By Javacia Harris Bowser | For the Birmingham Times

For Women’s History Month, The Birmingham Times highlights some of the most watched Black women anchors in our area. These women have dedicated their life’s work to sharing other people’s stories. Now, it’s time to share their stories.

When she has a brief break between broadcasts, Sarah Verser loves to gaze out the window of the WBRC headquarters. Verser’s station, located atop Red Mountain, offers a captivating view of Birmingham — the city she’s called home for more than 30 years.

“I basically grew up in television here,” the Buffalo, New York, native said of the Magic City. “I started in general assignment [in 1989], and I’ve probably worked every newscast except overnights.”

Career Path: Verser began her career reporting for WKBW-TV in Buffalo in the mid-1980s. When she got hired at WBRC about three years later, a mentor in Buffalo urged her to nail down a niche once she arrived.

“He said, ‘People often look for the perfect shop [television station], and you’re not going to find a perfect shop. Just find one thing where you can make a difference,’” she recalled. “One of the things I’ve always been passionate about is education.”

From that passion came her “What’s Right with Our Schools” and “At Your School” segments, which began in 1999 and have earned her honors, including the Alabama Broadcasters Association Best in Broadcasting and the Associated Press Best Specialized Reporter awards.

Through her “What’s Right with Our Schools” series, Verser highlighted the often-overlooked accomplishments of Birmingham area students and teachers.

The long-time anchor is currently on the early evening newscasts each weekday at WBRC. Before moving to those time slots, she was part of the “Good Day Alabama” team for 16 years.

As Verser was preparing to travel to Birmingham to interview for the job with WBRC in 1989, her parents were nervous. In their minds were images from 1963 of children protesting during the Civil Rights Movement and being attacked with water hoses and dogs.

“When I came and I saw how lush and green it was, met the people, and got a chance to see it for myself, I saw hope, I saw promise, I saw progress,” she said.

While many broadcast journalists move from station to station, Verser has stayed in Birmingham for more than three decades, building a lasting legacy along the way.

Asked what she loves the most about Birmingham, her answer is simple: “The people.”

Those people include the community she’s built at her church, Faith Chapel in Birmingham, and connections she’s made by being part of organizations such as the Birmingham Association of Black Journalists and Leadership Birmingham. Some of those people also include her colleagues.

Career Highlights: “I work with an amazing group of people,” Verser said. “Two women lead our newsroom — Shannon Maze is news director and Krystal Swann is assistant news director. Our general manager, Jason Mathews, leads by example, motivating all of us to be better and keep learning. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without their support. We have a great team of anchors, reporters, producers, and managers here, too. I am very proud to be part of this legacy that is WBRC.”

Verser has especially treasured the opportunity to interview legends of the Civil Rights Era, including iconic minister and activist the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth; celebrated clergy Bishop Calvin Woods and the Rev. Abraham Woods Jr.; trailblazing radio personality Shelley Stewart; and renowned Birmingham businessman A.G. Gaston.

“It has been the biggest joy to rub shoulders with actual people who were there,” she said. “It brings tears to my eyes.”

Most Challenging Parts of Her Career: Covering stories that take an emotional toll, such as the tornadoes of April 27, 2011, and the kidnapping and murder of 3-year-old Kamille “Cupcake” McKinney in 2019, Verser said.

“You maintain your composure, but on the inside …,” she said, pausing to take a deep breath.

“I mean, when you think about what was done to her …,” she trailed off, shaking her head.

On Changes in the Media: “Change is inevitable,” Verser said. “You either embrace change or you get left behind. It is an important thing to remember that we’re always learning, and if you’re not learning, what are you doing?”

That said, Verser is leery of some of the ways social media and the Internet have had an impact on journalism.

“Just because you’ve got a camera, a light, and a tripod, and you’re on social media, you’re not a journalist,” she said.  “Journalists have to verify their information.”

