Next in our series of profiles of women in Toronto media (we choose them because they tend to be smart and beautiful).
When Tracy Moore, Breakfast Television and Citytv reporter, breezes in to the Second Cup straight off a heavy morning shift of news she still looks like the woman who you’re scared to talk to at a cocktail party.
Not that her intimidating hotness (we’re sorry; we have no other word for it) should be the most important thing about her. Au contraire. She has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario. She has worked for most of the TV broadcasters in town. She’s smart, charming, insightful, and incredibly easy to talk to.
“Ok,” the ex-Montrealer says smiling mischievously, “how honest should I be here? Should I just tell you the total truth and get myself into trouble?”
So here’s the truth according to Tracy Moore. After her Masters, she rose through unglamourous internships at CTV and CBC. “I was a horrible intern,” she admits. “Really timid, and then totally inept with the technical side.” Still, soon CBC taught her to shoot, and she stared reporting. But in 2003, she was quickly off to what was then an exciting new local newscast called Toronto 1 (you remember Toronto 1, right? And the memory makes you cringe, right?) She laughs affectionately about it. “It was fun. But we had bad management, a saturated market, no viewers” and we all got fired!”
Soon after, she was reporting live for Breakfast Television and filing stories for the Citytv newsroom. She’s also the backup anchor for BT and reads regularly on CP24. “Everyone at City has to do every job,” she shrugs. (It’s true. It all goes back to the days when the very frugal Moses Znaimer used to promote the receptionists to on-air positions, and insist that editors know how to shoot and camera operators know how to edit.)
XYYZ spent the better part of an hour talking with Moore about the crisis of American TV news, the CNN-Fox continuum, coverage of the Israel/Lebanon conflict, the saturated Toronto newsmarket, and even her take on the Canadian journalistic sensibility (she thinks we’re too polite and deferential). Finally we ask her where she sees herself in ten years, imagining she’ll answer something about the National or CNN. That’s when she throws us a surprise.
Moore smiles. “I want a gaggle of babies.” Really? “I know it’s so unfashionable to say that,” she laughs deeply, “but I do, I want a ton of babies. My career is great, but I don’t want it to be the only priority in my life!”
Don’t get your hopes up about helping Moore have those babies. This summer she married (and honeymooned in Rome).
At least we get to look at her every day.
