Southampton Native Headed To The New York Emmy Awards

Sarah Hagen has never been the bashful type.

Present day, the proof is in the Southampton native’s on-camera spots as a News 12 Connecticut reporter and anchor. But years ago, judging from the days’ worth of home videos now stored in the family attic, anyone could tell she was destined for television.

In one recently discovered tape, the then 9-year-old Ms. Hagen lined up her dolls as an audience and proceeded, for hours, with “non-stop Sarah doing Sarah,” her mother, Dawn Brennan Hagen, recalled during an interview at a relative’s house in Water Mill last month along with Ms. Hagen, her father, Jim, and his wife, Linda.

“I’m dong the camera work,” Ms. Brennan Hagen said. “Then you see the camera going down on a table while she’s doing her thing. You hear me moving away and she goes, ‘Excuse me, Mom! What are you ... Get back here! How could you do that?’”

Ms. Hagen blushed slightly and mockingly slapped her palm against her forehead.

“What can I say,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve been practicing for 26 years.”

“I’d say to Jim, ‘She’s going someplace,’” Linda Hagen piped in. “‘I don’t know where it is.’”

No one in the family could have guessed that, on April 1, Ms. Hagen’s journey would lead her to the 55th annual New York Emmy Awards. And Ms. Hagen—who plans to wear a simple, classic, long red dress—has four nominations.

“It’s my first time going for them, and so far, so good,” Ms. Hagen said of submitting to the Emmy Awards. “It’s not a win, but close enough.”

“We don’t know yet!” Mr. Hagen said. “She never ceases to amaze me.”

Ms. Hagen joined the News 12 team about a year ago. She is nominated for on-camera talent as a general assignment reporter and received three nods for individual packages: an arts news piece on a photographer who took pictures of American flags across the country, an arts program feature/segment about a graffiti park in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and an entertainment program feature/segment on the blind film critic Tommy Edison.

“For the on-camera talent, the big concept was movement,” Ms. Hagen explained. “Not standing still, not falling into the statue pose that reporters sometimes fall into. Just being a little dynamic and movement.”

In the nominated arts program feature/segment, “Graffiti Park,” Ms. Hagen catches a spray paint can tossed to her during her stand-up, which is the portion of a broadcast news story when the reporter is seen on camera.

“All those years of Little League paid off,” Linda Hagen said.

“It took a couple takes,” the reporter added.

“It makes Sarah so unique with her reporting, Sarah with her drama,” her stepmother said. “You make it look so easy, but you worked hard to get there.”

Journalism wasn’t a path Ms. Hagen always knew she wanted to take. Before graduating from Southampton High School in 2004, she sat down with her English Language Arts teacher, Dr. Barry Raebeck, for some last-minute guidance.

“We were like, ‘What would I be good at?’” she said, emphasizing “good” by animatedly throwing her arms out in front of her. “‘Please help me figure out my future.’ He just kinda mentioned, ‘What about news and the news business?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I guess I could be good at that. Yeah, let’s try that.’”

She did. After taking a Journalism 101 class at James Madison University in Virginia, she fell in love, she said. In 2007, she worked as a reporter for WVVH-TV Hamptons Television and interviewed celebrities, such as Kelly Ripa, and other notables, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

And on graduation day a year later, CNN called.

“Maybe that was the, ‘This is my break. This is my chance,’ moment” said Ms. Hagen, who was hired as a news assistant and researcher soon after. “That was pretty cool.”

Her next career move was something of a sacrifice and a major culture shock, Ms. Hagen said. She moved to Potsdam, New York, to work as a one-man-band general assignment reporter for the television news network YNN.

“It was just, get out of your bubble,” she recalled. “Going from growing up in the Hamptons, my first job in New York City and now I’m going to go live on the Canadian border in negative-20-degree temperatures and the nearest airport is three hours away. It was awakening. This is a fairy-tale land out here sometimes. We need to go out and see the real world.”

The reporter saw, firsthand, the direct effects of the recent economic downturn. Instead of walking a thriving Main Street populated with designer boutiques in Southampton, she noted that half of Potsdam’s downtown stores were boarded up and the other half were just scraping by.

Living in the country, Ms. Hagen brushed up on her wilderness survival skills, she said. She kept her car fully stocked with snacks and water, in case she got lost in the snow, and learned how to ward off predators.

“She calls me and she’s like, ‘What do I do if there’s a bear?’” Ms. Brennan Hagen said. “So I looked through the survival book and it says, ‘Stand up and put your arms up and say, ‘Go away bear!’ She goes, ‘Mom, I don’t think that’s going to work.’ And I said, ‘That’s what it says in the book.’”

The family bursted into laughter.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to get eaten by a bear,’” Ms. Hagen said, collecting herself. “There’s no joke, there’s bears here. And when I had all my gear, I couldn’t run.”

But, fortunately, Ms. Hagen never did see a bear, she said.

After nine months in Potsdam, she finished out her two-year contract at the network’s bureau in Rome, New York, before moving to Norwalk, Connecticut, where she now lives.

“It’s a step from Potsdam. She’s had a chance to grow from the one-man-band to now she has the whole orchestra with her,” Linda Hagen said.

“Live truck every night,” Ms. Hagen said, referring to an on-location satellite truck that follows her to a story and allows her to broadcast it live from the scene. “It’s a different ball game, of sorts.”

Being in front of the camera is the best part of the job, Ms. Hagen said. And though she is far from being shy, Ms. Hagen said she still feels that rush of nervous excitement right before stepping in front of the camera.

“I think everybody who’s been in show business has that feeling,” Mr. Hagen said. “It doesn’t matter how many times you do it.”

“And if you don’t, I think there’s something wrong,” Ms. Hagen added. “That’s what is great about it. That’s why you want to be on camera. That little feeling you get right before you’re on.”