he's serving prison time But to go back now, ten years after that, and reconnect with Tamika and see her daughters now, the girl who saved her life as a two year old is now a 12. The newborn babies, ten, they are thriving. They're doing so well in school. Tamika is a fantastic mother and she has been able to heal from most of her injuries, But to reconnect with her and to learn about everything that had happened since that day, I was with her in the hospital. there's so much more to all of these stories. And the upshot of it for the reader, too, is that so many of us go through different struggles and things that happen to us and we think how am I ever going to feel better after this? And I think that whether it's Tamika or any of the other people in my book, we can all learn a lot from people who have suffered by no fault of their own, but not just in hearing about what caused the initial incident to get them on the news, but also what happens after that and how do they survive and even thrive after having these things happen to them.
So true. And everyone goes through something maybe not as traumatic, but when you see the stories and good for you. Thank you so much for sharing them because it makes someone feel not as alone.
And I think that's also in some ways the motivation. On why so many people wanted to speak with me again. I got to know when I started writing this book whether anybody would want to speak with me again Were reopening old wounds. I wondered if they looked back on the whole situation and thought, I wish I never went on the news. I wish she never knocked on my front door. I wish I never reached out for an interview. I was a bit intimidated when I was first contacting people. But the vast majority of people, did want to speak with me again. And part of it is they have something to say. And in a lot of cases, what people want to say is, I survived this and I want to help other people get through whatever it is they're going through. And in some cases, this is this is the mission of these people now in their lives to reach out to other people who are suffering and try to help them, too.
And for the safety of women. For what she went through.
Absolutely. And to make his case. The reason the whole reason she even agreed to go on the news while she was in intensive care in the hospital. She still talks about this to this day, that she wanted to warn other people and she wanted to make sure that no woman went through what she went through. she felt that it was incumbent on her to put the word out, look, here are the red flags that I ignored. Don't wind up like me. So even in that low point when she was in the hospital, she was thinking about other people and how to help other people, which is so admirable.
And we're grateful. She was so brave.
Yeah. I don't know if I could have done that in her situation. Which is more challenging, knocking on a family's door to ask for an emotional interview or walking back to the live truck afterwards. Oh, that's such a good question. the hardest part of my job is. Knocking on somebody's door, who has suffered. I write about it in the book that this takes me far outside my comfort zone because I do still feel like I am intruding on them and that I might be amplifying whatever bad thing has happened to them and maybe even making it worse. But on the other hand, through the years and having covered so many of these stories, I also know that if we don't reach out to the family and we do go and interviews some tangential person who barely knows anything about what's going on, we're at risk for putting an inaccurate story on the air. In some cases, that can be even worse for the family if we do that. my general attitude is I give the family the opportunity to speak with me, but I also take no for an answer. And if they say no, then that's the end of the conversation. I totally respect that. But I love your question because you also are looking at the other side of it, which is, okay, so the families agreed to the interview and now we've done the interview and now it's time for me to leave. And that is really hard too, because in some cases we're at these stories so early that maybe the extended family hasn't arrived yet, maybe the faith leader, the minister or the rabbi, maybe they haven't gotten to the House yet. And sometimes those support networks are not in place yet. I do sometimes feel a sense of guilt to be leaving, because in some cases, speaking with a reporter is cathartic. And we do see that with some people that that they seem to. Not necessarily feel better, but it gives them a way to talk and someone to talk to in those moments. we're human beings first and we're journalists second. But thank you for that question, because I think it shows a lot of empathy to even be thinking along those lines.
It speaks to your character because you care. And I would think that many of the families even later, are grateful for someone who cares. what did happen after that headline?
I hope so. I know I'm not unique in this. There are many journalists, whether it's reporters or photographers, who really went into the business because we're interested in people, we care about people, we enjoy meeting people. And if anything, having done the job for this many years, I've actually grown in some ways more sensitive to other people. And becoming a mom I have three kids of my own, and that's made me sensitive to how people are feeling in these situations. How is the process of becoming an author for you? What did you learn and what did you like the most about it?
