WRAL-TV’s Severance Admires ‘Can Do’ Attitude of WRAL Doc Colleagues

*WRAL-TV Anchor/Reporter Julian Grace (center) conducts an interview while WRAL-TV Documentary Photographer Jay Jennings (right) captures the action on camera on Saturday, August 20, 2022.*

WRAL-TV Investigative Reporter and Producer Cristin Severance is thankful that her team looks at challenges as opportunities. She shared about an experience working on the upcoming documentary on maternal and infant mortality rates which will air in late September:

Surround yourself with people who ask “How CAN we do this?” instead of saying “There is NO WAY we can do this.”

I was reminded of that simple yet important mindset a few days ago after we were invited to an incredible round table discussion of about 35 people.
The women at the roundtable would be discussing the topic of our next documentary.

This was a rare chance to hear vital, emotional, and important stories straight from the people who were impacted most.

Most people in local TV news would say, there is no way you could do something like that, basically a townhall style forum, in that amount of time.

Everyone from my manager, my doc producing partner, my co-reporter, and our second photographer said, “What an incredible opportunity. How do we do this?”

We saved valuable time not worrying about all the things we couldn’t do and instead stayed laser-focused on what we could do.

The result was a successful and impactful shoot that will 100% make this upcoming documentary better.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with many colleagues like this throughout my career and I truly believe this mindset is what leads to a positive, successful, and happy work environment.

And I’ll never take for granted that I’m surrounded by people with this attitude at WRAL.

THANK YOU to my teammates who are willing to do whatever it takes to tell the best story possible.