The host of Fox News @ Night shares insights on news gathering, team building, and content creation with Repertoire.
By Pete Mercer
Developing a plan for your career is a wise decision in just about every respect, but it doesn’t mean that the plan is going to come out exactly as you initially thought. You might have gone to school for one thing and ended up in an entirely different field for work. It’s all about the journey, something that Fox News anchor Shannon Bream understands very well.
Bream, author and host of Fox News @ Night, recently sat down with Repertoire publisher Scott Adams to discuss the journey and changes of her career, leadership, and content in the realm of journalism.
Building her career
Bream attended Liberty University, where she graduated with a business management degree. While she loved the program, Bream was interested in politics, specifically the intersection of law and politics. After graduating, she went home to Tallahassee to attend Florida State Law School, and even practiced law for a few years after that.
“I had always had an interest in news from very early on. Staying up all night, watching election returns when I was 8 years old, and my parents always said, ‘This doesn’t concern you, you can’t vote. Go to bed.’ I just loved knowing what was going on in the world. But when I was at Liberty, I studied business because I couldn’t really figure out what I was going to do.”
This interest in news pushed Bream to pursue an internship at a local TV station in Tampa, but she could only do the internship for college credit. She went to USF in Tampa where she took a course in news writing, giving her a foot in the door with the internship. Bream would shadow reporters, producers, and photographers to learn about the industry and take copious notes. She would often offer to buy dinner for the other person to further pick their brain.
Bream said, “I remember one photographer said to me, ‘No, I don’t want you to buy me dinner. I want, when someone comes to shadow you, for you to do the same thing. Just pay it forward.’ I’ve always remembered that. We all have opportunities in our careers to help other people.”
Eventually, she took a risk and quit her job as a lawyer to pursue a career in media. By “stepping out in faith,” Bream got her first on-air job, working from 2:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. She continued to do things like answer phones, make coffee, work the teleprompter, and write scripts for the morning anchors.
After a change in management, Bream was told that she was never going to make it in the industry and to go back to law. She hunkered down and eventually got a job offer in Charlotte, North Carolina at WBTV. From there, she continued to develop her career before landing at Fox News in 2007.
What leadership should look like
Bream’s long relationship with Fox News has not only afforded her great success, but it has also given her the opportunity to work with the leadership within her organization, as well as interview incredible female leaders for her show. Because of women like Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer, Bream never had the thought that she couldn’t go into broadcasting because she’s a woman. They had already broken through that wall.
Now, Bream has the opportunity to carry that torch for the next generation of female leaders. She says, “I feel like a lot of the strong leaders I know are very confident, but not arrogant. Because that’s different. Confident in whatever their mission they or their organization has. They believe in it and have a passion for it.”
However, being in leadership doesn’t cure anyone of missing the mark. Thinking about some of the strongest leaders Bream has worked with, she said, “They have confidence, but a lot of humility too. They are willing to listen to people with different viewpoints who can give them good advice, and maybe save some headaches. For me, I don’t want people to just tell me every idea I have is great and wonderful.”
Bream also finds significant value in taking counsel from other people, especially when it’s people she works with. Her team works with her every day to build the structure and the content for Fox News @ Night, all coming from different backgrounds, age groups, ideas, and viewpoints. This diversity gives her team the opportunity to A/B test the content of the show, improving on the foundation of Fox News @ Night with different perspectives and ideas.
“I think being humble enough to listen to people and take their advice is huge. The willingness to always learn will make you stronger in any area that you’re willing to invest time in. I will say, there’s never been a perfect show that we’ve done. It’s live TV, something is going to be flubbed. The important thing is to admit that and leverage it into making yourself and your team better.”
Building content
Bream’s team at Fox New @ Night works together to put out daily content in the form of a news show. For @ Night, Bream’s team consists of an executive producer, senior producers, segment producers, a copywriter, and someone who books the guests. “I think if you try to pretend like you’re doing everything yourself, first of all, that’s going to blow up in your face. No one should be that arrogant. We all have teams to us get everything done.”
Not only does it take a team of multiple people to produce the content for Fox News @ Night, but the entire network has a vast team of local and global correspondents to cover the news from all over the world. Even now, there are teams of reporters in the Ukraine covering the war, relaying critical and often time-sensitive information back to Bream and her domestic team of reporters, producers, and writers.
Building content is all about understanding the needs and wants of your audience. If you are producing or publishing content that your audience isn’t interested in, they will find someone else who will. Capturing the eyes and the attention of the audience is the biggest obstacle for major news organizations like Fox News.
At Fox News, Bream and her colleagues are trying to push the most up-to-date, accurate information around the clock. Bream says that Fox Nation, the official streaming service of Fox News, works because they really understand their audience. “We know what our viewers are interested in and what they’re going to connect with. And we want to feed them content that they feel like they’re not getting anywhere else. That we value them as a viewer, as a customer.”
To hear the full interview, visit repertoiremag.com.
The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak: Lessons on Faith from Nine Biblical Families
“Have faith” is a phrase we hear all the time. But what does it actually look like to live it out?
In The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak, Shannon Bream examines the lives of biblical women to see how God’s plans can turn our worlds upside down. She tells the story of Jochebed, a mother who took enormous risks to protect her son, Moses, from Pharaoh. Could Jochebed have imagined that God’s actual design for her son involved flight into exile and danger? And yet this was all part of the master plan to deliver Israel from slavery. Another biblical mother, Rebekah, made terrible choices in an attempt to ensure her son’s place in history. And a daughter, Michal, struggled to keep her faithless father, Saul, from sin, while battling pride in herself.
The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak shows that faith is more often a twisting road than a straight line. Yet, as the stories of biblical families attest, at the end of these journeys lies greater peace and joy than we could ever imagine.
Available on Amazon and other book retailers.