For Rebecca Hale, the biggest difference between life in the newsroom and her Repurposed Life as Director of Public Information for The Seattle Mariners is time.
“You have time to plan. Things aren’t always tied to a deadline. In a newsroom, every minute’s your next deadline.”
Seattle is where Rebecca Hale made the Big Leagues.
(Hale center, pictured with KIRO colleagues, among them Dan Leach, Sharon Vale, Molly Watkins, Tim Haeck, Tom Glasgow and Donn Moyer)
It’s been 24 years since Rebecca Hale worked in a newsroom. But this Idaho native and Oregon State University grad earned her solid reputation as an anchor and reporter from 1984 to 1993 at KIRO news radio (CBS Seattle). After leaving KIRO, she took a job as Public Information Officer at the Seattle Public Library. “I had a soft landing.” After that, Hale served as Assistant Communication Director and Speechwriter and then as Director of Communications for Mayor Norm Rice.. Nineteen years ago, she joined the Mariners. Hale says, “It feels like it’s gone by in a flash. 20 years. Blink and it’s over – Almost 20 years. “
The biggest change she says, No breaking news. “It was a different pace.” At the Seattle Public Library you won’t get called out for an emergency literacy story,” she says. “There’s a schedule.”
And now Rebecca Hale works mainly behind the scenes. If anyone has a microphone in front of them it’s usually not her. “I don’t do a lot of interviews. I try to have other people do the interviews. And that’s ok by me,” she said during our conversation between pitches at a recent game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the M’s.
“My family moved around a lot but Idaho’s always been home base.” After broadcasting stints in Vancouver, Washington and Boise, a former co-worker, Dan Leach called her from KIRO News radio to say the overnight gig was available. She jumped at the chance.
Hale made her mark as a reporter and anchor at KIRO FM, moving from overnights to weekend morning anchor and general assignment reporter before finally moving to weekend afternoons. She can’t remember all the awards she won. “A few,” she’ll tell you. One in particular was a UPI National Award for Use of Sound in a feature she did on Bo Jackson. Hale says she also got to meet White House correspondent Helen Thomas once.
Some nice highlights. But they all seem to blur through the lens of time. It all goes by so fast. Or maybe former journalists only notice how fast it is when they leave the newsroom.
“Journalism is being able to do things fast.” Rebecca Hale says that’s served her well in her professional life after her news career. “In newsrooms, you don’t have the luxury of time. You have to be able to work fast and juggle things. In the job I have here, when it gets hectic, I’m able to manage it without feeling overwhelmed.”
“You have to figure stuff out. And I’m not worried when I don’t know about a subject. I just keep digging around until I find out. I was in a newsroom for 12 years.” That’s a lot of experience digging.
And Hale still writes. “In my current job, I get to write a lot and spend time on each piece. For one story, I can talk to a dozen people. I write press releases and blog posts.” And Hale writes for Mariners Magazine (see below). “I get to interview people all the time.”
What’s it like to work with reporters today? Rebecca Hale says some (one man bands) are being asked to do way too much and they don’t ever have any time. Hale says there seem to be more in broadcasting than in print. She adds, “They have jobs with more demands.” Very often, I’ll come away from an interview and I’ll wonder, “Why didn’t they ask this question, or that question?” It feels sometimes like I have to spoon feed reporters today.” And sadly, she says, all too often, there’s a herd mentality. “If you can help one of them to go on a story, it seems like everybody wants to jump on it.” But Hale says, “I still really like my job. It’s been 19 plus years out of the newsroom but I still really never know from day to day, what‘s going to happen and I like that.” And she likes the energy of her co-workers. “We have so many young people who work here.”
As for this year’s Mariners? Hale says, “It really feels like this team is going to explode. The first three months we had so many injuries. But this really could be our year to make the playoffs again. Jerry’s so smart and Scott Servais is keeping it even. It’s been fun to watch.” But when the team is hovering around .500 and flirting with another mediocre season, you have to take that fun when you can get it.
As we were wrapping up the conversation for this piece, at that Phillies, M’s game, I asked Rebecca Hale if I could take her picture with Safeco Filed in the background. I told her it’d be better if she stood and smiled. A picture of her smiling with the sunny expanse of Safeco behind her was what I was looking for. She asked me to wait until everyone’s standing. “I don’t want to block anyone’s view just for a picture.” Just minutes later Seattle Mariner Robinson Cano homered to right field. The crowd stood up. I got my picture. And there was Rebecca Hale, another Repurposed Journalist who’d made the Big Leagues … smiling.
the repurposed journalist 