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Ellen Jaffe Jones, BJ '76

What do you do?
Media consultant, healthy cooking instructor, sailor.

How did you get your job?

• Media Consultant: After 18 years in television news and five years as a financial consultant at Smith Barney, the love of my life from Miami TV news (another former investigative reporter like me) called after 20 years of no contact. We were married on a Florida beach six months later, where we now live. He had the good fortune to write a book on media relations, Winning with the News Media, that is considered by many to be the bible in the industry. I helped him write and edit the eighth edition and joined him in media consulting. We are very selective about clients and choose only causes we are passionate about.
  
  
• Healthy Cooking Instructor: I fell in love with one of my non-profit clients, The Cancer Project. In my free time, I teach their free cooking classes. Underwritten in part by the Lance Armstrong Foundation and others, we give free food and recipes to help prevent and survive cancer. As each eight-class series ends, I often hear that the information has saved lives, caused major weight loss and allowed many to come off all kinds of medications. There has been no finer award, recognition or paycheck. It's the most rewarding work I've done. Figuring out what to eat so that I avoid my huge family history of cancer, heart disease and diabetes has been the investigative assignment of my life. Much has been written about this successful experiment to beat the odds.

What is the best professional lesson you learned at the J-School?
I didn't know it was my last night on the air until my co-anchor told me good-bye at the end of the newscast. After the deer-in-headlights look, I went bawling into the news director's office. "Training for the real world. No one is indispensable," he said. Excellent advice. And never cry in the newsroom.

What advice do you have for current students?
No one ever went to their deathbed saying, "If only I'd worked more at the office." Identify your passions and do them. The money will come. Always have a plan B. And perhaps a C. When I came off the mommy track and back into the newsroom, the makeup consultant said, "Forty is never too young to have a face lift, and the more often you have them at a younger age, the more effective they are. You just don't get to be Barbara Walter's age and look like that." She pointed out both locally and nationally, male and female, who'd had face lifts. I decided I would never go that route and be happy in my own skin. I'm still waiting for the day that mature anchors who don't get surgery end up on magazine covers.

What is your favorite J-School memory?
The first night I anchored the evening news at KOMU (and I was the first woman to be assigned to that on a "permanent" shift), I was so nervous, I ran out to my car and drank half a bottle of wine. Never did that again, before or during a shift. The time police mistook my mascara for a bomb after the station had been evacuated for a bomb threat was pretty interesting, too. Only my co-anchor and I, and the staff to keep the station on the air, were not evacuated.

What have you learned about balancing career and family?
When I went to school, the end goal was working for the network. But after I saw a network correspondent plagiarize a co-worker and local reporter's story, calling it into New York as if it were her own script, I decided that I enjoyed enterprise reporting of local television more. I also knew that if I ever intended to have a family, local news would be the only place that could happen. I took six years off to stay home with my three daughters. It was the best decision for them and me even though a general manager called me crazy for leaving the best job in local television. I have never regretted the decision. I was amazed I was able to walk back into a morning anchor/reporting job after being a stay-at-home mom. Things do work out for the best. Despite the book called, Having It All, But Not All At The Same Time, I believe I have been very lucky to have the best of both worlds.