Knowing Your Value (3 page)

Still, I was reticent about signing on to an early morning show that would throw my household into disarray. My family had put up with my crazy nights and early-morning shifts many times as I was scrambling up the career ladder, and they had picked me up after it collapsed beneath me. Why would I put them through that again? Why would I want to put myself through it again? Did I need a demanding job in television, or did I need a predictable one? After all I’d been through, I realized I was kind of happy with the predictable, and I was reluctant to put everything on the line again.

But Joe is nothing if not persuasive. He was hyperfocused on his concept for a groundbreaking political talk show. There would be no rehearsal and no script, just a cast of sharp journalists and analysts, all handpicked by him, who could engage in lively and intelligent discussions while treating one another with respect. He wanted real conversation, long interviews, true reactions. He was determined to make his vision of the show a reality. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was for me to be his cohost.

My gut told me that he was gifted. That he had a really good idea, and that his idea was going to change the way news was delivered on television. Joe’s concepts seemed exciting and innovative to me as a woman who had spent two decades in an industry that did little more than rehash tired news formats. This show would be a wild ride, and Joe was inviting me along.

I didn’t really know what I was stepping into on that first day back in 2007. But within seconds of being on the air together, I knew I was a part of something unique. That morning, I was on the set at 5:55 AM. Joe and I began discussing the latest political news before the cameras started rolling, and we just kept talking as the program went live. “Five, four, three, two, one ...” We just kept talking. In a random trick of fate, we had immediate on-air chemistry. We had only met the day before, but you would have thought we had been at this for years.

I have been on my share of new shows; you can tell very quickly if something works or not. Most are duds. I knew immediately
Morning Joe
would be a hit. Much of TV is conventional and safe; each show gets tied up with a neat little bow at the end. But this show was different. It was unpredictable and risky, and extremely smart. Both Joe and I had been beaten up in our respective careers, and that experience—plus the fact that we were both bored by the traditional television news format—made us fearless. I thought to myself, “This is the kind of breakthrough show I’d want my girls to see me host. I like watching this, and I like doing this.”

When we heard we’d won the Imus slot, we were off and running.

From that moment, our team began working around the clock to build
Morning Joe
into the success it is today. We had a tiny staff and limited resources, but we had big plans and even more determination. We didn’t engage in shrill dialogue to win ratings or deliver packaged reports that were safe and pat. We told the truth as we saw it. We said what we thought,
and sometimes we were wrong. We were ourselves, come what may, and people responded immediately. Everyone knew that we all cared to be there despite our differences, and we all genuinely liked one another.

Ours would become the show that the
New York Times
described as “unlike anything else on morning television,” that the
New Yorker
called “appallingly entertaining,” and that
Forbes
magazine proclaimed “the hottest morning show around.” But it would take a Herculean effort to get there.

Joe was the creator. I was the executor. He focused on ideas and pushed them through the MSNBC hierarchy. He fought for my job, our producer Chris Licht’s job, and other on- and off-air people whom he felt were the right fit. Building the team took up most of his day after we got off the air. He brought on Willie Geist as the bright young personality who would add youth and attitude. My job was to bring in the big-name newsmakers to our brand-new, and at that point unknown, very early morning show. I took my BlackBerry everywhere and worked it around the clock.

I used all the skills I had developed from years of chasing stories as a reporter. I worked every angle, every connection. I got up at three AM every day, but if I needed to call a contact at eight PM, I pushed myself to sound perky and awake. Aggressive. On a mission. I kept the phone at my ear while I jogged. As Joe and Chris and I would have strategy sessions, I would thump along my four-mile route, panting, sweating, and thinking, “How can we make the show better?”

The three of us realized we had stumbled onto a rare opportunity in the odd and unpredictable world of TV news and “opinion television.” We had been given a three-hour window over which we had complete control. MSNBC was still busy dealing with the fallout of the Imus situation, and as with many new shows, the network simply let ours fly to see how it did on its own.

I have to hand it to MSNBC president Phil Griffin. He knew we were on to something and that we needed space to work out the kinks. Only a confident, sharp manager would have had that foresight. There are not many of his kind in television news. He fought for us and protected us from unnecessary tweaking from upstairs.

Before long,
Morning Joe
’s future was looking bright, but mine still wasn’t. The network brass weren’t convinced that I was the right cohost. They gave me a new contract and moved me from freelance into a staff position, but the money was barely better, and I was not formally assigned to
Morning Joe
. That meant I had to be available to work for any and every other show that needed me. My days began with a four AM commute into New Jersey, where I would trudge up to the makeup room and have my face painted; most days I didn’t scrape that makeup off for sixteen hours. Often I would be on the air four or five hours a day, then spend the rest of my waking hours chasing guests for the next day’s
Morning Joe
and doing any other jobs that MSNBC assigned. I didn’t want to seem difficult by turning down extra assignments. I figured if management was asking me to take on more, that
meant they had actually considered my workload and felt I should be able to handle additional tasks.

The ink on my new contract was barely dry when I realized my mistake.

Joe and I worked so closely as we put this show together that we pretty much knew everything about each other. He’d answer my phone and talk to my kids, and I’d answer his phone and talk to his. Phil called, or Joe’s agent called, and they’d negotiate a detail in his latest contract, and I’d be sitting right there listening. So I knew there was a vast difference in our salaries. We talked openly about the money he was getting and the money that I should be getting. He was very concerned and hoped that I would be a permanent part of the show, and I think we were both just relieved when I finally had a contract in hand.

