Rough Draft: A Memoir

by Katy Tur

For me, though, the shock of Perth was the familiarity. It felt like California without the people and the development, which made it feel like California in an alternate dimension.

The news business is a “great job” culture, as in, “great job” is all you’ll hear until the day they fire you for a not great job.

A thought fell on the table like bird poop and we all saw it.

as though I wasn’t sure if he really existed in three-dimensional form until that very moment.

“The news should make you uncomfortable,” I said. “If everything you read or watch gives you comfort, you’re doing it wrong.”

And I don’t care what year it is, or where you work, or what your status is, if you’re a woman disappearing for five months to be a mom, you will have some worries about how it affects your career. Are the worries helpful? No. But they’re real.

I used my phone to add enough filters and fades to make our photo look normal, aka like the other new mom shots we’ve all seen, aka not at all like new moms actually look.

not being in the mix had exacerbated my already acute worry that I was a professional fraud just waiting to be sniffed out.

my whole schedule would be thrown off and I’d be failing the whole working mom challenge right out of the gate.

Or maybe in addition to the glass ceiling women—especially moms—face a sinking foundation, a baseline of success or seniority that’s just a little less solid than a man’s.

Without the daily commute, the gossip in the halls, the debates about coverage in our shared office during our morning meetings, the studio and the crew, the travel, the source meetings, and coffee runs, I felt lost.