Soledad O'Brien turned on a dime and says young journalists must too

You can't fire your boss, but one of the benefits of running your own TV production company is that if your client wants you to do something you don't care to do, you can fire the client.

That was one of the career-change nuggets shared with members of the Club's Broadcast Committee and their guests at a Primetime lunch Nov. 20 by Soledad O'Brien, a former CNN and NBC anchor who now has her own Starfish Media Group.

O'Brien said that when you make the shift, you get to quickly realize all the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into getting a show on the air, like a financial plan, budgets and running the company while the principal is in the field producing video.

O'Brien made the switch from employee to owner when she was told by CNN that she was being relieved of her morning anchor duties. For the 28-year journalism veteran and mother of four, being on general assignment was not attractive. CNN became her first client.

Transitioning from employee to boss wasn't O'Brien's first about-face. She said she bailed out of pre-med at Harvard University because she realized she didn't really like it. Asked what convinced her to change direction, she answered simply, "Organic chemistry." She could memorize the formulas and pass the tests, but wasn't "passionate about it."

She said her preferred stories at her new company are "character driven," which she defined as "following someone's emotional growth" and are "undergirded by statistics and facts."

She pointed to a piece on military personnel overlooked for the Congressional Medal of Honor. She said her study indicated race was a factor.

On advice to young people seeking to enter broadcast journalism she strongly suggested developing specific skills. She said it is no longer possible to get an internship if your only skill is running for coffee. And mirroring her own history, she said, "You have to be able to turn on a dime."