Ashleigh Banfield
Got mentors? According to a 2019 study, 76% of respondents indicated mentoring was important or very important, yet only 37% had access to a mentor.
Whether it’s a one-on-one relationship or a group dynamic, being on the receiving end of advice, guidance and influence from someone who’s been there done that, can help pave the way.
When it comes to helping broadcast journalists improve their craft, Ashleigh Banfield, host of “Banfield” on NewsNation, recently launched “Rising Tide: The Value in Mentoring Others.” It’s a free monthly symposium featuring interviews with VIP leaders in the industry to share their advice to broadcast journalists of all ages and demographics.
“I have been in this business now for 34 years and back in the ‘80s when I started, there wasn’t a lot of help. There certainly weren’t a plethora of mentors out there. There was barely one and that was the norm not just for women, but also for men as I’ve come to understand. I thought they all had each other’s backs. They didn’t either, not in this business.”
As Banfield realized “if I only had me to talk to, I could have skipped a lot of the hurdles, the prodigious valleys,” her mentorship symposium came to fruition and launched in late 2021. “It was a collective of many years of realizing there wasn’t a lot of help out there and there should be. I also recognized that a rising tide really does lift all boats and our business.”
The advice she would have given her younger self involved listening more. “Not just to your colleagues, but to your interview subjects. The best material comes when you delay that next question. I have found that people are very uncomfortable with silence and they move to fill it very quickly before they think about what they’re filling it with. So, number one, ‘shut up’ is what I would have said to myself out loud.”
“Another piece of advice for my younger self—you will have time to make these steps, you don’t have to achieve it all so quickly,” said Banfield who can’t imagine working in any other field. “And I also think grace. We work in a deadline industry and grace goes out the window a lot. Understandably, when there’s a countdown there’s not a lot of time for happy talk but the rest of the day there is and we always feel like we’re in a rush against deadline, but we don’t have to act that way. And I think grace goes a long way not just with your colleagues but also with your interview subjects to achieving better goals. Maybe not faster goals, but better goals.”
To achieve grace, Banfield recommended a shift from getting that right sound bite or getting a story edited in time and doing all the technical things, “jump out of your body and jump into theirs and realize what it's taking that subject to bare their soul or to recall the critical details you’re trying to elicit from them. I think grace comes just organically through empathy.”
Thick elephant skin for working in broadcasting and resiliency are necessary for this career path along with an innate curiosity. “I’m super curious obnoxiously curious. Ask anyone in my family and they will tell you I just won’t stop asking why to the detail, to the nitty gritty. On my tombstone, it will say, ‘The devil’s in the details’ because it’s how I’ve lived....If you don’t have an innate sense of curiosity, then you have no business being a journalist. Being a journalist is all about finding stuff out at its basic level. It’s all about honesty, it’s about purity, it’s about the desire to help others understand what’s going on in a language they can understand. Complex issues, break them down. Communicate them.”
And as for “Rising Tide,” the news anchor has learned something from everybody. “That was something that I wasn’t expecting,” said Banfield. For instance, Lester Holt, anchor of Nightly News with Lester Holt, talked about connecting with viewers.
Banfield recalled, “He said too often people in our business focus too much on what our colleagues might think of our work…He said the most important focus should, instead, be the viewers, and what they get from our work. He said we should communicate directly with them, instead of worrying what critics within the industry might think of us.”
As for another pearl of wisdom, when Banfield interviewed Deborah Norville, anchor of Inside Edition, for Rising Tide, Norville talked about sage advice she got from Lesley Stahl, correspondent of 60 Minutes. Stahl told Norville that her career will involve two different balls.
“One will be the work ball and the other will be the family ball and you’ll be juggling them constantly,” recalled Banfield. “The work ball is made of rubber and the family one’s made of crystal. I thought, ‘Wow.’ If I could have just had that image in my head at the forefront of all my decision-making, I would have probably made different decisions all the time. I would have made fewer decisions with disregard thinking, ‘It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.’ That was a wonderful piece of advice and not just for women. For men as well — they need to think of that as well.”
And Gayle King, co-host of CBS Mornings, talked about her career being happenstance. “This wasn’t what she set out to do. It wasn’t an expectation of hers that she was going to host a network morning show, and I think a lot of that is great to keep in the back of your mind as you progress through this business. I think if you’re a little more passive about being a participant in it, you’ll probably do better. You won’t be so aggressive, you won’t be off putting, you won’t frustrate or annoy…and for Gayle, it seems to have to worked out very well for her.”
Banfield has also been impressed by the participants appetite for knowledge. “They're so smart and they’re hungry and that, to me, was our best revelation,” said Banfield. “Once the questions started rolling in, they were thoughtful, they were researched, they were poignant, they were helpful, they were looking for advice that would apply for so many people and in that respect, I am just thrilled. I knew that I wasn’t barking up the wrong tree and with each session as we grow, I’m even more excited.”
As she may expand beyond broadcast journalism into featuring VIPs from other areas of the business and to other industries as well, Banfield said curiosity is king.
“The minute you start thinking you have it all figured out, you have a problem. It’s time to retire. I’m still learning, everything is different every day. There’s some new twist in technology or in communication style or in linguistics or in politics. There’s always something new that just shifts everything and it’s like a re-allotment of your 401k every couple of days or every couple of weeks—you really do have to assess your landscape. And if you think you know it all, you’re probably on shifty ground.”