On Being a Black Woman in Broadcasting: “Anytime you see a woman and a woman of color, there are challenges,” Verser said. “I think it’s how you see those challenges. I’m a person that doesn’t take ‘no’ very easily. So, I’m going to keep asking. I’m going to keep going. I don’t give up easily.”

On Representation: Verser takes the WBRC slogan “On Your Side” seriously.

“People trust local journalists because we’re in the community,” she said. “We live here, we go to church here, we shop here. It’s our community, too. To be a trusted voice is something that we don’t take for granted.”

And when she’s on set, she feels she represents the Birmingham community.

“I want to make sure I’m giving the best information,” Verser said. “I’m the best part of me when I’m on the set. That’s my neighbor, that’s my family. It’s important that we are that trusted voice and that the people who look to us know we’re not going to lead them in the wrong direction.”

Sarah Verser can be seen on WBRC Fox 6 anchoring the early evening newscasts on weekdays at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., and 6 p.m.

By Javacia Harris Bowser | For the Birmingham Times

For Women’s History Month, The Birmingham Times highlights some of the most watched Black women anchors in our area. These women have dedicated their life’s work to sharing other people’s stories. Now, it’s time to share their stories.

Carla Wade, an evening news anchor at WVTM NBC 13, also served as president of the Birmingham Association of Black Journalists (BABJ), the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). This means Wade is a leader inside and outside the newsroom. There was a time, however, when she thought about being a lawyer or educator — not a journalist.

“I loved to talk, and when I was little, I used to like to play teacher,” she recalled. “Also, several people in my family are educators.”

In high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, she joined the debate team. Her debate coach’s husband, who worked in radio, heard one of Wade’s presentations and thought she’d be a great broadcaster.

She considered the prospect but still decided to major in political science when she attended the University of Oklahoma.

“I really thought it was going to be more interesting than it actually was,” she said of her first field of study.

So, she signed up for a few communications classes and she was hooked.

“I finally just said, ‘I’m just going to go full speed ahead and switch to journalism,’” she remembered.

Career Path: In college, Wade worked for the school newspaper and a local radio station. She also worked part-time at a National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate station based on campus. With the NPR gig, she sharpened her writing and reporting skills and got comfortable covering politics and the courts.

“It gave me a leg up when I got my first job,” she said.

After an internship at a Fox station in Oklahoma City, Wade worked for a station in Lawton, Oklahoma, from 2000 to 2001, a time she called a “humbling experience.”

She often rode around in news vans with no air conditioning, and on the weekends, she both anchored and produced the evening shows.

“I wrote the entire show, and then anchored the show, and also ran a little foot pedal prompter,” she said, describing her operation of a hands-free controller used to manage the scrolling text of a teleprompter.

She answered the phones, too.

In 2001, she took a position as a reporter at a television station in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was later promoted to a morning anchor position.

“I think that position gave me my first experiences navigating newsroom politics,” she said. “When I was starting out as a reporter, you really had to fight for your place in a newsroom. If you wanted to anchor, you had to stand in line. You had to prove yourself.”

Most Challenging Parts of Her Career: Being in broadcast journalism also means navigating changes. When she worked for a station from 2004 to 2009 in Lexington, Kentucky, she dealt with constantly changing news director management, frequent station rebranding, occasional furloughs, and more. While her five years there taught her resilience and gave her the opportunity to work with a very talented team, she also wondered how much she could have grown in a more stable environment.

In a situation like that, she said, “You’re not spending time perfecting your craft, learning how to be a better reporter, working on your camera presence. You’re just every day in survival mode.”

And when she worked in Dallas, Texas, from 2013 to 2016, changes in the station’s ownership led to her being let go.

Career Highlights: The toughest stories Wade has ever covered are the ones that have reminded her about why she does the work of broadcast journalism. Whether covering the aftermath of a tornado outbreak or a shooting, “very often, we’re there in people’s worst moments,” she said.

During her time working in Las Vegas, Nevada, Wade helped with coverage of the 2017 shooting at a country music festival. A lone gunman opened fire, killing 59 people and injuring hundreds.

