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Pauley keeps a tight lid on details of her family life, partly for security reasons, partly because of a determination to shield her children from the public spotlight. But there is another, more philosophical consideration. "To the degree that your family becomes part of your image," she says, "it becomes less real. Someone once referred to my family as 'authentic.' One of the reasons it's authentic is that there's no confusion between the Trudeaus and the Cosby kids. I am very sensitive to the fact that there's a certain imagemaking attendant to my career. I don't want my family to become part of my public persona. It is real."
Pauley's early life was as real as it gets. She grew up in Indianapolis, the daughter of a milk salesman who traveled half the time (though, she says, "I mostly remember him being home"). In high school Jane was a six-time loser for homecoming queen but a whiz at extemporaneous speaking. Her toughest rival in statewide competitions was another future TV star: actress Shelley Long.
At Indiana University, Pauley majored in political science and participated in a decorous student walkout during Founder's Day ceremonies, in protest against a proposed tuition increase. She remembers the incident chiefly for the distress it caused her staunch Republican parents: "It was a very low moment for my father." Nor were her parents thrilled when, after graduating from college a semester early, she went to work for John Lindsay's 1972 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, then for the state Democratic Central Committee. "Mom was mad at me all summer," she says. "My father was at least pleased that I was gainfully employed."
By Election Day Pauley had her first TV job: as a reporter at WISH-TV, the Indianapolis CBS affiliate. She specialized in farm stories, anchored a Saturday-night newscast, and found herself the butt of jokes by a local radio personality named David Letterman. After three years at the station, she caught the eye of executives at Chicago's WMAQ-TV, who were looking for someone to co-anchor the evening news. A few days after her audition, Pauley got a call from the station's news director, offering her the job and a salary more than triple what she was making. Recalls Pauley: "He said, 'By the way, what are you making now?' I told him. There was silence at the end of the phone. Then he said, 'Don't ever tell anybody that.' "
Her year in Chicago was not easy. The critics were nasty (one said she had "the IQ of a cantaloupe") and fellow reporters skeptical. "I was all too fair game," she says. "I was the first woman to anchor an evening newscast, and I was practically a college coed." A former staff member at WMAQ remembers, "She didn't know the first thing about reporting. But her on- camera presence was incredible."
Ratings were low, and her days at the station seemed numbered when NBC asked her to audition for the job of Barbara Walters' successor on the Today show. The candidates constituted a virtual Who's Who of women in broadcasting, including Cassie Mackin, Linda Ellerbee and Betty Rollin. "I assumed I was there as a courtesy," says Pauley. Improbably, she won the job. "I was very impressed with her poise," says former NBC News president Richard Wald, now at ABC. "Jane looks like somebody you would meet in your neighborhood but who is just a little smarter and more articulate, so that you look up to her."