Knowing Your Value (4 page)

It was at Java Joe’s that we received the blessing from the king of political news,
NBC News
’ Washington bureau chief and moderator of
Meet the Press
, Tim Russert. He was over at the convention center doing the
Today Show
, but it was clear to Tim that the excitement in Iowa was at Java Joe’s. When the door swung open and Tim walked in saying, “Hey, you guys mind if I get on the show?” we were thrilled. He stayed on for an hour and then hung out in the background for the rest of the morning talking to candidates and campaign managers. The whole morning flew by and felt like magic.

Phil Griffin had already given us some unforgettable advice: “You all should look at it this way: You have an audience of one. You need to ask yourself, ‘Would Tim like this?’” So when Tim, the head of the network’s political coverage, joined us at the center of the action, it was as if we’d received a true royal blessing. We believe Tim’s support and presence helped set the path for our future. He passed away in June of 2008, but we will never forget what he did for us. We will never forget our audience of one.

Phil called Joe during the broadcast the second day. “Hey, can you do this in New Hampshire too?” he asked. “And what about Michigan and South Carolina?”

All our hard work was paying off. Our ratings soared. MSNBC was keeping us on the air an extra three hours every day, six in total.
Morning Joe
had quickly become
the
place for presidential candidates to be seen and heard. It was the show of choice for political junkies and viewers tired of the
standard morning broadcast fare. Our audience was growing, and the show itself was making news.

While we were on the road, I tried to push my salary concerns aside. I didn’t want to deal with the situation; I certainly didn’t have time. Yet the money issue kept surfacing. At times when I should have been celebrating, I grew morose and discouraged.

Three months into
Morning Joe’s
run, I started getting e-mails making fun of my clothes. One day I wore a vivid pattern, and a viewer wrote, “What painter threw up on Mika?”

Part of my job is to look fresh sitting among a bunch of men at six AM. In a visual medium, appearances matter. Clothes are part of the production element of a talk show. If not handled correctly, they become a distraction that interferes with the substance of the broadcast.

That said, nobody cares what the men wear or how they style their hair. Joe rolls out of bed at 5:45 AM and jumps in the car to make the top of the show with only seconds to spare, his face still puffy and creased from sleep. He’ll take his seat wearing a fleece sweater and run his hand through his hair to brush it. If he were a woman, he would be called a disgrace.

Being a forty-something woman on TV requires that I wake up around 3:30 every morning and go through a numbing routine in order to look presentable on high-definition TV. A female anchor’s hair, makeup, and clothes are scrutinized both inside and outside the network, and if something
seems off, she will hear about it in e-mails or even a phone call from the front office.

NBC wasn’t providing a wardrobe, so I had to fend for myself on
Morning Joe
. I found out very quickly that it was extremely difficult for me to handle the clothing aspect of being on the air three hours a day. I didn’t need Chanel or Gucci, but I needed to look put together and at the very least make sure my clothes and hair were not a distraction. But looking camera-ready requires a wardrobe, and assembling a wardrobe takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money—the two things in my life that were in short supply.

I remember one time running down to the Lord & Taylor near my home and grabbing a bunch of cheap V-neck sweaters. I figured I would save time searching for “new” outfits by simply wearing different colors.

A few weeks later, those sweaters wore out their welcome. I began receiving rude comments via e-mail about wearing the same thing every day. Some of these messages came from determined viewers who managed to find their way into my inbox. If a handful of viewers felt so strongly that they’d try that hard to get through to me, they probably weren’t alone.

Clothes and hair were becoming my daily enemy. They represented everything that was wrong with my position at MSNBC. Not only was I was not getting paid what I was worth, but after the added cost of a new wardrobe and quality haircuts I was actually losing money by working at the network.

I knew I deserved a raise. I knew I needed a raise. But I still felt anxious about asking to be compensated for what I was
bringing to the show. Lots of people considered me a hit, but how did I really know that management agreed? My current salary implied that they still thought of me as a freelancer.

I brought all these feelings with me when I asked for a raise. I actually thought that if I explained to NBC’s front office about the clothes and the travel, and how the math didn’t make sense, they would respond to my concerns. Looking back (and knowing what I’ve learned while writing this book), I may as well have said, “Hi. Please don’t give me a raise, okay?”

I went to see Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, who to this day is a friend, but we didn’t know each other that well then. I sat down in his office and said, “I’m sorry if this is bad timing. I don’t want to be a problem. I’m absolutely certain that this is a great show. I’m buying clothes for the shift, I’m buying makeup, I’m trying to keep my hair the way it should look.” I went on to say, “I really don’t want to be a diva or high maintenance or anything. But the way the numbers add up at the end of the month, I need to make more. I really hope you can understand that.”

I was nervous and struggling to articulate both facts and emotions. I was appealing to what I thought would be his ... what, generous side? It certainly wasn’t Phil’s job to care about wardrobe details, and I had signed an agreement. The conversation was a disaster. Needless to say I left Phil’s office without a raise, but it would be unfair to focus the blame on him. At that time I still didn’t realize why my plea failed. I didn’t know what was wrong with my approach, and given my age and professional experience, that’s simply not right.

By the time we returned to New York from covering the primaries, the tension was building. We were still working like hell, moving on to Election Day and the inauguration. It was a constant, driving battle. Every day I could feel myself edging one step closer to the breaking point. I was doing four long hours, and the guys were lumbering off the set at nine, going to relax in their offices. I’d continue to book the show, and push the show, and travel for the show into the night. Every day I grew tenser and tenser; again, it was nobody’s fault but my own.