“Nobody ever expects to have to cover something that big,” she said. “When things of that magnitude happen, you’re definitely in a role of not just providing information to the public but also being that voice to say, ‘We’re going to get through this together.’”

While Wade sought to give viewers some means of comfort, for her, it was personal.

“It was a moment in my life when I felt like I was able to come full circle, because my dad was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing [of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh in 1995],” Wade said. “The media at that time in Oklahoma City performed that function [of providing information and comfort] for a lot of us in that community. In Vegas, I felt like [I was] in that position to give back some of what I got from seeing how the journalists handled that magnitude of a situation.”

“I felt I hit my groove as a journalist during my years in Las Vegas, [from 2016 to 2019],” she went on to say. “I was nominated for five regional Emmy Awards and won three of them. It gave me my confidence back after things not working out the way I wanted in Dallas.”

On Changes in the Media: “I like the idea of going toward this era of more transparency about how we’re telling the stories, how we’re getting the stories,” Wade said. “I also like the era of being more authentic.”

More stations are allowing their journalists to be themselves, she said: “I started my career at a time when you were trying to be all buttoned up, sound a certain way, and look a certain way. I was 20 years old, dressed like a 45-year-old woman with a bob. I am so glad those days are over. I am much happier that people are allowed to be more of their authentic selves in how they deliver and report the news.”

Wade is concerned, however, about some of the changes in the media landscape brought on by technology.

“I have concerns about how much the level of trust in media has dropped,” she said. “With so much technology and with [artificial intelligence (AI)], all of these different things make it so easy to distort information. Some people don’t really seem to be able to discern good information from bad information or know how to evaluate sources.”

Wade also worries about the financial barriers that keep some people of color from entering the field of journalism.

“I’m very concerned that it’s getting harder and harder for people who are younger to be able to pursue this career just because the pay hasn’t really kept up with the times, and then they’re being asked to do more and more, and they’re burning out so quickly,” Wade said. “My mom was paying some of my bills for almost five or six years of my career. If I didn’t have a mother who could do that, I don’t know if I would have been able to last as long.”

On Being a Black Woman in Broadcasting: Though Wade believes things have improved immensely, there was a time when being Black and being a woman in broadcasting was especially difficult because the business can be so subjective.

“News directors would tell you, point blank, ‘I like you, but I think you need to lose about 10 pounds,’” she said. “Somebody might get more opportunity just because they’re prettier than you, or somebody might get more opportunity just because they’re white.”

On Representation: While Wade believes that NABJ is an important organization because it helps Black journalists cultivate community and advocates for journalists of color, she says NABJ matters because representation matters. She still remembers attending her first NABJ convention in Las Vegas a few years into her career. She went to the career fair and saw standing before her a big room full of Black journalists.

“You can’t be what you can’t see, right?” she said. “And it wasn’t until this moment that I realized how many of us are in the trenches in these newsrooms every day. … Seeing everybody all dressed up and looking good, polished, and professional, it just makes you feel good.”

Carla Wade can be seen on WVTM NBC 13 anchoring the evening news shows on weekdays at 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 10 p.m

By Javacia Harris Bowser | For the Birmingham Times

Muriel Bailey knew she wanted to be a broadcast journalist before she fully understood the career.

“Growing up, every morning, getting ready for school my mom would have the news on and there was a Black woman who was a morning anchor,” said the New Orleans, Louisiana, native who currently serves as an evening anchor for WBMA ABC 33/40. “One day [that morning anchor] came to our school, and I was sitting there thinking, ‘I want to be like her. I want to do what she does.’”

For Women’s History Month, The Birmingham Times highlights some of the most watched Black women anchors in our area. These women have dedicated their life’s work to sharing other people’s stories. Now, it’s time to share their stories.

Bailey said her parents encouraged her aspirations. In fact, her father, the late Steven Bailey, would call her “Channel 6,” she said.

