The Journalist Who Would Go On to Report From Everywhere
A young Nicole Edenedo reports from WBOC Chopper 16 with Capt. Pat. Nicole gears up for a live shot on the Rehoboth Beach, Delaware boardwalk for Memorial Day weekend. Reporting from a helicopter early in her career strengthened Nicole's reporting skills.
Despite the odds, Nicole Edenedo became the kind of journalist she always wanted to be, on the ground, in the air and around the world.
After a nine-year run in television news marked by as much turbulence as there was triumph, I thought my journalism career had landed safely in the world of travel media. While things did not turn out the way I expected, one Los Angeles journalist’s short life and legacy has reminded me that the best flights of my life have yet to take off.
By Nicole Edenedo
There really is nothing quite like it.
Being a local TV news reporter is a job that primarily happens on the ground. It’s not that common to come across a station, outside of big cities or well-funded outlets, with its own helicopter or regular access to one. My first TV news station on the Delmarva Peninsula had its own helicopter, and I was pretty fortunate to have had the chances I had to report from the chopper.
I had gotten pretty good at reporting by the time I started doing reports from Chopper 16. This was my first job in TV news and I had only started about nine months prior, fresh out of college, fresh from Los Angeles, a graduate of Cal State University Northridge, not far from Nordhoff Street and De Soto Avenue in Chatsworth. I was quite green those first few months. But by April-May 2015, I had hit the beginning of my stride, on the ground and in the air.
Reporting from the helicopter made me a better, stronger reporter in those early days of my journalism career. It was so unique, such a cool element to be able to add to my stories, and it gave me something to work even harder toward; an urge to push myself further in understanding my assignment and how I could use the dynamic tools I had at my disposal to tell a great story. I loved it. And everyone I loved was proud of me. My parents, my brothers, my friends, my partner, my college journalism professor and mentor.
It was nice being able to see where I lived and the communities I covered from this perspective, in perspective. My eyes would stretch across the horizon. The further out I saw across the county from this unfamiliar perspective, the more familiar everything became. I saw all the places I had been. And everywhere I hadn’t been yet, I could see a path to getting there. Nothing felt impossible.
It was nice to feel empowered. Even way back then. Like I could report from anywhere. Like I could do anything. Because I was capable. On the ground. In the sky. On a boat. This was just the beginning. And it really was. Who knew that I would actually end up being that kind of journalist who could report from anywhere? Who would go on to report from everywhere. There is a rhythm to the madness of being in the news business. And while in those days I didn’t always know what song was playing or how to harmonize with the rest of the band, I could still find my beat and play my part beautifully.
I can only imagine how Eliana Moreno must have felt as NBC LA and Telemundo 52’s Newschopper 4 Reporter, covering the city of Los Angeles, her hometown. Not DMA market #2. Not the second largest city in the U.S. Her home. Where her parents could watch their little girl go from an 11-year old who dreamed of being a helicopter reporter in LA, to the woman who actually became one and was living out her dream day after day, while her friends and her fiancé and her community cheered her on. That is more than just a blessing. That is destiny.
On Monday, September 14, I had been looking for old episodes of a weekly series I used to produce for one of my news stations in Delaware, called Hometown Heroes, that I wanted to send to a recruiter who was looking for a producer for a travel brand. I found the episodes I was looking for but I also came across clips from my helicopter live shots that I hadn’t seen in years, probably close to a decade, that I thought were lost. It was a great, well-spent afternoon and delightful really, as far as rewatching your old work from 10-plus years ago goes. Normally when I watch anything from that period I wince at my big fashionable eyebrows, my scrawny figure — all cheekbones and elbows — and that comical smug look on my face that I thought all serious TV reporters had back then to convey their confidence in their reports, their command over a story. Whatever that means. No, no — these clips I watched with care and with pride.
I accomplished nothing on Monday really, except a lot of remembering. Remembering from watching my old series that I’m happiest with a camera in my hand, on location, with a scene I want to be shooting in front of me while a rough cut of the story, or its possibilities, plays out in my head. I’m happiest when I’m writing with my camera, capturing what’s before me as I see it, as I feel it, and later finding the right words, the right music, the right sounds, to turn what I envision into something powerful, into something beautiful, into hopefully something meaningful. Something real.
