I came back and sent out 208 résumés to different TV and radio stations. I want to go home and get a job as a reporter.
MC: I’d gone to graduate school for economics in Freiburg, Germany-I loved econ and poly sci-but at some point I thought, I don’t know what I’m doing over here. Which is why I love television.ĮDGE: What path took you from college grad to Eyewitness News in New York? But putting a story together is like making a little movie. I have to actually go get the person on television and get the pictures-that’s a challenge. I’ll be out there covering the same story as my friends who are print journalists and they’re interviewing people on the phone in their car. MC: I was always interested in the creativity that television affords one. I also admired Diane Sawyer and Charles Kuralt-salt of the earth, everyman, a North Carolina guy-and I loved Charlie Rose, who’s the king of giving a little bit of himself so his guests give more back.ĮDGE: Why broadcast journalism over print? For me, coming of age when women were achieving more power and more parity, it was great to see that work like this was possible. She had a way of breaking things down where she would stop, back up and say Please clarify this. I loved to watch her do interviews on television. She wasn’t flashy, yet she had a no-nonsense approach to finding things out that, to me, seemed very elegant. MC: I gravitated to Judy Woodruff, who was a Duke person. What if I could get paid for this and never grow up? What a great racket! It dawned on me around age 13 that I loved learning and I loved people and I loved traveling. We would watch Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt together. MC: It started with my grandmother Jean, my dad’s mother. A Jersey Girl (since age 13) with a lifelong love of TV journalism, Michelle is as honest and skilled a storyteller as you’ll find on the air.ĮDGE: When did the journalism bug first bite you? However, it’s what she endured on the job-including a skin cancer scare and near miss on 9–11-that helped endear her to fans and define her as both a person and a professional. Michelle Charlesworth, longtime reporter and anchor for Channel 7, paid her dues on the way to joining the Eyewitness News team in the 1990s. And, of course, an occasional bit of luck. Staying at the top not only takes talent and tenacity, it requires the kind of authenticity that connects with viewers, who trust you to get every story right. Clawing your way to the top of the New York news business is not for the faint of heart.