“He would say, ‘If anything happens, ask her. She’s gonna know. She’s gonna tell you everything that happened. She’s gonna explain it to you. That’s little Channel 6 right there.’”

While attending Northwestern State University of Louisiana (NSULA), Bailey learned that journalism could be more than simply sharing information.

“I started to realize you can be a voice for people,” she said.

Career Path: Bailey graduated from NSULA in 2008, at a time when getting a job on-air was nearly impossible. So, she became an associate producer at a station in her hometown and worked a second job in customer service at a local supermarket. She said it was hard not to get discouraged and give up on her dream — but she stuck with it.

In 2011, Bailey relocated to Dothan, Alabama, where she worked as a reporter, producer, and fill-in anchor for WTVY News 4.

“The move to Dothan was for me to get comfortable on air, to learn the foundation of reporting, to make my mistakes and just get my feet wet,” she said, adding that her time in Dothan also taught her how to build relationships with her colleagues.

As a morning reporter for WAFF 48 in Huntsville, Alabama, a job she started in 2013, Bailey had the chance to sharpen her live-shot skills.

“I perfected it,” she said. “I could go live, drop of a dime, with little information, and I could give you a whole live hit.”

Bailey moved to Mobile, Alabama, in 2015 to serve as a nightside reporter and fill-in anchor for WPMI NBC 15 News. Here, Bailey not only got comfortable anchoring but also learned how to handle breaking news and busy nights.

“Mobile taught me how to move fast,” she said, “how to put that package together in little to no time and be ready for the live shot, and how to be versatile.”

Bailey came to Birmingham in 2019 to begin her tenure at ABC 33/40, first as a weekend anchor. She was promoted to evening anchor in 2021.

“I feel like my trajectory, the flow of my career, really helped build me to this point,” she said. “Every move, every position, every station, I got something from it that made me better.”

Career Highlights: In 2024, Bailey won an Emmy Award for her work on ABC 33/40’s program on Alabama’s medical marijuana industry.

“It was a group effort,” she said of the package. “I’m not doing this for the awards. I’m not coming in every day, beating the pavement, doing interviews, or doing any of this because I want an award at the end of the year, but the Emmy was great! It made me really excited, really happy, and really grateful for the moment. It feels good to be acknowledged for your hard work.”

On Changes in the Media: Bailey worries that today’s young journalists aren’t getting the same experience that helped to shape her. Post-pandemic, the broadcast media landscape began to shift, she explained, and it became easier for students to get higher ranking roles fresh out of college.

“I always try to tell aspiring journalists, ‘Don’t jump too high, too fast,’” she said. “You don’t want to get eaten alive, and then you end up getting out of the business.”

Most Challenging Parts of Her Career: Learning to turn off her New Orleans accent when on air was tough. Bailey would record herself reading scripts and then listen to the recording to critique her pronunciation of each word.

On Being a Black Woman in Broadcasting: “There was a time when I felt at certain stations in certain points in my life that there could only be one Black woman anchor or one Black reporter,” she said. “Even when I would apply somewhere, I would look at their team, and if I saw they already had one or two Black women, I would be hesitant to apply because you would never see a station where there were a lot of us. … That made you feel like there’s room for only one or two Black women.”

Fortunately, things have changed, Bailey said: “Now you might see three Black women anchors [at the same station] and you can see Black women meteorologists. Now you see several of us and that’s so good!”

On Representation: “Representation matters,” Bailey said. “You can get inspired by other people who don’t look like you, but when you see someone who looks like you who’s doing something you want to do, it makes it real to you. You think, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’”

Along with getting people the information they need and being an advocate for people who feel they don’t have a voice, another rewarding part of Bailey’s job is being the same type of representation that long ago motivated her to get into the business.

“If I go to a school, the young Black kids are so excited to see me,” she said. “I get a lot of messages from parents saying, ‘My daughter loves watching you.’ The same way I was inspired, now I can do that.”

Muriel Bailey can be seen on WBMA ABC 33/40 anchoring the evening newscasts on weekdays at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., and 10 p.m.