I’m happiest making sense of myself and who I am, how I am, what I feel — and I feel deeply — and using that person to communicate with people in ways that move me and speak to me, and that I hope will move and speak to them. I’m happiest living as the best and highest expression of myself – strong, glamorous, whip smart, agile, free – while in the best possible environment for myself. A place I imagine would feel a lot like a garden. A place where I can grow, unobstructed, be nurtured, appreciated for what occurs naturally in me and how I contribute to the landscape. A place where my presence doesn’t threaten the growth or success of those around me, but supports it, as they in turn support me. I’m happiest loving the process of taking parts and making them whole. So it makes a lot of sense to me now that I’m truly at my happiest when I’m living a life I love that loves me back. Because that is what makes me feel whole.
I know it’s true that any one of us is lucky to be doing work we know how to do well that we actually like and enjoy. A lot of the time we have to do work that we don’t enjoy that much or at all, simply because it serves its purpose — it pays the bills. But to me, that’s the entire point of life: to find a life you love that loves you back. And if you can’t find it or it doesn’t find you, then build a life you love that will love you back.
Seeing myself in the old episodes of my series and those old helicopter live hits that Monday and then watching the week unravel as I learned what happened to Eliana and her pilot, George Marciniw, the following evening was gut-wrenching, even though I did not know her. I can’t imagine what everyone who did know and love her and George are going through and what they will face together on the road ahead.
I think this tragedy particularly hits home for me because I’ve been a journalist for most of my adulthood and I’ve never not put my life at risk for my job. And except for the few short periods of time when I worked in-studio as an anchor of some sort, I’ve always worked alone. I did the knocking on doors of murderers and criminals because my news managers wanted “to see” if we could get a comment for the 6 o’clock news; I continued on with my work moments after a man — later convicted of the crime he committed that I was reporting on - tried to ram me with his truck and my executive producer showed little interest in anything but receiving my story; I kept showing up and still made myself a better reporter on my own even when the people who hired me told me they didn’t value my work.
I did what most TV news reporters feel they have to put themselves through in order to “pay my dues.” To do what I have to do now to get where I want to be, so that when I get there, I won’t have to do those awful things to myself anymore — to ignore it, to swallow it, to allow it all to happen, to justify the cruelties as necessities — just to prove myself worthy of belonging. One day, I won’t have to feel the way I felt then ever again. Alone. Afraid. Unprotected. I won’t have to feel like no matter what I do or how much I give or how good my work is and contributes to the team and the purpose we serve, that no one cares about me. That no one I work for, the people who I have to think so much about and consider, the people whose demands and thoughtless whims shape so much of my time and quality of life, would ever lose so much as a night’s sleep if something ever happened to me on the job they hired me to do. One day, I won’t have to face the constant reminder that no matter how much I have to hold myself responsible to them, they never share any sense of responsibility to me.
Nothing can replace knowing that my team cares about me and the work I’m doing for them in the field. That the people I’m working for, the people who I’m doing all this for, regardless of who the intended audience actually is, regardless of the job's perks — nothing can replace knowing that they care about what happens to me when I’m the one out there assuming all the risks that we all know the job entails. To know that they care about me, about my well being, on and off the field, as much as they care about the results I’m tasked with delivering.
I can now see more clearly why the last few years have been the most difficult for me to face, to make sense of and move on from. Why I feel like I’ve been in an almost catatonic state of shock for the past two years, paralyzed with what has felt like the same fear and hopelessness I encountered that day with the man and his truck.
Those days were behind me, I thought, when I found a job as a reporter in the travel industry. After years and years of having to live through such tumultuous times in TV news, I had finally found a place for myself in this journalism business as a travel writer. I had finally found my beat, a more natural rhythm befitting of my personality and spirit, able to showcase the timbre of my talents. Here in travel journalism, I could be seen for who I was, embraced for who I was becoming, appreciated for the kind of music I made, the sound I contributed, and the conditions under which I made it all happen again and again.
Here I was doing work I could never even have dreamed about seriously doing before, and it was work that made me happy, work that made me feel good, that made other people feel good. It was work in the kind of environment that seemed like it could give me the beginnings of the life I always wanted — a life I loved that could love me back.
And it didn’t.
My most memorable travel moments often come about because of the people I meet along the way.
The kind of journalist who would go on to report from everywhere.
