An interview with Catie Beck of NBC News
To friends and family across the region, she’s remembered as an impeccably uniformed, diligent, and courteous former student at St. Mary’s schools in Annapolis and a 1998 graduate of Archbishop Spalding High School. Though she still considers Annapolis her hometown, Beck has now become a Richmond, Virginia-based familiar face and voice on network television news.
After graduating early from Fordham University and receiving her master’s degree (also a year early) from American University, she broke into professional broadcast journalism in 2009 as an investigative reporter at WTVR in Richmond. Beck then moved to Atlanta, where she joined NBC affiliate WXIA and from there joined the network news team in January 2017.
In November 2018, the international women’s fashion magazine InStyle featured Beck and three other NBC correspondents who were covering the national congressional general elections in an article titled, “Life as a Female News ‘Road Warrior.’”
Beck has covered several major stories for the network, such as the June 2017 funeral of Otto Warmbier, the Ohio college student released after being jailed in North Korea for attempting to steal a propaganda poster and who died soon after returning to the United States. She also was sent to cover many of the now-too-familiar multiple active-shooter stories, including the scene of the triple shooting at a Home Depot in Dallas in April 2018—a story that turned out to set the stage for something she never fathomed.
It was in June and July that year when Beck attracted both local and national notice for a series of reports from right here in Annapolis. At her request, NBC diverted her from an assignment in Florida to breaking news that five journalists had been murdered in the newsroom of her hometown newspaper on June 28th.
Beck is now in the process of returning to NBC from maternity leave, and we caught up with her during a visit to her baby’s grandparents in Annapolis to talk about her hometown, her career so far, and how she approaches her job in the current climate of network television news.
When we first discussed doing an interview for What’s Up? Annapolis, you said, “I love Annapolis.” Why do you love it? Let me count the reasons. First, I have a sentimental attachment because I spent my whole childhood here. I’ve always loved the water, and I love this little, quiet, nautical place. My family is another reason I love it here, because I adore my family. I have such good memories of sailing and eating crabs.
I was so lucky. I had the most idyllic place in the world to grow up. My parents left the door unlocked, and I still don’t have a key to the house. Many people may call that naïve, and others may just call that Annapolis. We have wonderful neighbors, and people watch out for each other. Neighborhood kids, my friends in high school, everyone would just come into our house without even knocking, because they knew the door was open.
It was a magical existence to be able to grow up in this nautical, breezy little place, where people are generally nice to each other. Coming back here just fills me up. It warms me.
As we sit here downtown, I can look at Storm Brothers, which was my first place of employment. I think I lied on my job application and said I was 15 when I was really only 14. I gave away a lot of free ice cream, and I’m surprised I didn’t get fired. Everybody I knew used to visit me when I was working there. Things like that remind me of a great childhood.
What do you remember most about your days at St. Mary’s and Archbishop Spalding? I loved both schools. I think I sort of blossomed in high school, and that was where my journalism bug really took off. We had a morning TV show at the school called “Spalding AM.” I hosted the show for a while, and that was my big debut.
I wore a uniform for 12 years, Catholic school all the way. I feel like it really made me disciplined. Going through both of those schools taught me to love learning and studying. When I got to college, it was almost easy because I had such good preparation from the schools here.
I was also in drama at Spalding, so I found my voice on stage. I’d never had any theatrical training. I just auditioned, and the next thing I knew, I was in every play until I graduated.
One thing that struck us when we were watching your coverage of the events at the Capital Gazette last summer was when [NBC Nightly News anchor] Lester Holt said, “. . . and reporting live from her hometown, Catie Beck.” Are you proud of telling that to people? Absolutely. I feel like being able to say you’re from Annapolis is a great badge of honor. I had called the network when I was on another shoot in Orlando, Florida. We have an internal email system with breaking-news alerts. Before anything’s published, before any reporter is dispatched, we’re getting reports of what’s happening. And we heard that there had been a shooting in Annapolis. At first, I was just stunned, because I didn’t think that was possible. Then I had the strong desire to get on a plane and go. I called the desk editor and said, “Is there any way you could send me? This is my hometown, and I don’t think any reporter is going to be able to cover it better.”
Typically, with NBC, whoever’s closest to the scene is going to be the one who gets tagged to go. In this case, I was not the closest. But they said, “Just get on a plane as soon as you can, and we’ll give you the coverage once you get there.”
