By Elaine McArdle
Photography by David Carmack

"Can I get on TV?"

It's a hot August morning in the Gillette Stadium parking lot, in Foxborough, Massachusetts. A little boy in bare feet, his sneakers clutched under one arm, a Patriots cap on his head, has planted himself in front of Rhondella Richardson, AS'90.

"You want to be on TV?" Richardson responds, resting her microphone unobtrusively by her side. "Doing what?"

Two teenage girls walk by, staring at the attractive woman in the cream-colored sweater and pants. They stop and whisper; they giggle. They know her.

"I dunno," the boy answers, a quizzical look on his face. "Do you have to do something to be on TV?" Richardson laughs. Yes, indeed, you do, especially if you want the kind of visibility she's earned. If you want not one, but two on-air jobs — general-assignment reporter on weekdays, morning co-anchor on weekends — at NewsCenter 5 on Boston's ABC affiliate, WCVB-TV.

You have to do plenty of things. Like work your way up through smaller markets in Manchester, Providence, and Seattle, covering mudslides, elections, arraignments, and countless other stories that quickly fade from view. Be on call twenty-four hours a day for breaking news. When your luggage is lost after you go to Vietnam for two weeks to cover a trade summit, wear borrowed clothes you hope look okay on camera.

Spend two years in a long-distance relationship with the man you'll marry, wondering if you'll ever get back to family and friends on the East Coast. Outperform all the other hopefuls who want to be top TV reporters, too. Snag every story, land every interview, make every deadline — and always, always look great.

You have to do a lot.

"WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?"

Richardson has come to Foxborough to check out a story: a new partnership between the New England Patriots and the Massachusetts Army National Guard aimed at recruiting young people into the military. She's got to figure out if there's an interesting piece for the evening news here — and, if so, get interviews that frame it perfectly.

Every star needs a sidekick. Today, Richardson has Warren Doolin, a crusty sixty-something cameraman with a barking laugh and a cynic's sense of the absurd, who's spent thirty-three years in the news business. They've come down from Boston in a NewsCenter 5 SUV loaded with camera equipment and some two hundred radios for tracking police reports, fires, and weather. They also have two rain jackets, just in case. And Doolin's cooler, packed with two Diet Cokes and two sandwiches; his provisions were a lifesaver when Richardson was pregnant and almost passed out one day while covering a trial.

Across the vast expanse of the stadium parking lot, they see activity that looks like a carnival — a moonwalk, a rock-climbing wall, a DJ blasting hip-hop, scores of parents and little children — and drive toward it. Nearby are several military trucks painted in camouflage, a cannon, and a recruiters' tent.

"Do me a favor," Doolin tells Richardson as he shuts off the engine. "You go check it out before I get any equipment out."

Armed with pen and paper and a pager on her waist, Richardson heads toward the crowd, deftly stepping over a two-foot fence. "If there were a day I didn't climb over something, it wouldn't be a normal day," she says.

She spots a middle-aged man in military fatigues and strides confidently up to him. "Hello, I'm Rhondella Richardson from Channel 5," she says. "What's this all about?"

Lieutenant Colonel Sterling MacLeod, sporting a black felt beret that shows his rank insignia, is eager to talk. Over the past two weeks, the state's National Guard — which needs about five hundred more enlistees to reach its recruiting goals — has bused in nearly a thousand high-school football players from around Massachusetts to watch the Patriots practice and, perhaps, consider a military career. MacLeod hopes the effort will produce a hundred new recruits, who will take the military oath on the 50-yard line during the Patriots' first home game, against the Colts.

Richardson gestures at the toddlers jumping on the moonwalk and the junior-high boys scaling the rock wall. "But this seems to be for little kids," she says.

"Our target is seventeen- to twenty-four-year-olds," MacLeod responds.

Doolin materializes, lugging a camera and a tripod, and arranges Richardson and the recruiter into a compelling shot. MacLeod is comfortable before the camera.

Then why is the crowd mainly young kids and preteens? Richardson asks again. "It's a bit like brainwashing," she observes, in about as inoffensive a manner as such a thing can be said.

MacLeod's jaw tightens slightly, but his expression doesn't change. "It's not our intention to expose this to younger kids," he says. He thrusts out his hand to shake goodbye and end the interview.

But Richardson keeps asking questions, and MacLeod keeps answering. The camera is rolling.

