Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung and Jane Pauly are just a few of the people Roberta Spring has worked with during her 29 years at NBC Nightly News, she told AU students while speaking to a Communications and Society class on Thursday in the Wechsler Theatre.
"I've never had a job interview in my entire life," Spring joked. After graduating from Syracuse University with a BA in communications in television and radio, Spring began her job at NBC with the Page Program (a college graduate program) the following Monday.
Two months later, "a woman I knew came up to me and said, 'Do you want my job?'" Spring explained. "She took me upstairs, I met her boss, and I got the job" as a production assistant for the News Program Service for NBC. Later, Spring acquired her job as a commercial coordinator and weekend production assistant. She is currently a freelance assistant director for NBC.
Spring has gained many memorable experiences working in the newsroom throughout the years.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Spring was home watching the morning news when the first plane hit the tower.
"I thought, 'That poor pilot probably lost his hydraulics or something'... and then I saw the second plane hit, and then the smoke and the flames," she said. "When I went into work, I saw something in the network newsroom that I had never seen before - on a normal news night, there are between 8 and 15 people. [On Sept. 11], there were 72 people. Every technical director, all of the directors, assistant directors, the president of NBC, heads of General Electric ... all of these people were there."
Spring said that Sept. 11 made the "bigness [of news] even bigger." "Sept. 11 changed television news, I think, forever," she said.
She also remembered witnessing the space shuttle Challenger explode in 1986.
"I didn't really like the fact that a teacher was going up. ... And yet, when it took off, I thought, 'Jesus, good for her,'" she said. "Then we heard 'go throttle up' - the last words right before the Space Challenger exploded. ... We just watched people die. That was the first time in my life I witnessed something like this happen, live."
Although working in a newsroom has provided Spring with some disheartening memories, there are many more that remind her of why she works in the news business.
Spring remembers meeting John F. Kennedy Jr. at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, for example.
"He walked into our trailer ... handsomer than sin," she said, laughing. "He shook my hand and said, 'Hi, I'm John Kennedy'... I've never been so proud."
Spring explained to students the difficult lifestyle of the news business and the competitiveness in the business world today.
"The newsroom is changing. ... It's a very competitive business," she said. "You have to have things done fast, you have to have them done right."
Spring offered some closing advice to budding journalists: "Be nice to everyone, for they could end up sitting next to you"
