Reflecting on 30 Years in the Newsroom — Alumni Profile, Wendy Fisher ’85

Creating a Career

Growing up in the big city, Wendy Fisher ’85 had some big dreams. Supreme Court Justice big. Secretary of State big. Fast forward to today — neither of those panned out. She lives in New York City and has three kids — the youngest of whom currently attends Amherst College, and is also the writer of this article. I interviewed my mother on the balcony of the apartment that we have lived in for the last 18 years.

Fortunately, when asked if she was sad that her childhood dreams didn’t come true, there wasn’t a hint of hesitation in her answer: “Not at all,” she said, in between laughs.

Speaking to the career that she has made for herself, Fisher is very proud of everything she has accomplished — namely her over 35 years of working in a newsroom at two major news outlets.

The Road to Amherst

As her youthful dreams of prominent roles in the federal government may reflect, Fisher did not imagine herself pursuing a career in journalism. Prior to attending Amherst, all she knew was that she had some interest in French, and a lot of interest in American studies, and she didn’t have any particular desire about where she studied.

When the admissions team from Amherst visited her high school — Horace Mann, a K-12 school in the Bronx — she went to hear them talk, and put her name on a list before leaving. However, looking back, she doesn’t remember knowing much about Amherst, or why she was applying, when she put her name down. “I didn’t really know anything about anything,” Fisher said. “But I applied to Amherst, and then I applied to Princeton, and I didn’t get into Princeton, so I went to Amherst.”

An Educational Experience to Remember

Luckily, going to Amherst worked out pretty well for Fisher — at least academically; the social situation, not so much, but more on that later. She double majored in French and American studies, and had only good things to say about her education. “I loved my American studies courses,” she said. “I had great teachers, I just remember how much I liked the small classes and delving into each topic so closely. I even liked writing papers. I was pretty nerdy.”

One professor stood out in Fisher’s memory. She took a class with Henry Steele Commager, who she said made an impression on her “by talking about how there’s not always ‘on the one hand and on the other hand.’ Sometimes there’s a right and a wrong.”

With such an amazing educational experience, I wondered why Fisher decided to spend her entire junior year abroad. “Well,” she said, “I loved my education at Amherst. I didn’t love my social experience.” Fisher said that she didn’t find Amherst to be the most inviting place at the time, and that she was intimidated to try new things. “I played field hockey at Horace Mann, and I was too chicken to try it at Amherst,” she said humorously. “I really liked sailing, and I was too chicken. I was too chicken to try a lot of things.”

So, when junior year came around, and despite loving her Amherst classes, Fisher took the opportunity to leave and study in Paris for the year. While the academics may not have been as rigorous, Fisher was certainly more involved in the social scene. “I really, really enjoyed being in another country,” she said. “It was eye opening. I loved every second of my year there.”

Returning to Amherst for senior year, Fisher “muddled” through a thesis. “It was a bad topic,” she said, describing how she wrote about Thomas Jefferson’s time in France. “There was literally nothing original about it,” she added. However, she can at least think about her thesis as a learning experience: “That is where I learned that doing independent research is not my strength,” she said bluntly. And, she managed to graduate all the same.

Bonjour Again, France

Once she graduated, she wrote to several Amherst alumni who were in France, looking to go back for the summer. She got one job offer and gladly accepted, returning to Paris to work in a bank. This is where she truly learned to speak French, she said, and after a couple months there was the start of a process that was “too complicated for this interview.” In short, she spent the next few years going back and forth between the U.S. and Paris, including stints at a law firm in New York City, at NYU for her master’s in French Studies, at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris for a degree in 20th century European History, and at the Paris bureaus for both ABC News and the New York Times.

Returning to New York City

In 1988, after several years of bouncing back and forth, and after a relationship that — luckily for my father and for myself — did not pan out, she realized she did not want to live in France forever. What had she missed most about New York? “Central Park, cold, diet coke, football (the American version), and canned tuna on toast.”

A Job in Journalism

She returned to New York with a job at ABC News in 1989, and this is where her career in journalism truly began. She started as a desk assistant, an entry level position, in which she was expected to answer the phone, make copies, and do other administrative tasks.

Through the years, she worked various positions and various hours, sometimes working overnight shifts at the desk, sometimes on the weekends. She also worked as a researcher for two years, a role which allowed her to conduct interviews, help with stories, and occasionally travel. “Remember, this is before the internet,” she reminded me, adding that this period of time was the “first time that anyone was interested in [her] ideas, about anything.”

She reflected on her experience covering some of the historic events that took place during her time at ABC, as well as some of the challenges of working in the newsroom. She remembered one time that she was working an overnight shift, and some of the first reports of the Rwandan Genocide were coming in. “I remember seeing it on the wires,” she said. “Again, that time was so different, with no social media. So you’re like, wait, hundreds of thousands of people are dying in Rwanda? Who is killing whom?”

Another time, on Christmas Day in 1989, news broke that the leader of Romania had just died. But, because it was Christmas, there was no television broadcast, and it couldn’t be reported. “I remember a reporter calling me,” she said, “and he called me to scream at me, because Ceaușescu, the leader of Romania, had just died, and we couldn’t get on TV.

Getting screamed at wasn’t a rare phenomenon for Fisher at this time, or for anyone in the newsroom. “I was really screamed at,” she said. “That was in the old days of newsrooms for people to scream bloody murder at you. I think that was typical newsroom behavior. Tempers were short.”

While people still get yelled at in the newsroom on a regular basis, other aspects of the industry have changed dramatically in past years, with the most important transformation being the transition from broadcast television to streaming.

Rising in the Ranks

During that period of transformation, Fisher gradually rose the ranks in ABC. “I had a lot of ideas,” she said, “and people saw me in a different light.” With all of these ideas, she was given new roles, going from assignment editor, to deputy managing editor, to an executive editor, until she was eventually promoted to Vice President of newsgathering.

This role involved overseeing all of the news that ABC reported on. She advocated for which stories they should cover, and coordinated the teams of reporters that were assigned to those stories. And, with every story came questions of safety — for example, when teams are sent to report from sites of natural disasters or war zones — as well as how they could be sure of the accuracy of their information.

At a certain point, Fisher’s path diverged from ABC. She had mentioned earlier that with each major transformation in the industry that took place — and there were many transformations — there were rounds of layoffs. And, in 2024, after 34 years at ABC, Fisher was part of a new round of layoffs. “I was laid off from my job in restructuring. That’s what the Walt Disney company says,” Fisher said, with just a hint of sarcasm.

A year later, Fisher was offered a job at CBS News, to work as the vice president of weather strategy. After a short time there, she was quickly promoted, and now holds the same position that she did at ABC, with the title of Senior Vice President, Editorial.

Reflecting on her Path

Looking back on her career, and all the challenges she faced along the way, Fisher seemed to be very content that she spent her career in the newsroom, and not in the Supreme Court Building, or in the state department office of the Harry S. Truman building in DC.“ There’s no place like a newsroom,” Fisher said.