This week's guest is a familiar face and voice to Louisville-area TV viewers, as she anchors the evening news on WHAS, the local ABC affiliate.
I’ve known about Renee Murphy for years, but when she really came to my attention was when she did an on-air opinion piece about hair. I know, it sounds silly, but it was terrific. We talked more about the hair issue in this conversation, along with how she got to where she is, and what she loves about her job.
Listen to the full episode in the player above and subscribe to Five Things wherever you get your podcasts.
On her early beginnings as a news reporter:
"I would make up stories, and I had a little microphone and a tape deck when I was a little kid, and I would carry it around and interview the neighbors. It didn't work anymore, but in my mind I was recording all these stories, and I would come back and tell my mom, 'Oh, this is what happened.' I used to love the game Old Maid, that card game, and so I would play Old Maid with people and then I'd interview them about the game."
On the pressure to look good on the air:
"I've had many hairstyles, I've been many different weights, I've had many different outfits. I've gotten many emails about my appearance, good and bad, and when I was younger, I would say the bad emails, the nasty emails, they would get to me. And I would run to the bathroom, and be like, 'Oh my gosh, they said this.' And then as I got older, I said, look, I'm doing the best I can do. And on this particular day maybe this is the best it's gonna get."
On a special book that stays in her desk at work:
"I love this, and I use this at work, still all the time, even though I could just go on to Google, but I use my thesaurus because my father gave it to me many many years ago. He used to teach in college -- he didn't teach English but in my mind he was this grand professor and he was master of everything and knowledgeable about all, and so when he gave me this thesaurus, I thought, [whispers] this is it, okay."
