Media in Minutes

Wendy Gillette: TV & Radio Anchor, Producer and Editor for CBS News

• Angela Tuell • Season 4 • Episode 18

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In today’s episode, Wendy Gillette discusses her career journey from Great Falls, MT to CBS Newspath. She highlights her roles as correspondent, producer, writer and editor, and the launch of her biweekly travel series in 2022. Along the way, she shares the challenges of freelancing, her chaotic schedule, her need for flexibility and her transition to radio to ensure career longevity.  

Follow Wendy’s life and work here: www.wendygillette.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wendygilletteny

 

CBS Newspath: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wendy-gillette/

CBS News Radio: https://www.cbsnews.com/radio/ 

WCBS: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/ 

IFB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interruptible_foldback 

Trump Opening Statements: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/video/opening-statements-next-in-donald-trumps-hush-money-trial/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h 

Global (Canada): https://globalnews.ca/canada/ 

Rutgers: https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/about/journalism-and-media-studies-department 

CBS Super Bowl 2024 coverage: https://omny.fm/shows/a-new-morning/cbs-wendy-gillette-reports-from-las-vegas-with-sup 

Santa Claus Village (Arctic Circle in Finland): https://www.channel3000.com/news/newscasts/newscasts-live-at-four/want-to-stay-in-santa-s-village-here-s-how/article_471b9cea-27da-5c6e-8d01-fd15679fd068.html 

Cocktail Foraging (Scotland): https://www.wlns.com/steals-and-deals/what-is-cocktail-foraging-and-why-is-it-so-popular/ 

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/video/cocktail-creators-forage-for-ingredients-in-scotland/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h 

Culinary Tourism (Denmark): https://www.channel3000.com/features/watch-increase-in-culinary-tourism/video_27ee026a-2ef0-5179-b2e0-8026f335d991.html 

 

Thank you for listening!  Please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to the Media in Minutes podcast here or anywhere you get your podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/media-in-minutes/id1555710662

Angela Tuell:

Welcomeelcome to Media in Minutes. This is your host, Angela Tuell. This podcast features in-depth interviews with those who report on the world around us. They share everything from their favorite stories to what happened behind the lens and give us a glimpse into their world. From our studio here at Communications Redefined, this is Media in Minutes. In today's episode, we are talking with Wendy Gillette. Wendy is a national television reporter and anchor based in New York City. She currently reports for CBS Newspath, which provides national and international stories to CBS TV affiliates across the country. Her roles include correspondent, producer, writer, editor and senior producer. In addition, Wendy launched a biweekly travel series in 2022 that runs on CBS stations nationwide. She's also an anchor and reporter for CBS News Radio, anchoring and reporting stories for national newscasts airing on 700 affiliates. If that wasn't enough, Wendy also fills in as an anchor on the overnight national television newscast CBS Morning News. Hello, Wendy. How are you?

Wendy Gillette:

I'm great. Thank you.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, I'm excited to talk with you today, and in preparing for this interview, I saw that you started your broadcast career in Great Falls, Montana. And for those who don't know, you know, in the broadcast industry, we typically start in small markets and move our way up. So how did you go from Montana to reporting for CBS TV nationally?

Wendy Gillette:

Oh, it was a long road, as it is for most of us on air types. I was in Great Falls, Montana for nine months.

Angela Tuell:

Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

My contract was two years. But, uh, wasn't the greatest fit, I have to say, just because I'm a city girl, I'm from New Jersey, just outside New York City, and it was definitely culture shock in Montana. I had gone to grad school at Boston University, so pretty much used to suburbs or big cities and Great Falls, Montana was definitely not that. But I wrote a lot, and I was promoted within three months to morning anchor and noon anchor.