That was your idea? Yes. I sent myself. NBC is great about that. They understand that when someone’s from where the news is breaking, you’re going to have a different context of the area, different color. You’re going to be able to add details that other people couldn’t. When I was speaking about The Capital and about this town, I was speaking about it from a very deep place.
That came across on TV. What were your first thoughts when you heard it was at the newspaper? Not only am I attached to Annapolis, I also have a real attachment to journalism. I’ve given my whole career to it. And it’s a hard career path. But I’ve loved every second of it. Because it’s so hard, I think journalists share an instant bond. It’s like you’re cut from similar fabric. You have to have similar DNA to want to do this job. When I walk into a room full of journalists, I feel like it’s a family reunion. I think there’s something unique that draws you to it, that makes you love it and want to do it, despite all the hardships.
Having a loss to both my profession and my hometown hit me very hard. I remember being on the plane and thinking to myself, “I never thought I would be covering such a story, such a tragedy,” and I’ve covered many, including mass shootings. I was in Parkland, Florida, not long ago, covering that tragedy. Basically, I’ve been there, in some capacity, for every mass shooting in the past two years.
I couldn’t even picture what it would look like until I got here. It was tough. I was also eight weeks pregnant at the time and was going through all the symptoms of that and the lack of sleep. It was also really hot. And it was just so sad.
How do you feel about some people seeing what you do as fake news and that you’re the enemy of the people? You know, as journalists, we already have enough obstacles to overcome. People think we get paid a lot. We don’t. People think it’s glamorous. It’s not. I do my makeup in cars. I write my scripts in cars. I sleep in cars. At this level, I do all those things. Some days I’m operating on two or three hours of sleep, and I’m talking to eight million people and hoping I make sense. It’s not glamorous.
Now this new obstacle presents itself—that much of society thinks you’re a liar. That challenge is the hardest one yet—to convince people that you’re an honest journalist, and that you’re doing it for altruistic, good intentions. That this means something to you.
It is unfortunate that, for those of us who love this career and think so much of it, we’re constantly trying to convince people that we’re not what they think we are, which is hard to do.
Yes, it’s hard to do that while you’re just trying to do your job. Right! While you’re trying to tell a story. I think when people say, “Don’t you just want to give up and throw in the towel?” No, I don’t. I don’t want to allow that perception to be what ends me or ends us. I want the good guys to win. I think those of us who believe in this will continue to tell honest stories and will continue to care about people.
At the core of it, journalism has fed my soul in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve done it. You yourself have done it, so you know all this. You’re talking to someone and they’re sharing some of the most intimate, difficult details—sometimes of their lives—with you. And you feel it, too. You take in what they’ve put out. There’s an enormous responsibility with that, and also an enormous honor. It’s such a privilege that somebody is trusting me enough to relay what they’re feeling or what they’ve experienced. It’s so fulfilling. There’s really nothing like it.
All this being said, I’m not a fan of partisan journalism. I don’t like the “talking head” concept. I don’t like the left-leaning this, right-leaning that. I prefer my news to be just news, and I think I’m an old-school purist that way. You can’t allow your own emotions or your own biases to corrupt your stories. We now must right this ship, and there’s no room for mistakes. We’ve got to be as we were intended to be as journalists: as fair and accurate as possible.
Journalists often have forced themselves to learn how to compartmentalize when they cover tough stories. Have you done that? Absolutely. It is a trained skill. I don’t think it’s natural. If you’re a sensitive person—and I think as a journalist you’re better at your job when you’re sensitive—it’s hard to then take everything that you’ve internalized and shelve it. But it’s necessary.
Especially in the age of journalism we’re in now, where everything is so fast-paced, there are some weeks I have a different story in a different city every single day. What happens when four out of five of those stories are really sad, emotional, difficult stories? I can’t be hanging onto Tuesday’s story, going into Wednesday, or Wednesday’s story, going into Thursday. I have to quickly feel what I feel, try my best to channel that into my story, and then put it away—do a job and move on to the next one. It’s an unnatural process, but one I think necessary to learn if you’re going to be good at this. You can’t carry it all around, it’s too heavy a burden. It’ll weigh you down.
