Making choices in the world of TV news
Sorboni Banerjee's (COM’02) BU network helped her find her way into a career in TV news.
Flip on WHDH-TV Channel 7 in the morning, and you might just see a recent Boston University alumna filling in for one of the 7News morning anchors. Sorboni Banerjee (COM’02), who majored in broadcast journalism with a focus on international relations, joined the 7News team as a general assignment reporter in February.
After graduation, Banerjee moved back to her hometown of West Kingston, R.I., where she took a job with ABC6 in Providence as an assignment editor. She then moved to Maryland to work for NBC25 as a weekend anchor, covering the political beat. While there, she heard of an opening back at ABC6 from a BU professor, so she returned to Providence to become the station’s morning reporter. About seven months later she stepped into the spotlight as morning anchor.
Banerjee had an important decision to make when her contract with ABC6 was up a year later. “As my contract expired I had a tough choice,” she says. “Sign the new one they were offering, or make a jump. So I headed back to BU to get advice on the big question: did I want to be a reporter or an anchor?” She turned to Bob Zelnick, a longtime ABC News correspondent and a professor and former chairman of the COM journalism department.
“Professor Bob Zelnick always believed in me and held me to a high standard of achievement,” says Banerjee. “He helped talk me though my goals and how to achieve them. He has always offered advice, contacts, and support.”
With Zelnick’s help, she realized that she really missed reporting, so she left ABC6 and began looking for a reporting job. She sent a resume tape to WSVN in Miami, which forwarded it to sister station WHDH Boston. The station hired her as a general assignment reporter.
Looking back on the past few years, Banerjee gives the University credit for the large role it has played in the course of her career. “BU provided me not only with a great education, but also with professors who guided me and kept in touch and cared. BU really has been the foundation of everything.”
With this in mind, she offers the following advice to COM students: “Make and keep the connections, and realize they will guide you far beyond graduation. And take as many different classes as you can beyond your major, because this is the last time you’ll ever get to be so smart without trying.”