Angela Tuell:

Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

So that helped me get my next job and in on air, TV, news, you start in that small market, move your way up, like you said. And so I went to my next market, Portland, Maine, and I was there a couple years, then Tucson, Arizona, then Cleveland for five years. That was my longest stint before New York and I moved to New York in 2005. I started at WCBS, the flagship CBS station in New York City. I was there about a year, and then I got an opportunity to start freelancing at Newspath. And Newspath is the affiliate news service for CBS. All of the networks have a news affiliate service, and that just means that they provide national and international stories to all the CBS affiliates in the country. So all of a sudden I went from local reporting to network reporting, and that was an incredible experience. And I have actually been at Newspath since 2005 so I can...

Angela Tuell:

Wow.now.

Wendy Gillette:

It's been almost 20 years in that time, I've also worked at other places. I'm still freelance by choice. I've been offered full time jobs multiple times, in different divisions, doing different jobs, splitting different jobs to try to entice me. I'm but I have always said, Nope, I want to stay freelance. So when I first moved to New York, I wanted to be full time.

Angela Tuell:

Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

The opportunity didn't come right away. And then after I got used to freelancing, after a couple of years, I said I would never go back from this.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah, and you know, freelancing is sort of rare in the broadcast industry. What do you like about it, or how it works?

Wendy Gillette:

Well, it's becoming more common in bigger cities like New York, LA, there are freelancers there. For as long as the contract is.

Angela Tuell:

Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

Some other markets, Chicago, but you're That's right. So if you don't want to do morning TV, and they right that it's not widespread. It's not that that common nationally and in many cities, it doesn't really exist. But make you do morning TV. You can't really do anything about what I love about it is that in broadcast news, once you sign that contract, it's kind of like you are theirs to do what they will with you, so it. So although my schedule is sometimes chaotic and crazy and every week is different, at least I can say yes, I'll do that shift. No, I don't want that shift. No, I will do this. Yes, I don't want to do this. I do wantant to do this. I have, I feel, much more freedom and choice in broadcast life.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah, that's great. So speaking of you know your schedule, what is it like?

Wendy Gillette:

It's crazy. Every week is different. There's no consistent I work these days. There's been times in my career when I've had levels of consistency. Right now, it's not really that way. So every week is different. I could be working a morning shift and then a night shift and and then doing a day shift. And of course, I'm traveling a lot, so a lot of my life is figuring out, okay, what time zone am I going to be in, and what time is it there, and so I'll be working at this time. And can I work that around my commitments in the area, wherever I'm traveling to, and interviews or filming that is going on there? So it's a big juggling act, and every week is different, and I live by my iPhone. If I didn't have my iPhone, I could never make this work.

Angela Tuell:

Yes.

Wendy Gillette:

A lot of logistics and a lot of planning and a lot of thinking and strategizing about when I'm available, when I'm going to be shooting, and just trying to make every juggle everything and make it all work.

Angela Tuell:

Yes. Could you tell our listeners a little bit more about how affiliate reporting works, which often includes multiple live shots for various stations across the country, right?

Wendy Gillette:

Yes, exactly. So we have a server, and our stories get uploaded to the server, and stations all across the country can download our stories and then they run in local newscasts. So a lot of people think of network as only the morning and evening news shows like Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, but there's this whole other part of the network, the news affiliate services that's servicing those local affiliates. So I'll be on station in Kalamazoo and also Sioux City, and all over the place, all over the United States, and in terms of live shots, if we have a big story, oftentimes you're going to be going live in conjunction with that story. So you're on location, and stations will call to book live shots, and they each get a five minute window, and then you could be doing six, 8, 10 live shots in and out. And so you finish with one, and then you're going right into the next one, and you have your IFB, which helps you hear the stations. And there's something called Live News Center in our division, and they switch to the different stations, so I don't have to worry about changing the IFB -

Angela Tuell:

Oh, that's nice.

