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This Redhead Reads
Headlines and Much More
By Sonia
Chopra • Bankrate.com
While you're at the gym or a hospital waiting room
or the airport or simply on your couch, you hear her like a friend.
CNN's Headline News evening anchor Lynne Russell is talking to you,
alone, and you're not that far off.
"I know that for somebody out there, this is the only
newscast they will see all day, so I want to make it good for them.
I just think of that one viewer and do it," said Russell, in a recent
phone conversation during a break between the half-hour segments.
"I owe them that much. They deserve all my energy.
I try to remember that each and every time I go on air,' she said,
speaking briskly in an instantly recognizable voice, which is both
authoritative and friendly.
Russell has been the prime-time weekday anchor for
a decade, on the air from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. While she talks to you
about the state of the world, she is trying her hardest to block
out the noise in the background.
"I can hear what everyone is saying in the newsroom.
I can hear their phone conversations, there are tour groups marching
by with cameras and then there's the vacuuming down the hallway,"
Russell said.
Judging by her extensive fan mail, some written in
crayon, Russell is doing just fine. She is one of the most popular
anchors on CNN, but she brushes aside compliments on her achievements,
her flame-red hair, her eyes, whatever.
"I got lucky," she says simply. "I wear my glasses
when I can't take my contacts anymore. My hair I can't control,
it does what it wants to," laughs Russell, who is often greeted
in public places by fans who shake her hand and tell her how great
she is. "It feels wonderful. I feel flattered, grateful and happy.
I am just doing what any journalist does," Russell said.
But few journalists can match Russell's resume. Apart
from a decade on Headline News, she is a licensed private investigator,
a bodyguard, an author and a Fulton County Deputy Sheriff. "I like
to do them all. And because I can. They interest me. It's possible
to do them all. You just have to adjust everything and do less of
other things," Russell said.
She does surveillance, which is getting harder now,
she admits because "everyone knows my face," and she can be a bodyguard
for friends, because "no-one knows why you are with them at a party."
Russell also has her first-degree black belt in Choi Kwang-Do.
At her deputy sheriff's job, she used to work the
jail but because of time conflicts with the newscasts, she now works
at the communications department.
With all these earning streams, she's had to think
of money. Russell started out the old fashioned way -- stashing
her cash away.
"My parents taught me to save, with the first allowance
they handed me, and I always continued to try to put money aside
in the bank, as the situation permitted over the years. One bright
day I realized that the interest it was earning wasn't equal to
the rate of inflation, Russell said.
"And I began to look into stocks, bonds and funds.
I gathered information on short and long-term savings. These days,
I listen to my investment adviser."
And that's not the only person she's listened to.
"I moved some investments away from tech stocks when they headed
down, and now have more in S & P 500 index funds." She made
the move partly on the off-air advice from a stock market expert
she interviewed on CNN.
Russell's also developed a different perspective in
the last five years.
"I always knew I worked for my money, but I began
to see the whole scene differently when I read a book a friend lent
me. The message was that your money should be viewed as representing
the time it takes you to earn it -- hours and minutes out of your
life. Such a concept changes the way you think about your spending,"
she said.
"I've never gotten impulse buying confused with appropriating
necessities; but now I ask myself if the prospective purchase --
a dress, a pair of earrings, even a trip -- is worth the hours of
my time it took me to get the dollars together. The dollars, you
can hold in your hand and keep or spend; time, you can't," Russell
said.
"You don't know how much time you've been given, and
it's going to go by whether you like it or not. So the calculation
was a real eye-opener. Sometimes I put the dress back and decide
I have one at home that I loved just as much a few months ago and
have hardly worn."
For recreation, Russell loves the ocean. She is a
certified open-water scuba diver and after being under 60 feet,
she decided to take her first sailing lesson last week. "I'm thinking,
maybe it's better to be on the surface," she said laughing.
Russell has disdained age all through her career.
"It's a number, so limiting. It makes me crazy when
people limit women into categories with their age. It makes me want
to pound them to dust," Russell said laughing.
"Just like all anchors," Russell keeps notes and "little
observations on life" and about "men and women." Recently, she incorporated
her thoughts into a book, which materialized after a publisher who
liked her approached her because she does so many things. How
to Win Friends, Kiss A** and Influence People maintains that
you should not let people influence you, you can do more than one
thing, and basically "there is nothing that twenty minutes of Victoria's
Secret can't fix," she said.
"In my book, I just got down and had fun," said Russell
who is not afraid to balance her serious side with humor. "Everyone
has many sides. I can't tell you how many women told me at book
signings that they liked my book because they just needed to hear
from another woman that it was all right to be themselves."
Being in the news business, Russell acknowledges being
"cynical," saying, "I guess it's hard not to be. We are exposed
to some really nasty things" but she admires the style of veteran
reporter Roger Mudd, who used to deliver the news in a completely
unbiased manner.
Russell joined CNN as co-host of The Week in Review
and spent six years on the program before she became an anchor.
As a reporter starting out, Russell had one role model -- Helen
Thomas, the UPI legend who left after 57 years when the wire was
bought by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
"I remember being at a tiny radio station and I would
whip up her stories from the wire and say, 'you go, girl," Russell
said.
Russell logged stints in Jacksonville and Honolulu,
and San Antonio and says, "You can only be a good anchor if you
have been a good reporter. The public knows the difference," she
insists, and she questions "everything" that is handed to her because
she wants to make sure it "sounds accurate to the viewer."
Russell is a journalist because she knows she "can
make a difference."
"People have a fundamental right to know. It is a
privilege to be in a position where I can hand them information,
which is everything. I love that I can go places and get answers
from public officials and demand accountability, where the average
citizen cannot even get a telephone call returned."
"In the case of a privately run, fly-by-night con
game that had been hitting the populace and moving almost too fast
to track, I remember it was necessary to walk right into their office
and begin asking questions and keep asking, while they had the audacity
to call the cops. It's amazing what you can accomplish before the
police arrive," said Russell, laughing.
Russell is independent and individualistic. CNN recently,
asked all the women to wear black for their pictures on the Web
site. Russell did but she added a classy choker of pearls to her
ensemble. There are no candies in this anchor's drawer; her quick
fixes are ginseng and big salads on breaks.
Born in Orange, N.J., Russell moved around quite a
bit. An only child, she stayed very close to her parents as they
moved from Germany to New Mexico and to Colorado. Her father, John
Russell, passed away earlier this summer at the age, of 94 and her
mother, Carmen, 92, is dealing with the blow of losing a partner
of 58 years.
"In all these years with my father, I can't think
of one bad memory or remember any negative things he ever said,
" Russell said. "My mother, however, is not bashful with her comments,"
she added dryly.
She shares a story: "From the time, I was 14 years
old, my hair has been too long, my skirts too short for her. And
once when I was in a program, where my legs were shown, she told
me, 'I don't like opaque black pantyhose."
Russell told her, "then Mama, don't wear them."
| -- Posted: Aug. 17, 2000
