Ann Compton is a busy woman and that’s partly why we like her. We also like the fact that she has raised four children, has spent more than twenty-five years around the White House reporting on six presidents, and was the first woman assigned to cover the White House on a full-time basis by a network television news organization. Did we mention that she was also was one of the youngest to do so?
She was chief Washington correspondent for ABCNEWS.com and is now the national correspondent for ABC News Radio, based in Washington, DC. A lot of her time has been spent on Air Force One, next to George W. Bush, making sure his news becomes ours. She was the only broadcast reporter allowed to remain onboard Air Force One when President Bush was unable to return to Washington on September 11, 2001. She was the only voice to report what the Commander-in-Chief was thinking and doing to all the other news organizations around the world. I was fortunate to interview Compton on all things political, as well as personal, over email these last few weeks.
Q: Why did you become a journalist? How did it all start?
A: As a senior in college—with a liberal arts education at a women’s college—I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. The golden key turned out to be an internship my junior year at a local TV station, where I enjoyed working in the newsroom. The station offered me a job at graduation as the first woman on the staff—$100 a week. At that moment, ink began to run through my veins and I was determined to become a journalist!
Q: Who are your inspirations?
A: My inspirations now are the next generation of women coming up through the ranks of TV news—Kate Snow of ABC News, Norah O’Donnel of NBC whom I have mentored since her college years. She not only has now covered the White House with me, but is about to deliver twins …
Q: How has the nature of journalism changed since the 1970s? (For better? For worse?)
A: I started in 1970 at a local CBS affiliate in Virginia, then moved to the ABC Network in 1973—the first woman in my assigned role in each case. Now, the ranks are filled with skilled women and it is no longer a hiring advantage. With the advent of 24-hour TV news cable channels, and then the Internet, everything moves faster, and it’s often broadcast live, and stories are much shorter and jazzier with more sophisticated production techniques.
Q: How has journalism changed for women reporters/writers since the 1970s?
A: I look around onboard Air Force One when a “travel pool” of reporters flies with the president and then we “pool” our information with our scores of colleagues on the White House Press plane. Often it is all women from the two wires services, the TV reporter, and one each representing newspapers and magazines. On the air, we have finally broken an important milestone—a solo female anchor on the evening news, even though Katie Couric’s road is a little rocky right now.
Q: Which story has been your favorite to cover? Your least favorite?
A: Least favorite is always scandal. The Monica Lewinsky affair was sordid, unpleasant, and painful all around. But it was a legitimate story of unsavory conduct by a sitting President who then lied to a federal prosecutor about his conduct.
The most dramatic day of course was Sept 11th, when I happened to be one of those pool reporters with the President at the school when the attacks in New York happened. I was the only broadcaster allowed to remain onboard as Air Force One flew away from Washington. I knew my reporting would be the only information Americans, and the world, would have about how the powers in Washington were handling the crisis.
Q: What has been the toughest part of your job?
A: My job is not as tough as a firefighter’s, or a doctor saving lives. Not as creative as an artist. Not as skilled as a computer technician. But like all of those professions, for women and men alike, the long hours of a job cuts into time with the family. As a White House correspondent, I have had four children, in five years, and never quit working. Sure, I missed a couple of birthdays and Halloweens in election years, but the secret is flexibility—I could plan to duck out of the White House for school plays or kids’ doctors’ appointments, and I am married to a doctor who is always at home while I travel.
Q: Who has been your most fascinating interviewee?
A: Any president is fascinating, when you consider the awesome responsibility they bear, 24/7, for the entire four years of their term.
Q: I was touched by your speech on the Washington Speakers Bureau website where you talk about September 11th and how your son at Vanderbilt put a human face on the day for you (when he noted that his fraternity brother had been killed). Do you believe the “personal story” goes further in journalism in reaching a public audience? And if so, do you do that in your network coverage, and how?
A: Personal has no place in journalism if it is an emotional connection for you. The story that day wasn’t my kids and I didn’t cry until the end of the day when I returned with the President to the White House and my job as a pool reporter was over. On the other hand, the best reporters draw on their knowledge and experience to tell them whether the story they are covering makes sense, and where to follow the best leads.
Q: How do you feel your work at ABCNews.com compares to the television broadcast? Who are you trying to reach?
A: When ABCNews.com started me doing an on-camera newscast each day during the 2000 campaign, we were too far ahead of the curve. The only people really watching broadband were at the office and primetime was about 11 a.m. through 2 p.m., when people were presumably eating lunch at their desk. Now, more than six years later, video from the Internet is everywhere. But remember—we are only a headline service. Americans need to turn to many sources to be fully informed.
Q: I’ve noticed in your coverage your attention to detail, which helps set a scene that we can’t see through the Internet and radio. What are you looking for, as far as details, when reporting on people, the president, and the news?
A: I look for human elements that illuminate an issue and make it clearer to the broader audience—a single illegal immigrant who fears for her children born in the U.S. as President Bush pushes for immigration reform. And literally, just now as I was typing this, I stopped to file a light feature on the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn. To emphasize that much of the eastern part of the country is suffering a spring cold streak, I opened my report with the Marine band playing “Jingle Bells” to the kids hunting for eggs on the White House lawn.
Q: What do you think about the shift in women’s roles in communications, media, and journalism in light of changing technology with the Internet, the blogosphere, and social networking?
A: The internet provides such anonymity that gender identification in some cases is irrelevant. But I do have fun on Web sites that cater to some of my interests as a woman and a mom ... and admit I have never looked at the NASCAR or wrestling sites.
