Cover
Story

How does Twitter help
her diet? Beverly spills.

by Robrt L. Pela
Photography by Alonso Murillo

B everly Kidd is tweeting. As the director of KTVK’s nine o’clock newscast counts down to airtime, Kidd is racing to finish a Twitter update to her friends and fans. The director hollers “Three, two, one!” and Kidd looks up from her laptop, smiles into the camera, and launches into a story about a bank robbery over on the Westside.

While millions of Americans have taken up Twitter, a form of Internet social networking called “micro-blogging,” Kidd may well be the only one among us who “tweets”—that’s Twitter-speak for creating a text message that gets posted to one’s online Twitter page—while anchoring the evening news.

“It’s true, I’m the first anchor to tweet,” Kidd admits later, after signing off for the night. “I’m online with both Facebook and Twitter during every show, literally on the computer between stories while I’m on the air.”

Kidd’s love affair with this new trend in social networking was met with some resistance when she pitched it to 3TV executives late last year. “People kept asking, ‘What’s the payoff?’ Everyone hated it because it was different.”

Everyone except Kidd, that is. Her love of tweeting is about more than expanding her fan base, which—based on the thousands of hits her web-
site, www.beverlykidd.com, logs each week—is already pretty impressive. Kidd has lately been using social media to support her workout routine and healthy eating habits by sharing diet advice with and seeking exercise tips from her online pals. She eventually sold the TV station on the merits of
interaction with her “followers,” which is what Twitter subscribers call them-
selves.

“They saw the value,” she says, “of being able to use this media to take the temperature of people out in the real world.”

The real world is sometimes harder to navigate than the virtual world. The next day, Kidd is running late. She’s just returning home from the Mining and Mineral Museum, where she spent the morning with her kids. “I was dreading going there,” she admits, “but it was actually really cool. I bought a hematite ring, and any time I get to shop is a good time.”

This Everygal attitude is a big part of Kidd’s appeal. In a sea of Pattis and Lin Sues and Karis, she’s the glamour girl with a heart of gold, the single mom who wants to take her kids to look at rocks, but will admit she wasn’t necessarily looking forward to it. She confides that she likes to shop and sometimes can’t resist a good piece of junk jewelry; that she loves donuts and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and suddenly you forgive her for being a little late for an appointment with you; for being a gorgeous former high school cheerleader who looks a full decade younger than her age.

Kidd worked as a health reporter at WTKR, the CBS affiliate in Norfolk, Virginia, not far from where she grew up surfing and racing catamarans in
the seaside town of Virginia Beach. Snagged to pinch-hit during the station’s live coverage of a four-hour-long hurricane, Kidd impressed the station manager with her ability to adlib. But when he offered Kidd her own week-
end anchor spot, she balked.

“I told him, ‘Oh, that’s nice, but no thank you!’ And he said, ‘I’m not asking if you want the job.’”

That was on a Monday. The show premiered on Saturday. Kidd, who’d never read a Teleprompter in her life, was scared to death.

“I was a reporter, and liked being out on the street covering the news. Anchoring seemed boring, and I never aspired to it.”

Kidd, who turned 40 in April, learned to love anchoring. Eight years ago, she relocated to Phoenix and a hosting spot on KTVK’s weekend morning show before taking over as anchor of the evening news. She loves her job but admits that television can be a pretty superficial industry.

“Let’s face it,” she says. “People watch the news and the first thing they’re saying is not, ‘Oh, what a terrible car crash’ or ‘She’s not reading very well tonight.’ It’s ‘Hey, she looks a little bloated.’”

The anonymity of Twitter and Facebook, Kidd says, can mean even harsher commentary on a newscaster’s shortcomings. “It’s easier to say, ‘You looked tired on the news tonight’ or ‘Oh, you’ve gained some weight!’ in a text message than in person,” she laughs.

Instead of being insulted by online commentaries about her appearance, Kidd uses them as motivation. When her diet recently stalled, she began blogging about the rigors of dieting, then turned to Twitter and Facebook to chat up friends and viewers about staying healthy.

“Like a lot of people, I struggle with my weight and with feeding my kids healthy meals,” Kidd admits. “On Twitter, I have access to a commnity of people who are experts in these areas. I want people to comment on the process of staying fit, to give me ideas about how to stay on track. They keep me honest about my diet and they motivate me. Hopefully I’m motivating them.”

Tweeting even helps her build her diet. “I mentioned in my blog that I
missed breakfast cereal, because I was staying away from carbs,” Kidd recalls. “And right away I was getting all these tweets from people saying, ‘Kashi! Try Kashi!’ It’s high in protein and fiber, and it’s very satisfying. I eat it all the time now.”

Facebook did more than just draw a line between technology and breakfast cereal when Kidd needed a new work- out routine.

“I had tried everything, and nothing was working. I wasn’t sitting at home eating bon-bons, I was exercising and eating right, but still gaining weight.” Kidd eventually turned to a program she’d abandoned some years before: power lifting. It’s a peculiar choice for a gal who has no plans to compete in the Miss Musclebound Championship, but she knew it would work. “I’d done health stories on air with this great guy named Bob Matthews, who has this program called Power One K. He saw me on Facebook and he said, “Come back!”

Kidd says power lifting works as a weight loss method for women “because we don’t have enough testosterone to get ripped. Power lifting builds muscle that eats fat, but because girls don’t get bulky, the inches fly off.” Before hooking up again with Matthews, Kidd had been doing lighter weights and lots of reps, which wasn’t helping her shed pounds.

Kidd likes to pass along her virtual world health advice to her two sons. “When we go out, or I fix some food, I’m always quizzing them. ‘What’s the healthiest thing on your plate? Is it that broccoli or the macaroni and cheese?’ They’re 9 and 10, and so I talk to them on a level they understand: ‘This food will make you big and strong. This one will keep you from getting sick.’

“I’m always going to the gym or out hiking, so hopefully I’m a role model for my boys. My main rule for them is ‘Do some kind of exercise every day, if you want to live well and for a long time.’ Our vacations are built around activities, so instead of Disneyland we’ll go to Sedona to hike, and I make it an adventure: ‘Let’s look for rocks and tarantulas!’” (Unfortunately, Kidd says, they occasionally find tarantulas.)

Kidd also teaches her sons the im portance of giving back to their community. Toward that end, she volunteers at the public school her boys attend.

“I’m the copy mom,” she says. “It’s not very glamorous. I make photocopies for both of my sons’ teachers. Last year I was the lunch lady—wiping spaghetti off the floor in my little apron. It was very humbling, but I got to know a lot of kids and teachers.”

And all without the help of a computer. Imagine that.