Wendy Gillette:

I can hear the various broadcasts. They do that for you. And so you are just hearing, okay, we have, we're one minute out to your live shot. Okay, we're already in your intro, because the live shot before it has gone long. So it's definitely, it's an experience. When you do your first round of live shots, it's very overwhelming, because it's just it's on sometimes for hours. For our morning offers. If I'm doing live shots, oftentimes from the New York City Broadcast Center, which is on 57th Street in Manhattan, I'll be putting out a story at 330 in the morning. 430 in the morning, there are different topics. And then, and then you start going live in the 4am show, the national show, and then you do affiliate hits all the way up until nine o'clock. So you're alive five hours now, a lot of times you're just doing one or two live shots an hour, if it's kind of a slower news day, but if it's a crazy news cycle, or there's a lot going on, or you're on a big story, the last big one I was on was Trump opening statements. The - court dates in New York City, and I think I had that day almost 30 live shots.

Angela Tuell:

Oh yes. Wow.

Wendy Gillette:

And yeah, it's, it's very overwhelming and very tiring. Plus, it was freezing out that morning.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah, that's never fun.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeaheah. and then you just are on live TV for hours. You don't really think of all the things that come with that, like you have to find a bathroom in lower Manhattan -

Angela Tuell:

Yes.

Wendy Gillette:

When nothing is really open yet, and then there's nothing open, and then you're on live TV for the next 45 minutes.

Angela Tuell:

Yes. Are you doing it all yourself? Are you producing, editing, you know, your whole...

Wendy Gillette:

No.

Angela Tuell:

No, okay.

Wendy Gillette:

When you're doing stories like that. There's many, many people who are working with you. You have a camera person. You have a producer who's oftentimes writing your piece, not always. Sometimes it kind of depends on the story that you're doing. Then you have Live News Center people working to book your live shots. You have a

Angela Tuell:

Right.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah. So in those circumstances, in the normal domestic situation, you have many, many people who are working together to put out the content.

Angela Tuell:

Good, good. Okay, so how big is your audience? Or can it be, you know, how many people is all of the viewers of CBS stations across the country?

Wendy Gillette:

Well, we don't keep exact track, because there's no reason for us to. Our platforms are the stations, and we do everything we can to keep them happy and give them all of the news that they need and resources that they could want to make their jobs easier on a daily basis. But we do have a monitoring service, and I always look for my travel stories, which I think we're going to talk about as well.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, yes.

Wendy Gillette:

And yeah, that's kind of a different part of my career. So the travel stories, I'll often look at the viewership, and I've seen it as high - I did a story a couple weeks ago, and it got picked up on Global in Canada, which is a networking, second most watched network in Canada, and it ran in their morning show, their noon show that's national, so that pushed the audience to higher than I've ever had for a story. So it was around 11 million.

Angela Tuell:

Wow.

Wendy Gillette:

Actually the it was even higher than that. That was the initial and then I ran the report again the next day, and it was 15 million. It was ridiculously large. Yes.

Angela Tuell:

That's amazing.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah, but I've seen it for some stories it's just a couple million. It just really depends on the story, and if it gets picked up by different network shows, or Global in Canada, or other partners, because CBS is partners with many other broadcasters around the world.

Angela Tuell:

Okay, okay, wow, that's fabulous. So I saw you also, you went to college for journalism. Did you always want to be a broadcast journalist?

Wendy Gillette:

No, I did not. I went to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, okay, for print journalism. That was undergrad, and so I was a newspaper reporter for the last two years of my college years, and I was pursuing acting as well. So I had a year between my undergrad and

Angela Tuell:

Okay. graduate studies, and at that time I was pursuing acting. I was also working as a print reporter, and acting was just pretty much the worst career in the world, because you really can't direct your career. Right.

Wendy Gillette:

It's just great based on luck. And I just got fed up with it, because I had a lot of friends who were sort of main stream students, not pursuing anything in the arts, and I saw them getting good jobs and having health insurance and all this crazy -

Angela Tuell:

So you can live.

Wendy Gillette:

Adult stuff. And so I said, Hmm, I'm not sure I think I want to pursue this career anymore. So that was fairly short lived. I did it through high school and college, and then one year after college, and then decided this is for the birds, and then decided to go to grad school because I thought that the things I loved about acting, such as performance and having to be sort of up, I guess you could say.

