|  With
no gas left in the car and all alone in the dark at a murder
scene in toughest part of Baltimore, Raylena Church Fields
was trying to figure out how she ended up stranded in a
dangerous part of town.
That morning, Fields’ editor at Baltimore Morning
Sun, where she was a college intern, had sent her out to
cover a double murder.
Fields found herself stranded with two other cub reporters.
They had no way to leave the scene. Fields was fully aware
of the danger they were in.
Out of nowhere, a news television van showed up. “I
made my decision that night that I was going to never end
up in a dangerous part of town in a murder scene like that
without some back up,” Fields said. “That is
when I decided that I would be in television.”
To Fields, the television team seemed responsible and well
prepared, something that she saw lacking in print media.
“It’s amazing the little things that can happen
that makes you make a big decision,” she said.
Fields’ love for the media kept her working to achieve
her dreams. She is now a producer at CBS Evening News.
Still, Fields’ career as an intern for the Baltimore
Morning Sun during the summer of 1975 gave her the opportunity
to cover important events of history.
“It was a great summer (1975) in Baltimore because
there was a prison riot,” said Fields. “There
were race riots in Southern Baltimore, and then on top of
that there was a municipal strike. I will never forget the
scenes. I covered all sorts of things and I loved every
minute of it.”
But after graduating from the University of Maryland with
a degree in journalism, Fields couldn’t find a job.
The nation was in a recession.
Given the economy, Fields took a job as a typist. Her writing
skills landed her a job in public relations for Morgan State
University.
“It wasn’t something I wanted to do. What I
wanted to do was to be a reporter, producer person, and
I did that right before graduating from college,”
she said.
Fields carried her visions of joining the television industry
in 1978 at WTTG television in Washington D.C. Her career
later expanded at the Satellite News Channel, which was
operated by ABC News.
Her dreams seemed to be taking its route, but it all came
crashing down after they pulled the plug on the Satellite
News Channel.
“Everyone was laid off and that was…”
Fields trailed off. “It’s never easy,”
she added.
Fields went back to being a typist, and worked at Macy’s
during the evening until she found a job in a TV station
in Philadelphia, where she stayed for about five years.
Her dream of becoming a reporter or a producer expanded
when she joined the New York headquarters of ABC News Network.
“When I was at ABC I covered Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
the student uprising and that was a huge opportunity,”
said Fields. “You were surrounded by a lot of people
that had covered war zones. I don’t think I was ever
scared. It is always good to step outside your world and
see how somebody else copes and lives.”
She knows that a lot of struggle comes with achieving a
dream. Her main struggle was that she was a black female
trying to make it in the field. She confronted both racism
and sexism.
“Both exist in this industry, like it does in this
society already,” Fields said. “The industry
just narrows down what is going on in society. So through
all the experiences, my color and my gender have always
been an issue.”
From an early age, Fields was drawn to the world of journalism.
CBS anchorman Douglas Edwards early 15-minutes newscasts
captured Fields’ imagination with his comments and
news stories.
“His show would come on every night and last for 15
minutes, and you couldn’t get me to do anything, but
watch that,” Fields said. “I just watched what
he was doing and I was fascinating by all of it.”
Fields’ mother always kept National Geographic magazines
at the coffee tables and her parents were always pushing
education and reading. The idea of exploring the world remained
with Fields.
To Fields, the best thing about the media is talking to
and meeting people from different places.
“The thing I like the most about my work is the ordinary
people that I meet all over the country, and there are the
greatest,” said Fields. “I just always found
studying people to be extremely satisfying.”
Even though Fields majored in Journalism, she doesn’t
advice future journalists to do the same.
“Journalism isn’t something you really learn
in school,” she said. “It is really learning
how to report, how to write, and adhere some principles
of fairness, so you come to that from any (field).”
Fields suggested that young journalists should not allow
anybody to tell them what they can and cannot perform. And
she advised people interested in journalism to fight for
their points of view, even though sometimes they might not
win the argument.
"Steal yourself for a lot of disappointments,”
said Fields, “(and for) a great deal of intrusion
in your life, because events happen when they happen (and
journalists had to be there). So it can be a real challenge
to also have a normal life and try to be a good journalist
on the big stories. But there is only one way to get there
and that is to go for it.”
Read
more about Ms. Fields' work:
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