The reality of my situation began to dawn on me when I learned that Willie Geist had just re-signed as well, but his was a contract to be on the show, whereas mine was simply to be on MSNBC. Someone had said, “Just sign this,” and I signed a generic contract that had me working on any shift, including
Morning Joe
, but without the title “
Morning Joe
cohost.” It said MSNBC could also ask me to do
Nightly News
pieces,
Weekend Today
news reading, and hours and hours filling in for other anchors in the afternoon. Willie was smarter about the negotiation and cut himself a better deal. He asked for what he wanted, and he didn’t show up at work until he got it. When I heard through the grapevine that he was making more than I was, I realized I had done myself a
great disservice. I didn’t value myself, and I had taken a deal that reflected that.

I was stunned to learn that Willie made more, but I was happy for him. I’ve always known he’s a great talent, and I’m sure his value will explode in coming years. I’m good at predicting these things for other people. I just couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been on my own behalf, how my own sense of value was so deflated by low self-esteem and a misplaced sense of gratitude. I was demoralized, but I was determined to show up shining every morning. Balancing the job, the family, and the hours was exhausting, but knowing that what appeared to be a career high was really a complete failure was truly depressing.

Living with that reality was bringing out an emotion in me that does not work for a woman in the workplace, at least not mine: anger.
Morning Joe
shows me at my best and my worst. Our show is transparent and real. We hide nothing. It all shows: the effects of exhaustion (and Ambien), all our moods and emotions. I knew anger wouldn’t rate. I would have to find a way to be happy, or at least at peace.

I had taken a tremendous risk in accepting this job. I didn’t have financial security, and my career was hanging in the balance. On top of that, I was working with a man who refused to follow a conventional path. Some called him a rule breaker. But I knew he was actually a game changer.

That same rebellious streak that ruffled feathers in Congress made Joe a controversial figure in the halls of NBC. While everybody else played it safe, Joe demanded that we push the
envelope. Needless to say, that earned me few new friends at 30 Rock. Many tried to talk me out of working with him, even offering me the “safety” of a slot on another “more legitimate” broadcast. But I refused to listen to them. I went in a different direction, and I’m extremely proud of that fact. I don’t know any women who would have done what I did in that instance. I went my own way, ripped up my own script. That takes experience and self-knowledge. The ability to be brave, to try something new, to take a risk, to know it’s good when it’s good—that’s worth something. And if you’re going to take a major risk, you sure as hell better know what it’s worth. I can do that. I’m proud because accepting the co-host job meant accepting so much risk. And so much fighting. And so much standing up in the face of rejection. Of so much push back from NBC management and my new bosses who I instinctively wanted to please.

But I was still clueless when it came to translating that powerful sense of self-worth into actual dollars and cents.

Despite the money, I didn’t think of leaving. I was invested in
Morning Joe
and engrossed in the story we were covering: the 2008 race for the White House. The combination of the first African-American major-party nominee and the lightning speed of the news cycle in the age of social media made the 2008 presidential race unlike any other election I had covered.

Instead of walking away from MSNBC when I first realized I was underpaid, I worked harder to get the candidates booked on our show. It helped that my brother Ian worked for McCain; my father, former national security adviser to
President Carter, had endorsed Obama early on; and my other brother, Mark, worked for President Clinton and was joining the Obama organization to help out. If I didn’t know someone at a campaign, I’d bluff my way in until I got to know someone. Before long, I had lined up interviews with every candidate from Barack Obama to Ron Paul.

Joe and I knew that this election was our opportunity to really put
Morning Joe
on the map. No one was going to do it for us. We would do everything for ourselves.

Other morning shows had a staff of forty to fifty people and the full support of being “management’s choice”; we had a staff of eight, our BlackBerrys, and the belief that we could do it. We knew we had to be scrappy and relentless. So we ran around the country, basically carrying the show on our backs, and working around the clock to make it must-see political TV.

There was no better example of how alone we were at times than the Iowa caucuses. We wanted to take
Morning Joe
to Iowa, but MSNBC wasn’t sold on it enough at that point to spend the money. Management liked us, just not that much. We knew we had to be on the ground in Iowa. We fought and fought, and still hit brick walls. They told us there was not enough room in the budget and not enough room in the convention center, where all the other networks had built their sets.

Joe, Chris, and I refused to take no for an answer. We forged ahead. I kept calling all the campaigns and asking them to stop by our studio set—a set that did not yet exist in the minds of MSNBC management. Chris worked on the
travel and producing details as if we were going. On the eve of New Year’s weekend, Joe called Phil Griffin and laid down the law. “Phil, we are going to Iowa,” he said. “If you want us on the air on Monday, you might want to send a few cameras. If you don’t, you will have shots of empty chairs in New York. Your call, but
we are going to Iowa
.”

MSNBC finally gave Phil the money, and within 48 hours we were scrambling to kiss our families good-bye and make our flights. Joe flew from Florida and made it there first. But Chris and I got stuck in Chicago because of storms and air-traffic delays. We had ten hours to make it to Des Moines, 300 miles away. Chris and I grabbed a rental car—without my luggage, because it was lost. We drove all night through a blizzard to make our five-AM Des Moines broadcast. We arrived several hours before airtime. I was so worn down, I even ate McDonald’s chicken nuggets and fries for breakfast; as someone who aspires to be a paragon of healthy living, that was a desperate act.

With no room for a
Morning Joe
set at the convention center, we set up a makeshift studio at Java Joe’s, a popular Des Moines coffee shop filled with locals. Soon, every candidate showed up at Java Joe’s and stayed a while to drink coffee and shoot the breeze. The result was spontaneous and spirited conversations that engrossed viewers and participants alike.

I was running on no sleep but made it through five hours of programming that morning. After seeing the first hour of the show—the show no one wanted to send to Iowa—Phil got so excited that he asked us to stay on the air two extra hours.
MSNBC’s front office would later tell us those five hours were among the network’s best hours of campaign coverage.