It was simply a brief stopover, a weigh station on the personal and professional adventure of a rising broadcast journalist. Then, life happened.
Chattanooga has become a destination for Scottie Goodman, who produces and serves as the television news anchor for FOX61 First At 10. When she relocated here from Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1999, the idea was that a couple of years locally would lead to an opportunity in a larger market such as Nashville or another Southeastern city. As so often happens, however, Scottie was charmed by Chattanooga -- and by Unum director Dan Summerlin, now her husband of five years.
“I was not planning to stay when I came here,” she remembered. “Little Rock is actually a larger market than Chattanooga, and it was a great place to be a reporter at the time because Bill Clinton was President and all the Whitewater trials were going on. I was reporting then and wanted to try anchoring, so I started looking for a job in the Southeast because I knew I wanted to stay in this part of the country.”
When the opportunity at FOX61 came about, Scottie already had a connection to Chattanooga. She had worked as an intern at the ABC affiliate in Lubbock, Texas, and her supervisor was Christy Murphy, who was a former news anchor at Channel 12 here.
“I had heard about Chattanooga, but when I found out about the job opportunity at FOX61 it connected with Christy,” Scottie remembered. “She had been in charge of the interns in Lubbock and was technically my first boss. I learned a lot from her, and that was how I knew about Chattanooga. Ironically, Christy has returned to Chattanooga. She is a talent agent for a major television consulting firm and comes to our station to help us. Talk about a small world. When I started here, I was the weekend anchor for about a year and a half. Then, they promoted me to co-anchor with Dan Howell. That was when FOX61 did its own news, and we had news at 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. Now, FOX61 hires Channel 9 to produce the news, and we have the 10 p.m. news time with David Glenn doing the weather and Darrell Patterson in sports.”
Prior to reaching Chattanooga, Scottie had gained experience not only in Little Rock, but also in Lubbock while a student at Texas Tech University. After graduation in 1994, she relocated to the Wilmington, North Carolina, area.
“I was really a one-man band there,” she laughed, “working for Wilmington’s ABC station in the bureau at Whiteville, North Carolina, which is about the size of Cleveland, Tennessee, and an hour outside the city of Wilmington. I had to do my own shooting with a video camera and my own editing and reporting in a very small office; and then send the stories to Wilmington over the microwave tower. That was probably the hardest job I have ever had in this business, really doing everything, and being on call 24 hours a day. They would call me at 2 a.m. and tell me there was a house on fire in Lumberton or something, and I would have to be willing to cover the story. I covered two hurricanes, Fran and Bertha, while I was there, and I remember reporting outside while the wind was blowing like crazy. It is amazing what you will do when you are young and hungry.”
There is no substitute for on the job training, and Scottie quickly adapted to the life of a broadcast journalist. Her take on the experience is straightforward. “I learned mainly that college is a wonderful training ground, but you learn what you learn in your industry when you actually work for a company and do the job. College proves you are trainable, I think. I would tell any young person interested in this type of career to have realistic expectations because TV and radio are demanding. I’m sure the pay is not good when you are starting out, and you have to work the late, weekend, or early morning shifts and all the holidays because the news doesn’t take the holidays off. You have to love it to stay in it.”
A couple of years away from television news confirmed for Scottie that her first career choice was truly her professional passion. While she was away from the bustle of the newsroom, she worked in pharmaceutical sales and became the mother of twin boys, Jack and Jake, now three years old. The only real surprise in comparing careers or in starting a family came during an otherwise routine visit to the doctor.
“People are always interested in the twin thing,” she smiled, “and it was the biggest shock of my life when we found out. There are no twins in either mine or my husband’s family. I went to the doctor, and they did an ultrasound to see what was going on. So, I asked the technician if she could see anything. She said, ‘Yes. There is one egg, and there is the other egg.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘You are having twins.’ I said, ‘How can that be?’ I was in shock and could not believe it. When the doctor came in, she asked if I had been taking any fertility drugs, and, of course, I responded, ‘No.’
