Search

"Stay above water, stay hungry, and take a deep breath. You’ll get there."

Meredith Dean
Jul 20, 2015
9 min read

Inside Edition correspondent Steven Fabian has done more than you could ever imagine in his reporting career. He has covered the Ebola Crisis, drug war in Juarez, Neo Nazi investigations, kicked a shark in the nose, and even met Grumpy Cat! See what advice he has for young professionals starting our their own careers:

1. What's your story? What makes you unique?

I had a Spanish class in 10th grade where I often felt like some of the multiple choice answers on the tests could go either way. So when we'd go over the tests after getting our grades, I'd often argue on behalf of the whole class that we should really get points for all sorts of what I thought were debatable answers. Sometimes I'd get shut down, but sometimes it would work, and sometimes maybe would bump everyone up a letter grade. The teacher was always marveled (and surely very annoyed) that this was actually happening, and working!, in her classroom and one day claimed, "Steven, I have a feeling you're going to grow up to become a politician, a used car salesman, or you're going to be on TV." I don't know much about cars, and my political reign ended after a 1-year stint as senior class president. So, here I am. I grew up with a VHS camera in my hands and was lucky enough to have a phenomenal TV productions program at my high school where I got my start. In college, I got my hands on everything and anything media related and from there ventured into a challenging quest for a full-time gig in the industry. To pay the bills I bartended and waited tables, sold baby clothes and strollers (for real!) and took a lot of freelance TV opportunities that were often times for no or very little pay, but all the while busting my butt to try to break into broadcast. Channel One News came calling in 2008, and it's been one thing to the next ever since. I wasn’t so sure about it at the time, but maybe my Spanish teacher was right after all.

2. What motivates you?

New challenges. Keeping the mindset of “yeah, I can do that.” I’ve had so many different jobs and each had their own unique blend of responsibilities that I feel like I’m comfortable being thrust into any role, story, or crazy assignment. When I worked for “Channel One News,” it was catering day-of news and feature stories to a nationwide teenage audience of six-million in an easy to understand, relatable fashion; but also it meant covering the drug war in Juarez and an investigation into Neo Nazis in the US and in Germany – scary stuff. Going from there to “RightThisMinute,” it was all ad-libbing, off-the-cuff style discussion about any and all videos from the internet. This meant interacting with a panel, timing comments and jokes so they have the biggest impact, and going completely off-script because there wasn’t one. Now at “Inside Edition,” you can’t predict what I’ll be thrown into every day. One afternoon in the fall, I was hanging out with Grumpy Cat in studio and shooting a segment with a baby lion and tiger, and less than a day later I was in Ferguson to cover the rioting and unrest. I was on my way back from LaGuardia when the airplane skidded off the runway, and later that night I was en route to Maine to meet a lobster scientist trapped on an island by ice. You have to conduct interviews with experts on the biker gang war in Waco, and then facetime with a couple in Hawaii who had their wedding flooded. Just last week I crawled through a 24-inch pipe, similar to the one the escaped convicts used to flee the prison, to see if I’d fit. While I feel like I’ve been in this industry for what can be considered a fair amount of time, there are still many times I say to myself: “well, I’ve never done THIS before.” But I like that. I like the challenge of going into something, figuring out your own way to do things, and seeing how far it can go.

3. Who is a hero of yours?

I wouldn’t be anywhere without my mom (or as she is more affectionately called, mum.) My parents split up when I was in grade school, and I have two sisters who are way older than me who were away in college, so for a long time it was just my mum and me in the house living together. Admittedly, I’ve always been a bit of a mama’s boy but those years made us very close. She actually was a journalist herself; she was a feature writer for the now defunct Pittsburgh Press. And it pains me to say, she had to give up her career when I came along. Growing up, my mum was not only so very supportive and loving and understanding, but she also let me do pretty much whatever I wanted around the house. If I wanted to shut down the living room for hours on a weekend so my junior high friends and I could film a makeshift pro-wrestling show, she’d camp out in the kitchen like a hostage so not to interrupt the “broadcast.” (Boy, those VHS tapes would be quite the blackmail now.) Or, she’d drive me all over the tri-state area for a travel junior Olympic volleyball team that I played for, sometimes having to deal with storms, snow, and annoying teen teammates. If you ask her now, she’d say that she probably “should have told me no more often,” but in some way, she opened a door for me to think that anything is possible. She did whatever she could do to help me chase my dreams, to help me think that I can do anything I put my mind to, and if I didn’t have that attitude today I probably would have given up on a job in television when I was 23 and selling those baby strollers. She’s done so much for me that it’s hard to put in writing. On top of that, she often corrects my grammar so much that I’m nervous about there being errors in this writing, and she always tells me to “watch yourself” – which I think is pretty funny. If I ever get invited to an awards show, I have a long-standing promise that she’ll be my date. Fingers crossed.