Yes, MacLeod tells her, it's much more likely today's recruit will be called up, probably to Iraq — "we tell them that up front," he says. His focus, he repeats, "is high school athletes."

Richardson moves on to talk with seven or eight other people: ninth-grade boys, a guardsman, a high school principal who's encouraging students to consider joining the military.

A father strolls by with his wife and a swarm of young children, including a newborn in a carriage. He's embarrassed when Richardson engages him; he doesn't want to talk on camera. "But you don't even know the question yet!" she says, in such a disarming way that he changes his mind. He's happy to have his children exposed to the military in such a pleasant environment, he tells her.

"See, that wasn't so bad!" she says. Seconds later, the dad's talking into the camera like an experienced hand.

Three tow-headed children play in the cab of a jeep. Richardson points the microphone in their direction. "Do you ever think about being in the military?" she asks.

A boy who looks about nine says, "My great-grandfather was in the Marines, and he got snipered, and he said don't even think about it!"

A natural, likable manner: Reporting on location in Boston.

NAILING THE STAND-UP

A quick trek back to the SUV. Richardson touches up her makeup, reads over the notes she just took, and comes up with her lines, which she practices out loud twice. Two minutes later, she grabs a pink tweed jacket and puts it on, never breaking a sweat despite the heat.

She stands before a military truck and does a single run-through, effortlessly: "Every year, the National Guard sets recruiting and retention goals. This year, it is short five hundred recruits, and, because of the war, it's had far less success with retention."

Three-two-one, camera: "Every year, the National Guard . . . "

Doolin stops her, unhappy with the camera angle. Take two — she nails it. Take three — she flubs a line. Take four — she nails it. She smoothes her hair and rubs her nose. Take five — Doolin stops her again. Takes six and seven, she nails.

Richardson calls the office to tell them what she's got. "Yes, it's good," she says. "It's unique."

"So," she asks after she hangs up, "what's for lunch?" She and Doolin head to a seafood shack, a rare treat for a duo who usually eat on the run and once went fifteen hours without a break or food. "This isn't work, is it?" she says, smiling. "I love it."

Richardson, thirty-seven, grew up in New Jersey, determined to have a career in broadcast journalism. Her father was a professional piano player and a music teacher; her mother, a homemaker. In high school, she taught piano and served as the editor of her school newspaper.

She picked Northeastern for two reasons: to play varsity tennis and to learn TV reporting. Her co-ops included gigs with a public relations firm in New York (she hated the work) and the Boston Globe. Too many kids, she says, come into the newsroom right out of college with no experience or training, "so the co-ops were invaluable."

Her long relationship with WCVB began when she got an internship there during her freshman year. "I got yelled at every day," she says.

"And just look at her now!" crows Doolin.

Her dad is her biggest fan, she says. Her mom thinks she works too much, especially now that she has daughter Rhylee, fifteen months.

But Richardson's got a ready answer: "I say, ‘Okay, what was the point of my working all over the country to get to this point?'" Fortunately, her husband, whom she met at Northeastern — ; Mark Porter, UC'93, chief of police at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth — ; has always been completely supportive of her career.

Her rise has been rapid. After she graduated from Northeastern, she received a Leo Beranek Fellowship at NewsCenter 5. When that ended, she took her first reporting job, at WMUR-TV, in Manchester, New Hampshire, where she was immediately thrown into covering the presidential primary, rubbing shoulders with top journalists from around the country.

Within six months — ; a very short time by television standards — ; Richardson had landed her next gig, with WJAR-TV, in Providence. One winter morning when she'd taken a rare day off with a bad sore throat, she was called in to cover a snowstorm. All day long, she stood in the blizzard, doing live shots that were carried by stations throughout the country. After the NBC affiliate in Seattle, KING-TV, saw her reports, they made her a job offer.

She stayed at KING for two years. She did her first piece for the Today show there. She went to Vietnam for two weeks with the Washington governor to cover a trade mission. Porter commuted out to Seattle every six weeks to see her.

Then, in 1996, Richardson got the chance to come full circle, back to Boston's Channel 5, where she arrived in 1996 as a general-assignment reporter. She and Porter married two years later.

Anchors aweigh: With weekend meteorologist David Epstein.

"JUST A DOLL"

At WCVB, Richardson has racked up achievements. She's moved into the weekend-morning co-anchor spot while continuing to report during the week. Boston magazine named her among the city's "fifty most intriguing women" in 1997. Two years later, Northeastern honored her with a Medallion Award, for her contributions to her alma mater and her professional successes. She's often asked to speak at elementary and high schools.