Angela Tuell:

Sure.

Wendy Gillette:

I thought that that would be a meeting with print journalism. The things I loved about print journalism, which were telling stories, helping people, writing, putting the story all together. And I thought, wow, I think broadcast journalism can be both of these together.

Angela Tuell:

Yes.

Wendy Gillette:

And I went to grad school and fell madly in love with broadcast journalism, and it was the, really, the perfect career for me. And then I started my journey in Great Falls, and went from there.

Angela Tuell:

How fabulous.

Wendy Gillette:

So I did not originally want to do broadcast journalism, but through trial and error, I found it was the perfect career for me.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, definitely proven it over time, for sure. So you also do both TV and radio, right? Could you tell us more about your radio work?

Wendy Gillette:

Sure. So about four or five years ago, I decided that I started thinking about being a woman in this industry, and how when you get older, it's not always easy to be on air. It's changed. It's definitely improving. It's

Angela Tuell:

Yes. getting better, but it's still not easy, and you face sometimes roadblocks. So I thought I love this career. I want to keep going in this career, even if people don't necessarily want to put me on TV anymore. I want to be doing on air work for a very long time. So I thought that to ensure longevity in the business, I thought about doing radio, and we have a very strong radio network at CBS. It's, I think it's the best. ABC is also very good. And so I tried out initially, I got turned down. And then there were some shuffles, and some people left. And so I said, maybe I'll try again. I actually wished an employee, an employee who is leaving, a manager, good luck. And she said, you know, you might want to try again. And if she hadn't said that, I might not have tried again. Because she you'll, you know, when you get rejected once, you always think I got rejected by, you know, CNN, or whatever. Right, right.

Wendy Gillette:

I always tell young journalists, it's not that way. You got rejected by one person or two people. It's just a couple people usually making the decisions. But we feel like it's so much more that it's the whole network has said no to me.

Angela Tuell:

Right.

Wendy Gillette:

But that's not really the case. So in that

Angela Tuell:

Okay. case, it was one person who decided they didn't like my sound, and when she was when she was leaving, I wished her good

Wendy Gillette:

So I had never anchored radio. I had never luck and wrote her a nice note, and she was nice enough to say, you know, they're looking for freelancers right now. You might want to try again. And that was a different director of the division, and fortunately, he loved my work and how I sounded, and he was super excited. And we started moving towards figuring out what days I could do at that point, and I moved right into anchoring. worked for radio. So usually you start in a small market and move your way up in radio, but that was for me. I just started anchoring pretty much right away. So there was training, of course, and I needed it because I had never worked a board before when you,

Angela Tuell:

Yes.

Wendy Gillette:

Have to manipulate the dials. And these days are different. It a lot of the software is now online, and it's not quite the same as it used to be, but still, when I first came in, I was working out of the studio, and I had to learn a board and learn how it worked. But I was also an editor at that time. I was a producer, writer, editor for Newspath, as well as a correspondent.

Angela Tuell:

Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

And so it's fairly tech savvy, and already knew how to edit very well. And so editing sound was really easy for me, because I said, Oh, wow, you don't need to - You don't need to worry about the video. This

Angela Tuell:

Right. is easy. Right, it's half the work.

Wendy Gillette:

Well,

Angela Tuell:

Not really, but...you know.

Wendy Gillette:

Right but like three quarters was gone, of the work, all of a sudden disappeared. So I thought, Oh, wow, this is easy. But I did have a lot to learn. Of course, broadcasting includes radio and TV, but there is a different lingo. There's a different way of telling stories. Because the stories are so short in broadcast, new, in TV news, the stories are typically a minute 30 or a minute 45. In radio, it's 30 seconds or 25 seconds, which you think, Oh, wow, it's gonna be so easy, but it's hard.