4. What's your future plan? Your goals?

I’m at my best when I’m at my busiest. I don’t do well with idle time. So, while hopefully continuing a career in television and working on stories that compel viewers in a relatable way, I’d also like to branch out into other mediums. I’d love to do more live audience work, I’m working on developing a weekly podcast with a friend about our hometown baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I have an athletically-focused venture that I’m keeping under wraps – and if I pull it off, it would be a total shocker. As for TV goals, I’ve never been a fan of falling into the common roles of your standard news or entertainment reporter, where you can easily fall into a cookie cutter trap of “a person on TV” – the voice, the dress, the way things are produced. It sounds kind of silly, but I try hard to just BE MYSELF while on the air. I’ve had an eclectic background, and it’s definitely not your standard TV news track, but it’s worked out for me so far. So while I’m always going to be learning and growing in this business, I think it’s important to stay true to yourself. Where the path goes from here is a total mystery, but that’s the exciting part.

5. If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?

I’ll answer this with my best attempt to not sound so preachy. For young people looking for that first job, in today’s world it’s very easy to feel like you deserve something just for graduating college. The attitude you may have is “well, I’ve got my diploma in hand, a base knowledge of a certain subject, and tons of followers on facebook, twitter, and instagram – now where’s my job?” I made the mistake of feeling that way for a period of time in my early 20’s, I can tell you in full confidence that it’s the totally wrong attitude. The years immediately after college are some of the toughest ones you’ll ever have; you can ask for advice from the smartest and most successful people in your field but in reality, no one can definitively tell you: this is what you have to do to get the job you really want. As scary as it seems, you have to figure it out on your own and prove to someone out there that you’re worth it. I tell young people all the time – there is no shame in taking a part time job after school to make some money while you figure things out for your career – I did it. That’s what the years after college are like. Not everyone jumps directly from cap and gown to their dream job, and if you don’t have something lined up immediately once you’re handed your diploma, it’s not the end of the world. It’s fine! There’s no blueprint on getting you from college grad to CEO. You have to make your own way. You may really feel like you’re deserving of something because of all the amazing things I’m sure you’ve already accomplished in your life, you may feel sorry things aren’t going according to plan, but keep in mind THERE IS NO PLAN. Sure, you will have friends who will seem like they have it all figured out, that their plan is in place. But keep in mind this corny analogy that I often think about: sometimes that duck gliding along so smoothly on the surface, is feverishly kicking its legs to stay afloat. Stay above water, stay hungry, and take a deep breath. You’ll get there.

6. What is something you feel strongly about (a cause, belief, etc.)?

I wish I had some better insight on this one, but instead I'll give this a shot. No matter what, we're all just trying to be happy in this life. We can all agree on that, I hope. While the absolute secret to an infinitely happy life is still yet to be determined, I think the first step is realizing that it's 100% impossible to have it all. You can't. I know that's kind of a bummer of a thing to say, but it's true. There's so much 'fear of missing out' nowadays that it's easy to forget about the happy things you have in your life and start taking them for granted.

So, I've sort of made up a little system in the past couple years, and it's worked for me. On a very basic level, I believe there are five things in your life that can combine to help make you happy.

1 - living in a place you want to be

2 - having friends and family nearby

3 - a loving relationship

4 - a job that challenges you and you enjoy

5 - a job that pays you handsomely

Now take a look at that list. How many do you have? Keep in mind, in my very unscientific research on this, no one has them all (especially the nearly impossible combo of #4 and #5). And if someone is telling you they DO have them all, they don't. They're liars. You might look at that list and think "dang, well I've only got two!" But, the point here is.. that's okay! You have to look at the things on that list you do have, appreciate them every day, and stay working towards checking off another. And in doing so, you might have to uncheck something you already had, but that's okay too. Giving things up is part of it all. That’s how this works.

At the same time the five things on my list don’t necessarily have to be your five things. They’ve worked for me, but everyone’s different. If that’s the case, be 100% honest with yourself and come up with your own list of what you have and what you want. But just remember, we can’t ever have it all – you’ll stress yourself out trying. I’m usually not a fan of people who quote song lyrics, but I’m just going to go ahead and do it here because man this one is so on point with argument. Plus, who doesn’t like Bob Seger – get real. The guy once wrote: “He wants to dream like a young man // With the wisdom of an old man // He wants his home and security // He wants to live like a sailor at sea // Beautiful loser // Where you gonna fall? // When you realize, you just can't have it all.”

Enjoy what you have.