“The doctor printed off a picture of the ultrasound and marked the eggs ‘Baby A’ and ‘Baby B.’Then, my mother and I drove to my husband’s office. She decided to wait in the car and let me go in and tell Dan the news by myself. I went in, and he said, ‘How did it go?’ I told him, ‘Great, I have pictures.’ He stood up in his office and said, ‘What am I looking at?’ I told him to read the words. He took a step back, his mouth hit the floor, and he was speechless. Now, for those who know my husband, that is really something!”
Although her first intention was to be a stay at home mom, Scottie realized that television news was “in her blood.” A telephone call to Mike Costa, the general manager at Channel 9 who had also been her general manager at FOX61, got things going once again.
“I suppose I have it in my DNA,” she said. “I told Mike that I was interested in getting back into TV part-time, and he sent me to Tom Henderson, the news director at Channel 9. Tom asked what I was interested in doing, and I said that one day a week just to get my feet wet would be best. So, I came in as a freelancer and worked on stories I wanted to report on, and I could stay home with the boys every other day of the week. Later, Tom asked if I was interested in moving back into the anchor role at FOX. We worked it out so that I could come in later and be with the boys more during the day. A sitter comes in for a little while in the afternoon.”
A regular shift for Scottie begins around 4 p.m. and ends when the 10 p.m. newscast concludes. She regularly skips her dinner break to make the late afternoon arrival time work, and when Dan gets home from the office, the sitter is finished for the day. Scottie also considers herself very fortunate to be able to devote the time necessary to nurture her family and succeed in her career, thanking Henderson, Costa, and FOX61 general manager Tracye McCarthy for their family friendly approach, which she says is rare in the industry.
Keeping up is a challenge, but life goes on at a steady pace. “To make it work, you really do need to have an understanding spouse,” she said, “and I couldn’t do this without my husband. Not many of them would want their wives to work second shift while they have a first shift job. He has a great job that pays the bills, and he really works hard at night with bath duty and clean up duty while I am working. I also drink a lot of Diet Coke to his dismay. Really, I do feel very blessed to be a mother and have a career that I enjoy.”
As producer and anchor for FOX61 First at 10, Scottie describes her role as that of a news gatekeeper. The entire nightly broadcast is about 34 minutes in length, of which approximately 15 minutes is dedicated to news, once time is subtracted for commercials, weather, and sports; and at least half of that news time is dedicated to local events. She has access to any of the daily reporting at Channel 9, as well as the Associated Press wire service; and the FOX News, CNN, and ABC network news feeds. With such a huge amount of information from which to choose, perhaps the most difficult part of the workday is picking and choosing those stories which she believes Chattanooga’s viewers want and need to see. From start to finish, she is editing content, writing copy, and then on the air.
Although she originally had other intentions, Scottie Goodman has put down deep roots in Chattanooga. So have other members of the family. Both she and Dan have brothers with their own families living in town. Dan’s parents reside on Signal Mountain, while Scottie’s parents, originally from Franklin County, Tennessee, have settled here following her father’s military career which involved relocating a number of times.
“I never thought I would be one to live near my family, but my parents are only one exit down from us, and I don’t know how people do it when they have kids and don’t have family around to help,” commented Scottie. “When we had the boys, Chattanooga sold me. First, it is a beautiful city. When we go on vacation, we are always glad to come home and be reminded just how gorgeous it is here. Housing is affordable, and if you want big city things you are only two hours away from cities like Atlanta or Nashville.
“We have access to lots of things,” she continued, “but we don’t have to fight traffic, and activities like the Aquarium, the museums, and the parks are great places to do things with kids. This is a wonderful place to raise a family. We love to take the boys to the Zoo and other places around Chattanooga. Everything is new to them, and we enjoy seeing things through a child’s eyes.”
Scottie Goodman has achieved a great measure of balance, working through the challenges and realizing the rewards of both family and career. All it takes is time, talent, and a little help from others.