But if she has an ego, it's well-hidden. Richardson is accessible, genuine, likable — which is why viewers and sources take to her. "She's a very good interviewer, because she's very good one-on-one," says associate professor Alan Schroeder, a former TV producer who teaches broadcast journalism at Northeastern. "You need people to talk to you. She's someone who gains people's trust."

Neil Ungerleider, WCVB's assistant news director, says Richardson knows how to be persistent and aggressive in pursuit of a story without alienating her sources. "She has a wonderful, approachable personality," he says. "The person you see on the air is exactly who she is. There's no pretense about her — she's very natural. The people who have the best chance at success are those who are the same on the air as off."

Susan Wornick, the award-winning journalist and midday co-anchor at WCVB, is another fan. "She's just a doll," says Wornick, who's known Richardson since she was a newly minted college grad. "She's smart, inquisitive, and she has good energy and insight. More important, she's a wonderful human being. I've known her for years, and I have a motherly love for her. I've seen her just grow and flourish, not only as a journalist but as a woman."

When some of these comments are repeated later to Richardson, Doolin is listening in. "I'm nauseous — I think I'm going to be sick," he says. But once she's out of earshot, he sets the record straight: "No, I'm kidding. She's great to work with."

Strangers often come up to speak to Richardson. Children ask for her autograph, a tough request to accommodate when she's on assignment. "I came up with this thing," she says. "I give them a business card and say, ‘If you get an A on your report card, then I'll send you an autograph."

The attention makes her family laugh. They keep her centered. "My mother would knock me down off a pedestal so fast," Richardson says.

What does she like best about the job? "The element of surprise, not knowing what each day will be like," she says. "And being out, not stuck in an office or cubicle. And I like seeing new people."

She'd love to work someday for a national news magazine, like ABC's Primetime or NBC's Dateline. "I'd like to have more time to work on stories," she says. "It would be a different type of storytelling."

Arriving back at the station with the Foxborough videotape in hand, Richardson hits the viewing room to pick the interviews and clips she wants to use. Her story will run last on the 5:30 broadcast; she'll have 1 minute and 40 seconds of airtime.

She sits at a computer, headphones on, and scans the tape, stopping to chat with Mary Saladna, a reporter covering an Amber Alert success story, a nineteen-day-old baby retrieved by police after being kidnapped by the father.

Richardson spends the next hour or so picking her bits, then hands the tape off to her editor, Greg Kidd. After she writes the script for her voiceovers, she joins Kidd in the editing room. Her on-air voice is natural, with none of the overly affected tone some reporters favor.

She has a little over an hour to finish her package. She and Kidd go over the video again and again, as he cuts the bits into a cohesive story.

An hour later, they're still polishing, even though the 5:30 news has started and her story has already been teased by veteran anchor Natalie Jacobson. At 5:48, they're finished, and Kidd rushes the tape into the control room. It airs nine minutes later.

It's a lot of work for 1 minute and 40 seconds.

"Yes, but it didn't feel like work," Richardson says, "so it was a good day."

Elaine McArdle, a freelance writer who lives in Watertown, Massachusetts, wrote about Northeastern's student radio station, WRBB, in the May issue.

The Glamorous Life?

There are maybe three people on earth who look great at four in the morning. Rhondella Richardson is one of them.

In the world of broadcast journalism, this is a gift beyond compare. "It's cosmetic and shallow, but you have to look good," says Belle Adler, a School of Journalism associate professor who specializes in television news. "You have to look good for a live shot at nine at night when you've been out all day and haven't had a meal. And you have to come in at seven in the morning and look gorgeous. Especially women."

As the weekend-morning co-anchor at WCVB-TV, Richardson knows all about early-morning demands. Every Saturday and Sunday, she's awake by 3:00 a.m. and at the station an hour later, perky and smiling though it's still pitch-black outside. With her flawless skin, perfect features, and long, dark eyelashes, Richardson — whose mother was a model — is that rare creature who looks best without a lick of makeup. She seems surprised when this is pointed out.

"Really?" she asks, as she swiftly completes her predawn application of special camera-friendly foundation and blush, as well as mascara, eyeliner, eye shadow, brow pencil, and lipstick. "My husband tells me that."

