ST. LOUIS — In the world of journalism, Ala Errebhi is in the pursuit of the truth and in her desire to make complicated things easier to understand for her viewers.
California State University Northridge, which is in Southern California, was the setting for Errebhi college years. During her time at CSUN, her got a chance to work in her chosen field. Her first job in the real world was at the college radio station.
Errebhi said that she was tasked with not only playing the music, but also have a half-hour evening update newscast on the weekdays.
“I got to not only help cut sound bites and put things onto the rundown, but also help the students that come in through the program,” she said. “I helped them with their writing and check their scripts before we put them into the rundown.”
Errebhi’s first job outside of college, happened in her home state of Minnesota at KTTC-TV in Rochester. She covered politics in the capital, education, and breaking news. After gaining experience in Minnesota, she moved to Buffalo, where she lived for a little more than two years. During this time, the unexpected start of the pandemic happened.
Errebhi joined the FOX 2 news team from Buffalo, NY, where she worked as a reporter and fill-in anchor at WKBW. She covered breaking news, local news, and COVID.
What is your job?
“Anything that involves numbers and statistics that needs to be simplified down a little bit for the viewer to be able to understand anything that has a lot of jargon,” she said “I really enjoy summarizing and simplifying information so that it’s a little more bite-sized than the average person can understand.”
Errebhi is working on a day side reporting shift now. For the past year and a half, she had been working in the early morning.
Why did you want to be a journalist?
“I always tell people that I decided to be a journalist when I was 15 years old. I took a journalism class, and I loved writing,” she said. “But it started a little bit earlier when I was really young. I used to live in Saudi Arabia because of my dad’s job, and I would watch newscasts like Al Jazeera. It was around the time of the Iraq invasion. I remember watching that on TV; it was live. There are sirens going off, and then suddenly you see these journalists, these reporters out there; it’s just them and their photographer and maybe their truck, and there’s no police around them, no military protecting them.”
Errebhi was impressed by how brave they were and thought they were the bravest people she had ever seen. She was so moved by their unwavering courage that she wanted to be just like them and become a journalist one day.
“People have a right to be informed, and the fact that we are basically the first draft of history is something that I think is very important because when you look back at history, a lot of times you are going to see newspaper clippings and archives of the news reports,” she said. “I feel we are the ones that can reach a larger audience.”
How do you handle work stress?
“I take medicine to help calm me down because I have severe anxiety. I developed that several years ago, and that has really helped, but I also just tell myself every day that no matter if I stress or don’t stress, I’m still going to meet that deadline,” she said.
“I text my mom and dad every day, and we do a video call once or twice a week just to check in and see how things are going and give me updates on my cat that they’re keeping with them now,” she said. “When you get home, make sure that you’re not the journalist anymore. You’re just a regular citizen. You don’t have to worry about the work stuff. Leave work at work.”
Errebhi likes to just sit back and watch TV shows and movies when she is at home. She likes to sometimes rewatch the same movies: all the Harry Potter movies, the Twilight movies, and the Family Guy series.
“When the pandemic happened at my old job, I was under a level of stress that I’d never experienced before. Making deadlines, and having good time management was really important, and it got to a point where I picked up this habit of not having enough time to eat food, so I would just eat my food in 10 minutes,” she said.
She realized it wasn’t a good habit, so she’s been trying to eat more slowly ever since. “I’m still struggling; I still inhale my food every 10 to 15 minutes. But now I’m trying to take it easy. I will eat a little bit, focus on the show, and then eat a little bit again,” she said.
What do you do on your day off?
“I like sleeping late in the morning and eating my breakfast slowly. Sometimes I go out for a drive to get out of the house, maybe grab a coffee from Starbucks,” she said. “I will definitely catch up on some comfort shows.”
“I just really enjoy doing what I do, and it is never a job that feels like a tedious task; I’m showing up to work, I’m doing what I love, and I’m having fun. I do a good job and make sure that I’m being fair.”