Today we’d like to introduce you to Lana Harris.
Hi Lana, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My journey really started at Lovejoy High School (shout out to Clayco!). I was so focused on getting good grades all 4 years, I didn’t pay much attention to what I wanted to be when I graduated. At the time, you could not convince me I wasn’t going to be an actress or a model! I also watched a lot of HGTV, so in my head I was basically already an interior designer. My mom essentially told me… think again haha. She said I could do it if I put my mind to it, of course, but that those jobs are extremely competitive and could take years before I saw any real money so I needed to choose something more realistic. I had no idea what to do! Eventually she said well, you like your broadcasting class, what about that? I absolutely loved my broadcasting class at Lovejoy HS and didn’t realize that could be considered “realistic”, so it was settled! I went on to the University of Georgia which has an incredible broadcast program and started volunteering for the behind the scenes roles (audio, camera operator, etc) my freshman year. I grew to love it! I’ve always been nosy, always talked too much, always seemed to find my way in front of a camera, and always loved learning new things. That’s pretty much non negotiable as a journalist because it’s almost like having endless homework, you’re constantly researching and trying to retain information. As a college senior, I met the Vice President of TEGNA at a UGA job fair and she told me she’d love to have me work at a news station in the company. It was a dream come true! The salary was $30k with a small increase year over year. That was considered a lot for the painfully little money journalists can receive when starting out, which almost sounds absurd to me now given the workload. Generally, you’re told if you want to be a news anchor, you have to be a good reporter first. So I started as a reporter in Columbia, SC, jumped from there to Jacksonville, FL, went to Charlotte, NC after, and finally got to come back home to Atlanta in 2022. When I found out I was getting hired as an anchor here, I couldn’t believe it. I still remember screaming and crying and laughing in the car when I told my family the news! My mom and grandparents have watched me through every single move over the years and they were so unbelievably proud after everything I’d gone through to get here. Getting to anchor the news in my home city in front of my family, my old friends and classmates, and the community members who raised and supported me along the way has been the honor of my life.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Man do I wish this journey was a walk in the park haha, each step was HARD. I had to jump through hoops for every opportunity I got, I heard “no” and “you’re not ready” more times than I can count – even as people with the same or less experience weren’t being told the same – and the goal post felt like it was constantly moving for how I needed to prove myself. It was extremely discouraging (and I cried in frustration more than I’d like to admit over the years), but at my core I just believed in myself more than I believed the people who I felt were trying to hold me back. I’d come in on weekends to practice reading the teleprompter, make practice-anchoring highlight reels to get feedback on, have a weekly visit with one news director to ask how I specifically needed to improve to be afforded opportunities, and work hours upon hours of unpaid overtime trying to show my worth and dedication. I’m not unique, many journalists have similar stories – this business can be a bit of a beast. So it may have looked glamorous on the outside, but for years I was really struggling on the inside. I always got such positive feedback about my work from friends, family, and the community, I couldn’t understand why the people who could give me opportunities didn’t see it. To say it ate at my self worth would be an understatement. Eventually I realized I had to decide for myself that I was enough, and if I kept getting no’s, I simply needed to find out how to turn it into a yes or find someone else who’d say it!
After Charlotte, I was out of work for 2 months waiting for an agent to find me a job (you could do a whole other article on news talent agents!). I knew I was ready for a full time main anchoring job and the few job leads they’d find weren’t for positions I wanted. Day by day, it was hard fighting off those seeds of doubt that tried to creep in. I felt like a failure. I leaned HEAVILY on my faith that God had a plan and my friends and family who would tell me to keep my head up – that it was only a matter of time. One day, I got so fed up with unemployment and my piling debt that I decided to take my future into my own hands, used my own contacts to find the job at WANF, and it fell into place in a matter of days. Now, I think God was trying to show me that I had it in me to find a job on my own after all – I just had to put my pride and embarrassment aside and reach out to people for help. It was an extremely valuable lesson, I could’ve missed out had I not humbled myself.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m an anchor and a reporter at WANF. Over the years, I’ve always been known for my energy and “authenticity” on camera. I use quotes because I still don’t fully understand what people mean by that, haha. I’d get nervous when I started out, but I always just tried to be myself. The news can be downright boring or overwhelming depending on the day, and I think generally news delivery can sound a bit fake or robotic and turn people off. I’ve always tried to follow in the footsteps of anchors who felt different, who felt real, would laugh loud, crack a joke or witty comment here or there, and overall make the news something I wanted to watch. Staying informed and rooting out fake or misleading information is only getting harder with more people online and AI expanding the way it is, so just being human and a voice people can trust has always been extremely important to me. It’s why I started doing news videos online, actually. I take the same stories we do on the news but say it in a relatable (sometimes funny) way so people know what’s going on around them. I specifically try to find and report both sides of political or controversial stories too – just so everyone knows how the other side is feeling. I realized recently that the way different media reports the news in completely different ways is leaving people with a completely different set of facts, and we’ve all seen how divided we’ve gotten as a country. I want to do anything I can to alleviate that and bring the temperature down.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
If I could go back and tell my younger self anything, it would be to demand the same respect that I give people and that a job is JUST a job. This actually didn’t even sink in for me until a few months ago. I spent so many years feeling small and doubting myself because I allowed bosses to talk down to me and have a sort of power over me where I felt I could not let them down – even as they demanded exponentially more of me than they were paying me for to prove myself. Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe in working hard, giving it your absolute best everyday, and being dependable when a job needs you to work longer hours or fill in when the situation calls for it. I definitely didn’t get this far by doing the bare minimum of what was required of me, and it’s extremely helpful to soak in as much as you can when you’re new at something – even if it means unpaid overtime. The problem is when you want (or feel forced) to give your bosses a “yes” every time and it gets taken advantage of on a long term basis. As companies try to downsize, do more with less people and pile on new responsibilities to existing workers without compensation, it can feel impossible to say no – even at the sake of your own sanity. I ran myself raggedy for years and almost completely burned out from the stress of it, and I don’t believe work and life was meant to be this way. So the most important lessons I’ve learned are to give myself grace, to be such a dependable and hard worker that it cannot be construed as lazy when it’s time to say “no” to extra roles, and to remember bosses are just people too and you’re all working together to get a job done. A lot of times decisions made really aren’t personal, it’s just business. Managers will always look out for what’s best for company, that’s their job. As an employee, it’s your job to look after yourself. When work gets to be so much you feel anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, and stressed, it’s time to figure out how to adjust. Because again, it’s JUST a job. You have bills and goals, you need a paycheck. It doesn’t mean you should have to silently suffer.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lanajharris/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lanaonlocation
- Twitter: https://x.com/LanaOnLocation
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LanaOnLocation
Image Credits
The picture with me and a group of people at the Teal Trot can be credited to the Georgia Ovarian Cancer Alliance. The rest of the photos are mine.
The woman in the picture with me is my beautiful mother, I would be nothing and nowhere without her 🙂