Sometimes I come back to it. I didn’t cry during the Annapolis coverage, I cried after. I held on tight to that knot in my stomach, and I waited until I was by myself and the cameras were off, and then I let the tears fall and the makeup run. I knew that this whole community would be watching, and there was no other stage more important for me to do my job well than right here.
You interviewed the woman who had been harassed by the newsroom shooter. What was that like, having her face not seen on camera? It was eerie to hear someone so soon after the event painting a picture of who this was. It’s always strange when there were signs, there was a history. You wonder what could have been done differently. What should have happened? Should there have been some other intervention before this? It’s hard to know the answer, but it makes you think to yourself, “This wasn’t the first time that this individual had shown a dark side.”
With mass shootings, it’s in those days afterward, in those details, that the picture becomes even harder to digest. You realize the planning that went into it. I was in Las Vegas, and I was standing outside [mass murderer] Stephen Paddock’s house, doing live shots. His neighbors were coming out in this perfectly normal retirement community. It looked like some place I would expect my parents to be in a few years. They had no idea that inside this home where he was living were stockpiles of ammunition, and this brutal plan to massacre all those people. The neighbors had no idea.
Sometimes it’s in the aftermath when the picture really starts to become clearer, and the magnitude of what has happened occurs to you. It’s even worse than the start of the story. I’ve covered too many of these now. Sadly, it won’t be my last one, and I know that. It’s one of those stories I dread getting a call for every single time. I just think, “Not again. And please don’t let it be a school.” Now, as a mom, that’s going to be even harder.
Did you have voice training before you went to work at the network? I didn’t. When you start at NBC, they do send you to a voice coach. But when I went to him, he said, “There’s not a whole lot I can do with you. You have a great voice.” I felt very fortunate to hear him say that, because I don’t really have an explanation. I think the best I can say is that I’ve mimicked people I’ve liked. I watched 60 Minutes religiously at eight years old. I was a total TV news junkie from a very early age. I would listen to the cadence, and I would listen to how the greats pronounced their words, and how they delivered their copy. I guess it worked.
Have you had any mentors at NBC? From the on-air side, no. There’s a producer for NBC News at 30 Rock who teaches a writing class for correspondents, and her name is M. L. Flynn. You spend a week with her and she kind of breaks you down, then builds you up, and then sends you out to the correspondent world. I think it’s been the single biggest change in my work as a journalist, in terms of growth. She’s worked with all the best. She was [former NBC Nightly News anchor] Tom Brokaw’s producer. She’s been all over the world, in very exotic places, and done incredible reporting. She’s a true journalist’s journalist. And she’s the best of the best. To be in a room with her for a week was an incredible gift that NBC gave me. If you looked at my writing skill at the beginning of the week and the end of the week, you could definitively tell that it had improved a great deal. That was probably the biggest leap I’ve taken with a mentor. She’s amazing.
So, you write your own copy that goes on the teleprompter? Everything that has my voice on it is my writing. Sometimes I write what an anchor reads, as well. In New York, they usually write what Lester Holt says. I write what I say.
Some days, if breaking news happens at 4:30, they need a script by 5:30, and you’ve got to do interviews on the phone, and they’ve got a camera somewhere else taking in a feed, a video, and you’re looking at it in near-real time. It’s a chaotic scramble. There are days when you’ve got to write a script in a half-hour.
What have you done to mesh with social media? I’m probably not that great at social media. I’ll admit that. If you look at my Facebook page, it’s pictures of my baby and my dog. I’m sort of old school at that, too. I know social media helps promote our product. And when I can, I do. Most days, I’m just focused on the story and on conveying what I’m feeling. Sometimes writing your own scripts and finding the right words is such a consuming exercise that I just feel like, “I can’t think about Instagram right now. I’m lost on a word.” So with social media, I’m probably a rogue child.
Do you have any aspirations to be at the anchor desk? No. I’ve never wanted to be an anchor, and I still don’t. I like telling a story, and I like being out. I do this job so I don’t have to sit at a desk. Therefore, sitting at an anchor desk is counterintuitive to my goals.
What is the most difficult part of being a journalist, in your opinion? My opinion has changed. The new answer is that I have to leave my baby. I fear I’m going to miss moments. I already have a lump in my throat. I have this tremendous anxiety about having to leave her. I think the answer now is the hardest part of the job is saying goodbye to my daughter at the airport.