Angela Tuell:

It's harder to do less, you know, to make it more concise, but yeah.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah, just to make it very, very concise and boil the stories down to the most important elements, is sometimes not easy for someone who's has done a longer form. But I loved radio, and I was really happy that I made that second attempt. And so I've been a anchor and reporter also for CBS News Radio for the five years now, and I'm getting to do some really interesting things. This year I covered the Super Bowl for radio.

Angela Tuell:

Wow.

Wendy Gillette:

And we are I'm also going to the Olympics for radio, so,

Angela Tuell:

Oh, that's wonderful.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah. So that's super exciting. And we have 700 stations all over the country. It's something like 98% saturation of media markets. We are everywhere.

Angela Tuell:

Wow.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah, so it's so it's great, and I've been really honored to be part of the division and and I'm really happy that the second time I got in.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, yes. Oh, that's wonderful. So talking a little bit about your audience a little bit more. What do you wish viewers and listeners understood about broadcast journalism that they likely do not?

Wendy Gillette:

Well, I think the time pressures. Most people don't understand how crazy it is to get your stuff on the air, and they think that you come in with a lot more bias or thought about -

Angela Tuell:

Right?

Wendy Gillette:

Hmmmm, how am I going to tell this story? And it's not like that. It's just you try your best as a trained journalist, to get both sides, to be truthful, to tell the best story possible, to get all the information correct, and then you're just putting it together and trying to make deadline, and that is day most of the time. The pressure is even greater for radio when there's a newscast, when I'm anchoring, I'm anchoring for five minutes at the top of the hour and a minute at the bottom of the hour, and the news is constantly changing, and sometimes I'm writing scripts until the very minute that I'm on the air, or even ad libbing, if I've just learned something that you're on national radio, and just filling in a line or changing a line as you go. So I think that most people believe that the process is much more deliberate, and there's so many people making these decisions, it's very calm, and it's not like that.

Angela Tuell:

No, it takes a special kind of person to be able to do what you're doing as well. You know, there's, I try to explain to people about deadlines, and there's no missing deadlines. Like you are live then at that time for your new casts, and it doesn't matter what you have or don't have, you

Wendy Gillette:

That's exactly right, right. The deadlines know.

Angela Tuell:

Right. don't change, no matter if you're ready or you're not ready. It's four o'clock and you're live and that is that. But I tell, I also tell people that I never knew how long a

Wendy Gillette:

I know what five minutes feels like now, because minute or two minutes could be until I got into TV news, the of those deadlines, because you have to be super, super, because that meant I could be - I have, I'm not ready quite yet for the newscast, but I managed to put on lipstick and and blush super conscious about the time. in 30 seconds. And go over my script in the last 30 seconds, Yes. So we mentioned this a little bit ago, but two years and so I know exactly what a minute feels like. ago, you launched your bi weekly CBS travel series for the TV affiliates. Tell us more about that. Yeah, so I had started pitching doing a travel series about probably five years ago, and it took quite a while to get through the process of approval. And then at Newspath, we had a lot of different managers who were there, and so if I had it approved by one manager, and then they left, and I had to start all over again and go to the next manager. So it just took a while to get it going. I had started doing travel content for Newspath around 2014.

Angela Tuell:

Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

And it was because I was going on a trip to Asia, and specifically Vietnam. I happen to be going there when there was an anniversary of the ground invasion American troops hitting ground in Vietnam. And I said to my boss at the time, hey, what do you think if I do some stories while I'm over there? And he said, okay, and he gave me this sort of dilapidated camera that didn't work that great at Newspath, and that was sort of the start. And I was very ambitious. I even though this is my first time doing this, I said, Oh, I'll do a three part series, very ambitious. And I'm going to be in Vietnam, I think, for four days.

Angela Tuell:

Oh no, right?

