LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The son of a woman who broke barriers in the journalism industry visited the WHAS11 archives on Monday, and it took him down memory lane.
Jim Sciutto's mother, Liz Sciutto, worked at WHAS-TV in 1951. The station hired her right out of school, and she became the first female film editor in Louisville.
The late Milton Metz, of WHAS-TV & Radio, also believed she was the first female film editor in the country at that time.
“I’m imagining that she would have touched some of these film canisters right here, and might have done some editing [on] this little machine behind me,” Jim said while looking at the historical films.
At the time, Channel 11 was only a year old. He says, “It makes me feel like I'm keeping her alive a little bit.”
Jim, at age 54, is doing just that.
He spent 13 years at ABC News, joining the network at age 27 as a foreign correspondent under the late legendary anchor Peter Jennings. Later, he worked with Louisville’s Diane Sawyer, anchoring “World News Tonight” after Jennings died.
Now, Sciutto is at CNN as an anchor and the chief national security analyst.
So how does Jim say the metro's name?
“Lou ah vull, of course! I’m smart enough to know that. It’s funny, when Louisville’s been in the news and my colleagues on CNN will say Lou-eee-ville, I’ll always correct them. 'That’s Lou-ah-vull Kentucky.'” He said with a big laugh.
Jim was born in New York, but his mother was all Louisville.
“We came back a couple of times a year, we spent Christmas here a lot," he said. "I grew up going and swimming at Lakeside.”
Liz graduated from Ursurline Academy for high school and then the University of Louisville. She later married Jim's dad, Ernest Sciutto. Her maiden name was Higgins.
“She knew at the time that the newsroom was not a thing for a young woman to do and she always talked about how she was in a boys club,” he said. “She described it as not an easy time to be a woman in the business, she was breaking through; but she was welcomed by the folks at WHAS, like Milton Metz. She maintained these relationships with them many, many years later, and they were champions of her at the time. She was always grateful for that.”
On Monday Nov. 25, 2024, he came back to Louisville to be the guest of the Kentucky Author Forum for his new book: “The Return of Great Powers. Russia, China and the next World War.”
In his career, he has dodged missiles in Tel Aviv, and was in Ukraine for Russia's full scale invasion in 2022.
"The difficulty is that Russia and China have decided it’s in their strategic interest to weaken the United States and weaken its allies and weaken the world order that the U.S. has helped build,” Jim said while talking about what he learned for his book.
His amazing growth as a correspondent came at ABC News, where Jennings also made his name as an international correspondent.
"Getting Peter's okay to be on his show (World News Tonight) was not an easy thing to do," he said.
Jennings was intensely hands on. He personally edited all of the scripts and rewrote what was in his newscast.
“If it was a piece for his show there was no insulator between you and him, he would deal with you directly. As in, 'this is my show. If you want to be on my show, you've got to meet my standard,'” Jim said.
Through every test, Jim’s mother was with him in spirit.
“Brings a tear to my eye," he said. "Makes me feel closer to her. My mom always talked about her time at WHAS-TV with pride and great memories."
Jim said he will never forget the story she told him about her early days starting in 1951.
“I imagine with a little bit of exaggeration, a story about how they would strap her to the steeples at Churchill Downs to film the Kentucky Derby! Now I'm sure there's an element of truth to that, but I doubt she was hanging form the steeples,” he said.
With a large group of cousins still in the Louisville area and his parents buried here, along with grandparents and others, Jim may be half way around the world, but he's proud of his Kentucky connection.
“Decades later she would become a New Yorker," he said. "Louisville was always home and she was always grateful that this place and WHAS had given her, her start.”
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