At the mirror in the small bathroom/ dressing room she shares with the other women on-air personalities at Channel 5, she gives herself a quick once-over — she's her own personal stylist, too. "People are always surprised we don't have a makeup artist or somebody to pick our clothes," she says.

Welcome to the reality of television news: bad hours, high expectations, scant support. For all its apparent rewards, broadcast news is a lot less bling for a lot more hard work than the public would ever guess. "People don't have a clue," says Adler. "They think you just turn a camera on."

After Richardson arrives at the studio at 4:00 a.m., she goes over the news from the evening before, reviews the video footage she wants to show, and writes her script. At six, NewsCenter 5 EyeOpener goes live on the air. Richardson and co-anchor Kelley Tuthill, also the mom of a young child, expertly present story after story — looking and sounding fresh and alert — until the broadcast ends at eight.

Just surviving in TV news is a coup. Unlike in print journalism, the pressure to build a loyal audience is intense. Focus groups and surveys measure whether you are recognized — and liked — by viewers. A low "Q rating" can mean a pay cut or a pink slip. That's why reporters do stand-ups, the brief spots at the beginning and end of a piece where they talk directly into the camera. Why a reporter makes sure to say "Live, from Worcester, Susan Smith reporting."

"You have to make your mark," says Adler, a former investigative news producer who covered medical issues and the Gulf War for CNN. "And if you don't, it's goodbye."

Men who work in front of the camera can get away with gaining weight or aging. The profession is less forgiving to women. Veteran broadcaster Natalie Jacobson, who began co-anchoring the Channel 5 weeknight news in 1976 and has built a huge following in New England, is a rarity.

"Unless a woman is really well-known, it's hard to get older," says Adler. "Natalie Jacobson is not someone who could get a job in another market." (Here, too, Richardson is lucky — at thirty-seven,she looks no older than twenty-two.)

With few exceptions, Adler says, women news personalities "are all attractive, well-spoken, well made-up women who look good on television." In a word, babes. "You need to have that on top of reporting skills," she says. "That's what's hard."

Other challenges prompt many would-be stars to quit the business. "The hours are crazy," says associate professor Alan Schroeder, a former TV producer who teaches broadcast journalism. "You're always on call, because television news goes on around the clock. You don't have a lot of control over what your day will bring. You can go in feeling tired and hope this isn't the day anything bad will happen, and then all hell breaks loose. It just hits you day after day." The pace doesn't lessen with seniority, he adds. "You don't get a nice, quiet wind-down of your career."

While print journalists travel light with pen and paper, TV reporters lug pounds of gear — and sometimes a whole team of folks. "You have a camera to deal with, equipment, a crew," says Adler. "And you all have to get along. There are power issues, stresses between people, territory issues. Those are all real problems."

Sources who wouldn't hesitate to talk with a print reporter may refuse to speak on camera or may freeze up once the camera is running. And though collecting the news is often exciting, putting stories together isn't much of an adrenaline buzz. "Editing stories is really tedious," says Schroeder. "You're stuck in a little room, watching the same images and hearing the same sounds over and over and over again. It's kind of like being in an echo chamber."

Then there's the competition, which runs rampant in television news. Reporters constantly fret about losing a big story to another channel — or their position to a fresher face. "You're always looking over your shoulder at the other stations," says Schroeder. "But you've also got your eye on the younger reporters behind you who'd love to have your job."

And the money? When Richardson speaks at elementary schools, the first question from the kids is almost always "Are you rich?" "I even get that from my family members," she muses. "And I pack my lunch every day." The truth is, until you hit a big market, which takes years, the pay is laughably low. Richardson's first job, in Manchester, New Hampshire, paid about $18,000 a year. She couldn't even afford to pay her own rent.

There's a sliding scale within the profession, of course: A weeknight anchor in a major market like Boston, Schroeder says, can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But getting to the top is a long haul, and reporters with families often tire of the meager pay and the lousy hours. "That's why so many of the friends I graduated with dropped out," says Richardson.

With all the challenges, are young people continuing to enter the field? "Absolutely," says Schroeder. "Every year, we have students who have a very single-minded focus on television news."

Ask Adler why this is, and she laughs. "Oh, I don't know," she says. "Some people just have the bug."

As Richardson does, clearly. "There are a lot of misconceptions about the glamour of this," she says, "but when you boil it down, at the end of the day it's a really great job. Even with all the sacrifices you have to make."

— ; Elaine McArdle