In an area teeming with personality and character, we will be featuring 10 select influencers that are leaving their mark on the Northern Virginia region. Spotlights will be featured on a weekly basis and will range in industry from authors and performers to tech giants and unique business owners.
If you need proof of Alison Starling’s resilient dedication to her job: the WJLA news anchor was in the office just one day after coming down with a sinus infection.
Armed with cough drops and plenty of water, she remains as bright and attentive as she appears onscreen. Her office overlooks the main newsroom, and she takes the time to wave at employees who hustle by.
Although she anchors the 4 p.m., 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts, Starling’s day starts much earlier—more specifically, whenever her two young daughters (ages 3 and 5) get her up. After spending the morning with them, she makes it to the office by 2 p.m. From there, it’s a non-stop operation: going over news stories, taping promos, getting to the makeup chair, all to prep for those three hours thousands of Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia residents see her on their televisions at home. On a good day, Starling may get the chance to go home after the 5 p.m. broadcast; but she has to be back in the studio by 8:30 p.m. to prep for the 11 p.m. broadcast. It’s usually midnight when she gets home, and she gets to sleep by 1 a.m.—if she’s lucky.
Sound daunting? Not to Starling, for whom the routine is practically second nature. “You have these little built-in alarm clocks, because we’re so deadline-driven in this business. And we’re not talking a vague deadline, we’re talking seconds,” explains Starling. “You become really accustomed to knowing exactly when you have to be somewhere, and you feel it if you’re late.”
It helps that Starling has always wanted to be a newscaster, even when she was an elementary schooler reading the morning announcements. “There was something inside me that was like, ‘I love knowing something before everybody else,'” she says. “Which is really what it comes down to in our business: helping to gather information, and then disseminating information in the simplest way so that everybody can understand and easily figure out what in that story affects them.”
With 15 years at WJLA/ABC 7, there’s a lot she has come to love about the D.C.-Metro area. “I really believe it’s the best local news market in the country,” says Starling. “The viewers are highly educated, they have high expectations of what they get from their news. … They want to get their news from people who know this community, who live here and make it their home too.”
If there is any challenge about covering D.C., Maryland and Virginia, it’s found in the little things. “You have to really know the nuances of all three of those areas. Even though they’re all very close together, people in [each region] all have different issues they care about.”
When it comes to memorable stories, it’s difficult for Starling to pick just one. There’s Hurricane Isabel in 2003, her first big field report that still gets recognition from longtime viewers. There’s also, of course, the Capitals’ Stanley Cup victory, when she covered everything from the games to the parade. “This city is full of interesting stories, history and people,” Starling says. “[But] I think my favorite thing to do is the ‘Working Woman’ segment.”
Starling took charge of the news segment in 2006, and in full capacity: she does all the researching and writing, and also sets up the shoots that make it to air. Broadcasting every other week, it focuses on women in the area who are making a positive impact through their service, from philanthropy to business and everything in between.
As a working woman herself, she remains endlessly awed by the people she meets through these stories. “I get to interview an outstanding, accomplished, interesting person—woman—in our community who’s making it better. And I love that, because local news has its share of negativ[ity]. Just knowing we have these bright windows of airtime with popular, interesting, positive people is awesome.” So far, “Working Woman” has covered more than 300 individuals, with many more still to come.
Being a part of a major news station in the area means that uniqueness is key. It’s a notion not lost on Starling, who praises the investigative reporting unit 7 On Your Side as a defining feature of WJLA. “People to this day, if you say you’re from Channel 7, the first thing they say is ‘7 On Your Side.'”
She also notes the various passion projects her fellow news anchors have as a distinguishing factor. Each one—Nancy Chen, Jonathan Elias and Michelle Marsh—has a segment like Starling’s “Working Woman” that focuses on positivity in the community. “Because if you just want quick headlines, most people get that on their phone. So you have to do something to give people more,” explains Starling. “Whether it’s some company that’s been accused of fraud [that 7 On Your Side exposes] … or if it’s windows into these different people who are doing good things. Those are the kinds of things you need local news for more than ever now.”
Family comes first for Starling, who spends every possible free minute with her children and husband, a White House Correspondent for NBC News. With two growing girls, the family loves to spend time outdoors in the area’s many parks and playgrounds, or venture into the District to explore the monuments.
But nothing beats staying close to home, near their Northern Virginia neighborhood. “I love [Northern Virginia]. It’s so convenient to the city, but it still has such a family-friendly neighborhood feeling to it.”
She also values the cultural diversity present in the region. “It has a lot of different types of people, restaurants, pretty much anything you like. … That’s great for raising kids, too, because I want them to be exposed to as many different types of people and things as possible.” Still finding the nuances—Alison Starling is always on the job. // wjla.com