Tully Is Hired by NBC is the turning point at which Tully’s long pursuit of television journalism carries her from Seattle to New York. A childhood declaration inspired by a pioneering woman anchor becomes a network job, fulfilling a dream built through study, persistence, and an appetite for work. The breakthrough opens a new professional world, but its early rewards come with punishing hours and a career that keeps expanding its demands.

The Dream and Its Preparation

Tully’s ambition takes shape in the Mularkeys’ home. Watching the news, Mrs. Mularkey points to Jean Enersen as one of the first women to anchor a nightly news program. Tully responds by announcing that she will become a reporter. The moment joins a career aspiration to the experience of being welcomed into a family: Tully feels how different her life might have been had she grown up with such support, and Mr. Mularkey encourages her declaration. Journalism is not simply a job she wants; it becomes a way to imagine a future beyond abandonment.

The phrase “The next Jean Enersen” later becomes Tully’s private mantra. She understands her dream as a force that has changed her, giving direction to a life she had understood through loss. Her correspondence with Mrs. Mularkey assures her that the older woman is proud, while Kate shares the ambition. Tully imagines the two friends as a reporting team, pursuing stories and writing them up together. The dream is therefore both individual and relational: a route to professional recognition, and a future she pictures alongside her closest friend.

At the University of Washington, Tully turns that aspiration into a deliberate course of preparation. She studies communications, reads at least four newspapers a day, and watches as many newscasts as she can, determined to be ready when a major opportunity arrives. She consults her School of Communications adviser repeatedly as she tries to plan her studies. Yet her youth limits her access to upper-level broadcasting and journalism classes; institutional rules leave her waiting, a situation she admits does not come naturally to her.

By the end of her sophomore year, Tully has taken Chad Wiley’s Broadcast Journalism I and II courses and committed herself completely to the work he assigns. She hopes that his judgment will bring the recognition she has been seeking, particularly an opportunity at KVTS. Instead, while she reads the news from a teleprompter, Chad offers brief criticism and moves on to the next student. The delay sharpens the contrast between her readiness to work and her lack of control over when established gatekeepers will give her a chance.

The NBC Opportunity

The opening arrives in 1988, after Tully has spent months trying to remain patient and has nearly lost hope by the end of May. She is working as a replacement anchor when, after a broadcast, she returns to her office and answers a call from Dick Emerson, NBC’s vice president of programming in New York. He understands that she wants to move up to the networks and tells her that an early-morning program needs a general-assignment reporter. He will be interviewing nearly fifty candidates, making clear that the offer is an invitation to compete rather than a guarantee.

Tully accepts the challenge without hesitation. Emerson arranges to have a ticket sent and his secretary organize accommodation and interview details; Tully responds that the arrangements are perfectly acceptable and promises not to disappoint him. His closing request that she pass along greetings to Johnny Ryan indicates that he already knows of her connection to the news producer. The call turns an abstract ambition into a concrete next step: a network interview, a journey to New York, and a place in a crowded field of candidates.

The account presents the eventual hiring as the culmination of that transition. Tully arrives in New York with new NBC business cards, carrying them as she explores a city whose scale and activity astonish her. During her first two weeks she chooses a neighborhood, finds an apartment, and learns to use the subways. The practical work of establishing a life there accompanies the emotional charge of reaching the place she had imagined. She is on her own, but her excitement about the job keeps solitude from defining the move.

Learning the Network Trade

Tully’s first experience inside NBC confirms that she is drawn to the work itself, not only to the prestige of the network. She wakes at two-thirty in the morning to reach the studio by four, earlier than her duties require, because she wants to observe and help. She studies Jane Pauley’s movements and mannerisms, treating an established anchor’s performance as a lesson in a profession she still hopes to master.

Her title, general-assignment reporter, describes a junior position rather than immediate prominence. She contributes pieces to other people’s stories and expects to wait for a substantial assignment. The possible first stories she imagines are deliberately modest, even inconsequential ones; she sees them as dues to pay before she can take on work that matters more. Watching Pauley and Bryant Gumbel makes the distance between her position and theirs plain, but it also supplies a model for the advancement she wants. Tully’s confidence in her eventual performance coexists with an awareness that she still has much to learn.

That learning takes place amid upheaval on the morning show. The appearance of Deborah Norville in a publicity photograph with Pauley and Gumbel fuels claims that Norville is displacing Pauley, and the resulting controversy spreads beyond the network. Tully stays clear of the gossip, concentrating instead on the work and on the possibility of earning a replacement opportunity on NBC News at Sunrise. She imagines further advancement from there, toward the Today show and a larger career. Her response reveals a consistent strategy: when the institution around her is unsettled, she tries to make her own effort more dependable than the noise.

Work, Distance, and the Cost of Success

The NBC job makes Tully’s ambition tangible while narrowing the time available for other parts of life. Eighteen-hour workdays leave little room for a personal life. She nevertheless sustains her bond with Kate across the distance, speaking with her at least twice a week, and calls Mrs. Mularkey every Sunday. In those conversations, she shares accounts of work pressure, celebrity encounters, and Manhattan life; Kate and the Mularkays tell her about their new house, a planned spring trip, and Kate’s pregnancy, which is progressing well. The calls preserve a sense of shared life even as Tully’s working world moves east.

The pattern of demanding hours persists beyond her first NBC position. Years later, Tully recalls that she has been rising around three-thirty in the morning for work since almost her first day in New York. Moving to CBS adds afternoon meetings to the early broadcasts, and increased fame and income do not slow her pace. Instead, each new opportunity makes her want more and fear losing what she has gained, driving her to accept a wide range of appearances and assignments. This later career does not erase the significance of the NBC breakthrough; it shows how the pursuit of advancement can become self-reinforcing.

Significance

Tully’s hiring at NBC fulfils the ambition planted when she first saw Jean Enersen represented as evidence that a woman could anchor the news. The path is not a single stroke of luck: it passes through self-directed study, restricted access to advanced classes, disappointment in Chad Wiley’s classroom, competition for a network opening, and a junior reporter’s willingness to arrive early and learn. The opportunity validates her persistence while establishing that entry into the network is only a beginning.

The event also binds career to belonging. Tully’s dream takes root in a home where the Mularkeys respond warmly to her declaration, and she continues to maintain those ties through regular calls after moving to New York. Yet the future she once pictured with Kate as a fellow reporter unfolds alongside a schedule that keeps Tully intensely occupied. NBC gives her the professional platform she sought, but the developing pattern of overwork foreshadows the tension between public achievement, personal connection, and the fear of losing success.