I found myself once again reminded every day of how little regard there was for me. I felt it in the way I was treated; saw it in the behavior patterns that only worsened over time; heard it in the suspicion directed at me, in the lack of benefit of the doubt afforded anyone else but me; read it in the performance reviews that surprisingly questioned my extra contributions that went above-and-beyond my duties. To be reminded of how much I didn’t matter once again to the people I worked for after enduring so much of the same thing for so long, and then finally reaching a place where I thought that was all over and it wasn’t, how could that not be devastating? How could I not feel hopeless? Heartbroken? I have felt nothing but since, endlessly. And no matter how hard I've tried to move and work past it, I haven't been able to because the cycle of experience left a question that still haunts me:
What’s the point of trying, of living, if no matter what I do — even when I think I’ve reached a better place and I can feel the taste of happiness in my soul — that I still just end up back where I started, living in the same nightmare over and over again?
At 24, I fought back tears in my eyes after getting fired from my first job in TV. In better spirits at 27, my 2nd TV station was acquired by my first station. They fired me again. At 28, nine months after losing my job in a merger, my New York station closed. Lost my job again. At 33, my last mirror selfie came with mixed emotions & uncharted territory: I quit.
Over nine years, I took a mirror selfie on each day I had ever been fired, let go or reluctantly left my job as a reporter.
I think that’s why when I was watching the news unfold the night of what happened to Eliana and George, I got to work on Instagram. I went looking for any information I could find about her and her life and the people she worked with and whether or not they really knew her. I felt, selfishly and perhaps out of my own misplaced sense of grief for the life I had planned and was no longer living, like I needed to know that Eliana was loved and cared for by the people she worked with. That while she may have been happy every day doing her incredible job that she had been dreaming of since childhood, that she wasn't also harboring a dark truth as the cost. I wanted to know that it wasn’t just her family and her friends outside of her professional life who actually knew her, took the time to know her, to care about her, to nurture a relationship with her; that she wasn’t just an instrument used for other people’s benefit, a means to an end. I wanted to believe that Eliana was seen as a real person in their eyes, a life worth protecting just as much as someone else’s that the people she worked for and with every day cared about. I wanted to make sure that Eliana had been doing the job she loved, with all of its inherent risks, for people who would care if something ever happened to her now that something had happened to her.
I watched the tributes pour in from the people she worked alongside at Angel City Air, NBC LA’s aerial news gathering partner, who turned out to be some of her closest friends. I felt the pain in the words of their tributes match the joy that was shared between them in the photos of their trips to Disneyland together, or to Dodger Stadium or just another day at the office.
I watched every news clip I could of people reminiscing about the impact Eliana had had on them and their community. I learned about her pilot George’s generosity to their mutual friends and coworkers and his favorite hangout in Burbank, the Blue Room, where he would help with dishwashing if they were short staffed sometimes. I watched clips from the life Eliana was building for herself with her fiancé and her dogs and her chickens. I watched, through her eyes, what it was like for her to get engaged to the love of her life. I read later in the week what Eliana’s family had to say about her life and what she’s left behind. Later, I read what her fiancé had to say as well. I found some kind of comfort and reassurance in basically everything I found, and what I found was a truth I needed to believe in: Eliana was living the life she was meant to be living and loved by people who knew how to love her and what she gave to them every day.
I knew this was just my own muddled projection, the confluence of my own grief over losing a job that gave me a taste of happiness, stability and security that I've always craved but had never truly found before in my journalism career, clashing with the harsh realities that can sometimes befall journalists in the field. Still, I couldn’t help but dwell on what had become so obvious to me as I scanned through all those pages and posts:
This is the kind of life worth fighting for.
This is the kind of life worth saying no to the wrong things, to the wrong people, to the wrong environments, on your way to getting exactly where it is you want to be, where you are destined to be. This is the kind of life worth building, brick by brick, for as long as it takes to manifest it, to materialize it, that can endure whatever setbacks it faces along the way because you are meant for more.
By 33, after 10 wild & unstable years in journalism, I reached Antarctica & returned renewed. A starry-eyed 23-year old me undergoes my first helicopter flight to train in Chopper 16. At 34, amid a tough job market, I turned my passion for gardening into a job as a gardener at NYBG.
"Don't worry about the wings you came in with," I'd say to my younger self now. "You will learn to grow your own and we will help you fly."
When I think about Eliana in her helicopter flying over her city, it’s hard for me not to be inspired, revived with a renewed sense of hope and the courage to recognize exactly where I am on my own path. I have already touched the kind of joy I’ve wanted in my life for so long. There is nothing I haven’t seen already. No place I couldn’t find a path toward. Nothing is impossible. I just need to keep building. And when I’ve finished, then I need to fly.
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In memory of Eliana Moreno and George Marciniw.
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