COM graduate, CBS anchor advises students to be flexible, authentic

From covering the dot-com bubble to Hurricane Katrina, Boston University alumna Erica Hill said that no two days in her career as an on-screen reporter have been the same.

“One of the things I love is that it’s different every day,” she said in an interview with the College of Communication. “It’s a gift to be on the front lines of everything.”

Hill, co-anchor of “The Early Show” on CBS, returned to BU on Thursday, as an honoree of the Distinguished Alumni Awards, held by the College of Communication at 7 p.m. in the Burke Club Room in Agganis Arena.

“When I first received the [honoree] email, I thought it was a joke,” Hill said at the ceremony, upon accepting her award.

Hill received her award, along with COM alumni Samantha Swindler, Shauna Brook and Travis Roy, and spoke of the “foundation” BU gave her.

“BU gave me a foundation for telling stories, for telling them well,” she said.

COM Dean Tom Fiedler described Hill’s career path as “a little bit of a roundabout route,” from her days as a assistant producer at “PC Week Radio” to her morning show on CBS. Fiedler said she has gained recognition for reporting on technology, national conflicts and international issues, including a series on CBS about Kenya’s refugee camps for starving Somalis.

“I think [the series] is the kind of reporting that exemplifies some of the people who are serious about what they do,” Fiedler said.

Hill’s accomplishments stem from her parents’ encouragement, she said. Hill brought her mother to the award ceremony. Her father, who passed away a year and a half ago, emphasized the value of education.

“They told [their children] ‘there’s nothing you can’t do, but you have to work for it,’” Hill said.

They supported her endeavors, she said, from studying abroad for a year while in high school to pursuing a degree in Communication.

Although Hill studied broadcast journalism at BU, she said she did not intend for a career on screen. In the summer before her senior year, she interned in New York for “The Evening News” on CBS. With help from professor Sasha Norkin, Hill said she worked through her last semester at a paid internship for PC Week. After graduation, she worked as production assistant for “PC Week Radio,” the magazine’s online news radio station.

“I was 22 the summer after I graduated from BU,” Hill said in an interview. “I was lost…I didn’t know what to do. I did know that if I was going to go into TV news, that I wanted to be a producer.”

Hill said her first encounter with on-screen reporting was at TechTV, now the G4 network. Her employers asked her to try running a segment, as she was already at the studio early enough for her current work.

“I found out that I liked it, and it came naturally to me,” Hill said.

Hill said that the networks where she has worked, including CNN, have defied the stereotype of the brutal, captious broadcast journalism industry.

“There’s so much talk about how broadcast news especially is cutthroat,” she said. “The people I’ve worked with are incredibly encouraging and supportive people. They want to see their entire network succeed, and they want to see the younger people succeed and journalism continue.”

In her last year at CNN, Hill worked weekdays as a news anchor and correspondent for “Anderson Cooper 360” and a substitute anchor for Cooper and Campbell Brown, according to the biography. She served as a news anchor for the Saturday edition of “The Early Show” on CBS, taking a full-time job as co-anchor of the show in November 2010.

Hill said her career path she learned to embrace the unexpected turns her career path took.

“It’s great to have a focus on something, but you don’t want to be so rigid in your focus to the point where you’re limiting your possibilities,” Hill said.

Hill gave similar advice to students at Studio East when she visited COM Thursday afternoon. During the visit, she showed video clips of herself on the job and recalled how she progressed as a reporter, starting with her education at BU.

“There’s a certain way to write for television, and I learned that at BU,” she said in the interview. “When you work in TV news, the picture tells the story. It’s amazing how that’s almost been lost. That’s something that was drilled into my head.”

Hill reiterated throughout her visit was the importance of remaining true to oneself.

“Be authentic. Be who you are…because people see right through them,” she said.