I learned a lot from friends of mine who had all already written books, and I would encourage anyone who's even thinking about writing a book, which I know a lot of us are, reach out and find a mentor or friend or somebody else who's done it because they can really be your cheerleader. And in those moments where you feel like the words aren't coming out I think that they were essential for me. And even just not looking at it as is such a huge thing, like I used to think, how does anybody write a book? How can you write so many pages and sustain the same idea? And I just think nobody sits down and writes an entire book. You write a little bit at a time and somehow at the end you have the book. if you can break up the task into smaller, more manageable pieces, that that's a better way to do it. and to be honest, I wasn't even sure until I was probably half done with this book that it would even work, that people would want to read it, because I know that now it looks very organized. Okay. There's ten stories. And I went back to each of them and it might appear that I just had the list of ten and I went right down the list and that's how the book was written. But in fact, I started with about two or three stories. I knew that I could write those. And then in real time the book was developing, so I might be writing one chapter and then researching the next. And in some ways it was better that way, because if I had picked all ten stories to start, I'm not sure that the book would have had the same flow and as much of a variety of stories as it does in the end.
Thank you for sharing how it developed over time and how you manage the structure of the book. What is your approach to management for leading teams and what do you think is the most crucial element of leadership in order to grow?
I've got a couple of different examples of leadership because I work for NBC in New York as a reporter, and then I am also an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism. So I'll take these two separately for my two different jobs. But as far as leadership, for example, while reporting a story, I always work as part of a team. I am not reporting any of these stories myself. And my most important teammate is the photographer who I'm working with, and I always view the two of us as a team. We work as a team. So when I finish an interview, I will turn to the photographer I'm working with and say, Do you have any questions? Because even though that's not their essential job, it empowers the person I'm working with to know that they're part of the story too. And if I have a shot that I think we should get at a news story, I might say to the photographer, Would you mind getting some video of this? And I see the two of us, as always being equals. And that is part of leadership, is not just viewing yourself as the person at the center of everything, but really empowering everybody around you to be able to share their ideas. Because I've always felt that the collaborative approach is always the best one and every newsroom is a collaboration so that Segways into what I tell my students at Columbia. we're in a classroom with 15 students and I'm the adjunct professor there, and I tell the students from day one, it's in the first thing I said to them that we are a team. If you finish your assignment or you finish your editing, I don't expect you to sit there and be on your phone. I expect you to go and help your teammates because if you know how to do something and you teach it to somebody else, that you actually understand it better in that way because you've now taught it to somebody else. So in many ways, whether it's out on a news story or in the classroom, the best leaders empower the people around them and they solicit ideas from other people. And that way the product at the end is really the sum of all the parts.
That's such good advice, because even writing a book, you do that alone, but in the end you don't really, because there has to be a team for publishing. it's still a collaborative effort. Of course, I've so enjoyed working with the publisher and my publicist and the editor and learning about the book industry. But I try to approach things with the Dean of Columbia College, Jim Valentini uses the term Beginner's Mind and Beginner's Mind is such a great place to start where basically you go into a situation trying not to have a preconceived idea of how it should be. having that attitude of openness, you want to solicit other people's ideas, if you can go into something as a flexible thinker and say, okay, this is what I'm thinking, but I'm interested to hear about your strategy and I'm willing to take a second look at what I think.
Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. What is one tip that you can leave with us today about how you make sure to find and live your joy?
I got into this business because I love people. I love meeting new people. I love learning from people. I'm interested in speaking with people who might have a different job or live in a different place or come from a different background. I have always thrived on meeting people and learning from them. And so what still gives me joy about my job 23 years after I started it in Binghamton, New York, is just the fun that I have. I write in my book, I've interviewed 10,000 people, over the last 22 years. some of the stories are really tough, I write about some of those in the book, but I view it as a gift and an opportunity to be able to meet people and spend a career traveling around the state that I love New Jersey, and meet and speak with so many people and have them trust me with their stories because at the end of the day, that really is what it requires. These are their stories and I'm telling them, and that does require a degree of trust on their part, which I hope I've earned. I'm still trying every day to earn it.
Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having the courage to share these incredible stories. Please tell us how and where we can find you. And we all can't wait to read your book It's been such a pleasure and thank you for thinking of me. my website, https://www.jenmaxfield.com/ My book is available online for preorder it publishes July 12th. We expect that it'll be in bookstores all over the country. And I am doing signings across the country. We're adding more every day. And you can also find me on Instagram at Jen Maxfield News.