I knew there was really no point in blaming Joe or Willie. I liked them, and they deserved everything they were getting and more. They were smart enough to get it. That was clear with every meeting that we had with management and every phone call that I overheard. The men around me were doing a good job of getting what they wanted and deserved. The inequity became tougher to overlook.

I was angry at myself, and certainly my family was paying the price at home all over again. I’d gone from unemployed to finding a freelance job that was totally doable and a good transition for them, to quite frankly working harder than I ever did at
60 Minutes
, which really seemed like the ultimate in exhausting, hard-driving, competitive, tough, constantly explosive, stressful work. But this was even more intense and all-consuming.

Joe was growing more furious by the day. He had believed in me from the start, and he wanted me to focus solely on
Morning Joe
. He probably saw me getting in my own way as I tried to get my due, but being aware of the challenges all
women in television face, he knew how difficult it would be for me to solve this problem on my own. It never occurred to me during this time that it was my job to just say no. Many days I was exhausted and depressed. I would tell myself if I worked harder, I’d prove my worth and eventually the bosses would notice and reward me.

It would be a fruitless wait on my part.

MY STORY, WITH VALERIE JARRETT, TINA BROWN, CAROL SMITH, SHERYL SANDBERG, CAROL BARTZ, LESLEY JANE SEYMOUR, NORA EPHRON, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, AND SUZE ORMAN

D
espite the network’s misgivings, Joe and I knew that our partnership on the air was driving the show’s appeal. In fact, just one month into our run, our chemistry would put
Morning Joe
on the map.

The show’s fans know it as “the Paris Hilton incident.” The story began the morning socialite Paris Hilton, released from prison after serving minimal time for violating probation, walked through a blinding gauntlet of frenzied photographers. Her release was written as the lead for our news-headlines segment on a day when the Iraq war should have been at the head. I couldn’t believe this junk was being passed off as news, so Joe and I called it out by mocking ourselves and the news
business as a whole. At first I held up the news script and simply announced I wouldn’t read it; then Joe goaded me into ripping, burning, and shredding it at the top of each hour of our three-hour show.

The episode was emblematic of what makes the
Morning Joe
chemistry work: our ability to act instinctively and say what we think without fear. We call each other out. We call other journalists out. We call politicians out. We do it with humor and transparency, and we do it with the credibility of having been there: we’re guided by our collective experience in the fields of politics and news. Our life lessons have taught us many things, including not to take ourselves too seriously.

Ripping up the script was an unremarkable act to the
Morning Joe
team, but we discovered that in the world of 24/7 news, it was a minor league sensation. For some reason, the Paris Hilton incident hit a nerve. Someone posted the video clip on YouTube and it went viral, seen by millions of viewers around the world. The incident helped introduce
Morning Joe
to a whole new set of viewers. To this day, I am applauded and thanked by rabid news junkies who say they will never forget that moment. They tell us repeatedly that our show is refreshing because all the players are candid about their beliefs and biases, which apparently is something viewers have been looking for.

Was my value suddenly changing? Could it be that what looked like “forty and washed-up” was now “experienced and gutsy”? Joe had assured me of that every step of the way. But I was programmed differently. I had my doubts.

The day after the Paris Hilton incident, a top NBC executive,
a woman, called me into her office and asked me to take a seat. Her stern expression told me that this was not a victory lap. She was clearly unhappy that I had ripped up the Paris Hilton script. In a sharp tone she warned me that I would now have a reputation for being a “problem” and “difficult.” She was “concerned” that people “wouldn’t like” me.

What did I do? I
apologized.

As she paced her office looking like she was about to fire me, her assistant barged in with an urgent call. She left the room. I sat there alone, wondering whether I had apologized enough.

Five minutes later, the executive returned. I don’t know who had been on the other end of that urgent call or what was said, but her tone and body language had done a sudden 180. “We want to offer you your own show,” she said brightly, “at nine AM, after
Morning Joe
. A full hour. All yours. You get to cohost
Morning Joe
, and then you get to host your own show. All yours!”

I must have had a slight case of whiplash. Clearly I wasn’t thinking straight, because what did I do next?

I
thanked
her.

Seriously.

My success on
Morning Joe
meant that I would now be responsible for another hour of television every day. While it may look casual and spontaneous, hosting
Morning Joe
, a political show with no teleprompter or safety net, is incredibly demanding work. Its success depends on my instincts, my up-to-the-minute knowledge of world events and my mind being clear so that I can ad-lib no matter the
situation. Three hours of extemporaneous discussion and debate were considered a hard slog for any television host or anchor.

As I looked around the table on the
Morning Joe
set the next day, I realized what I had done. Joe and Willie stretched and yawned at the end of our three hours and talked about how tired they were and how our schedule was insane. Then they wandered off the set to finally collapse somewhere. I was just getting started on an additional full hour, an hour I would now have to fill every day. By myself. I was still the lowest-paid on the set despite four hours each day on the air. No other anchor on television worked those hours five days a week. At the end of every
Morning Joe
, at 8:55 Eastern Time, we have a short segment where we all take a turn saying what we’ve learned that day. That morning I should have said “I learned that I am an ass.” How could I have missed this opportunity to ask for what I deserved?

But as I started talking to women, especially researchers, I heard many stories and statistics that surprised me. The simple fact is that women don’t ask for raises as often as men do. My problem wasn’t just a personal failing, it was a common experience.