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah, yeah, I was so exhausted on that trip. I've learned a lot since then, travel content for Newspath for 10 years or so. But I wanted to make it more formalized and more

Angela Tuell:

Okay. consistent. I was doing stories basically for sweeps, which is the old, yeah, not really in vogue anymore, thankfully, but it used to be that all the TV stations lived and died by sweeps, which were the ratings months, February, March and February, May and November, and that's how they got their ratings and then advertising rates for the next couple months. And so we at Newspath would also offer special stories for sweeps, and I started suggesting travel stories. So that's kind of how it all came about, but I wanted it very more formal, and so initially it was going to be every week. Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

And then I had it approved, it was ready to go, and it was going to be debuting a week after Super Tuesday in 2020, and we all know what happened then.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah, let's not talk about it.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah, let's not talk about the whole pandemic thing. But during the pandemic, I did some stories about keeping yourself safe while traveling,

Angela Tuell:

Okay.

Wendy Gillette:

Because at that time, remember people were just coming out of their shells and just going to the gas station or right getting on the subway. So I did this series about how to keep yourself safe and and then finally, about 20. Well, it was just last month was the two year anniversary. So it was 2022, in May, that my boss came to me and said, I think we're ready. And at that time, I had said, Let's do bi weekly, because I realized that weekly would give me a heart attack.

Angela Tuell:

That's a lot, right, to travel and do the story, right?

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah, that's a lot. So I said, Let's do bi weekly, because I also wanted to keep doing all my other jobs, so I still wanted to do some national general assignment reporting for Newspath. I still wanted to work for radio as an anchor reporter. I still wanted to keep producing at Newspath, and so that was a great compromise to do it every other week. It's still a lot. My schedule is jam packed and crazy and sometimes stressful, but it's very exciting, and the whole journey has been amazing. So the stories go out. It's kind of loosely called Travel Tuesday, and the stories go out every other week, although sometimes I'll do two weeks in a row and to alter the schedule based on my travel schedule.

Angela Tuell:

Right.

Wendy Gillette:

And then we also do live shots for around 11 stations every other as well. And sometimes I'm doing those live shots in locations around the world

Angela Tuell:

That is so cool. So how do you choose your travel stories and what have been some of your favorite ones?

Wendy Gillette:

Well, the favorites I have, let's say there's so many at this point, but the memorable ones are Santa Claus Village at the Arctic Circle in Finland.

Angela Tuell:

Wow.

Wendy Gillette:

But I ended up doing live shots from a glass igloo. They actually had an ether connection in the glass igloo, so I was able to do live shots. And so that was that was a lot of fun to be reporting from, essentially the Arctic Circle.

Angela Tuell:

Yes.

Wendy Gillette:

That was one of the hardest stories. Although it was incredibly memorable, it was so cold there. I can't remember what the temperature was, but I would take off my gloves, and I would get frostbitten. And I get frostbite really easily, so and then the batteries were dying within there would be full batteries, and they would die in 15 minutes, because it was so cold.

Angela Tuell:

Oh my goodness.

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah. So it was very challenging to shoot the story, because I was trying to do it all. And then also, you have to think that around that area in the Arctic Circle, there's hardly any light. So yes, three hours, two hours of light a day. So we're trying to shoot -

Angela Tuell:

Oh wow. Are these stories, Can we find these online? Do the affiliates put them?

Wendy Gillette:

Yeah, most of them are online in some capacity, or I also on my website WendyGillette.com. I have, I haven't updated them in like six months, but I've a lot of I have to do that.

Angela Tuell:

We'll have to link to these in the show notes, so - for sure.

Wendy Gillette:

Sure. And then there's also cocktail foraging in Scotland that was super fun. And culinary tourism, I just did that story a couple weeks ago in Denmark. And in terms of how I choose the story, so my stories go out under the Consumer umbrella. We have this consumer story every day, Monday through Friday, and it's our most popular franchise. And so the travel stories have to fall under the Consumer umbrella. So they have to be trending in some way, something that's new. And so I have to make the, whatever the story is, fit into some central theme, and I usually visit two different destinations for each individual trend, or sometimes stories like crazy suites, like hotel suites, like bucket list hotels, then I'll have more like four or five, even five hotels. But, but most of the time it's two different destinations or hotels, and I split it. It just really depends on the, on the story, but it has to be trend worthy in some way.

Angela Tuell:

Right. So how can- you kind of answered my next question a little bit, but obviously a lot of our audience is PR professionals. So what is the best way that that we can work with you to help get stories in front of you, help you do your job you know the best? And do you have any pet peeves?

Wendy Gillette:

Well, I hate when PR people don't tailor the email to who you are, and they always say, we think your writers would enjoy, or your readers...

Angela Tuell:

Your readers.

Wendy Gillette:

Would enjoy this story. And it's just doesn't take that long to change a word here and just funnel it to broadcast, instead of, you know, making it for print.

Angela Tuell:

Right.

Wendy Gillette:

So that's kind of annoying. And then I would say pitches that are really long and wordy, or sometimes now even PR agencies go in the opposite direction, and they're so short, so I don't even know, like, what, what are you pitching exactly? Because there's just a few lines. That's not the normal case. That's just once in a while, normally they're too long. And I don't know. I just don't have time for that. You know, I get so many emails just from CBS alone, I get hundreds of emails and then dealing with pitches as well. But I would say concise, well thought out stories that show some sort of trend and some newsworthiness. And newsworthiness is not a restaurant opened in a hotel.

Angela Tuell:

Right. A ribbon cutting.

Wendy Gillette:

A GM just got hired at this hotel. I mean, I'm never going to do a story like that, and nor do I really care.

Angela Tuell:

Right.

Wendy Gillette:

So I would say just something that is that could fit into an bigger theme.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah.

Wendy Gillette:

So I just got a good pitch about gardening at hotels and how there's classes and gardening. And I thought, Oh, that's a great little pitch.

Angela Tuell:

That is cool.

Wendy Gillette:

And it could fit into the larger theme. Because I think sometimes I know it's that PR people get a lot of pressure from their clients, and they want instantaneous news coverage for some things that really aren't newsworthy. And the PR people know that and say that, but they still are pressured to get, to try to get coverage. But I would say, just keeping in mind that I do these stories for a national audience, that it's not local, that it has to be something that people in Iowa would potentially be interested in just as much as people in New York.

Angela Tuell:

Right. That's great advice. So what are your future professional goals?

Wendy Gillette:

Well, I think I've -

Angela Tuell:

Not that you haven't done it all, right?

Wendy Gillette:

I have my hands full at the moment. No, I mean, I I'm so professionally satisfied and so excited with what I'm getting to do right now, and I feel such a privilege and an honor to be able to work in so many capacities in the business and be the person who's giving people information. And the travel is is amazing, and it's just kept getting better over the last two years, so I guess I would just want to keep doing the same thing for a while.

Angela Tuell:

That's wonderful. We can all only hope to be there, right? That's amazing. I do have to ask before we go, what would what is something that others would be surprised to know about you?

Wendy Gillette:

I think most people probably figure that I work really hard, given my crazy schedule and everything that I do in the business, but I also love to play hard, so that's kind of my mantra. Like work hard, get your work done, and then have fun. Have great meals, have drinks, enjoy, enjoy all the experiences of travel. Sometimes it's not easy, and sometimes I'm still carrying the stress from, say, a shift on the road, whatever the case may be. But I try to enjoy the moment and really have fun wherever I am.

Angela Tuell:

Great advice, and besides, your website that you mentioned, how can our listeners connect with you online?

Wendy Gillette:

Instagram is probably the best. It's Wendy Gillette NY all together. And I do a lot of stories. I haven't been posting too too much on the main page, but I do a ton of stories. No matter where I am.

Angela Tuell:

Wonderful. We will be watching and listening.

Wendy Gillette:

Thank you.

Angela Tuell:

That's all for this episode of Media in Minutes, a podcast by Communications Redefined. Please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to our show. We'd love to hear what you think. You can find more at CommunicationsRedefine.com/podcast. I'm your host, Angela Tuell. Talk to you next time.