Q: We wanted to know what your medium of choice is; whether you get your news from television, or from the Internet or newspapers.

 

A: I would say that I probably rely on the newspaper for the news. But it isn't consistent, it has a lot to do with my schedule at the time. For the last year I've been at Stanford University as a student and I've had time to read the newspaper.

 

Q: What differences do you find between television news, printed news and news from the Internet?

 

A: Well...it depends on the place that you're getting it more than the medium. I think that some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which, you know, are basically sort of straight news. But then on-line, you also have things like Slate Magazine which has a lot of commentary and analysis of stories and so it gives you a fuller picture and I would compare that to a news magazine or a magazine like the New Republic. So I don't think that the news content you get becomes different through the different media as much as it does where the news is placed. You know, what kind of magazine or newspaper it is. In the New York Times, you're going to get completely different information than you would in the USA Today, for instance. So, that's what I would say to that. But I don't... I think there are probably a lot better people to talk to about on-line news than myself, because I really just rely on it more as a wire service. You know, when Princess Diana was in the car crash, that was how I found out, you know. AOL sort of beeps you and says "There's a news flash". I liked that kind of a media, see. But CNN and MSNBC and some of those cable channels do the same thing (alerting you when there is a news flash), so that's nice. It's nice to know about something as soon as it happens and obviously a newspaper can't provide that..

 

Q: When you were on MTV news, what role did you play in the development and presentation of a breaking news story?

 

A: Well, if the breaking news story had to do with hard news, politics specifically, I had a lot to do with it. If it had to do with music, Kurt Loder was more involved than myself. I, in the case of politics, would make calls to sources that I had to find out more information or find out, you know, what really happened. If I had any skepticism about what I had read in the paper or seen in the wire services, or if it was not actually concluded yet . . . if things were still up in the air, I would try to call people I knew in Washington, or politicians, other places to find out more information, and then I would tell them to the people in the office and often write the story and read it myself. With breaking stories, if I was in the studio, they rarely would send me, you know, put me on a plane, and fly to Washington quickly to cover it, or wherever it was. Because since the other major news organizations had bureaus in those places and were going to give audiences their mainstream coverage of this event, MTV News doesn't really need to compete with that. If the news event, the breaking news event has something specifically to do with young people, then therefore specifically with MTV's audience, there was a higher chance that I would actually go cover it with a television camera instead of just write the story myself and read it on the air.

 

Q: What steps did you take to make your news more interesting and appealing to the viewers than other stations to catch people's eyes?

 

A: Well.. I would say that anytime you have a specific defined audience like MTV does, they assume that the audience to the news is 15-30 years old and they do a lot of research about the things that they're interested in. So, I worked at NBC simultaneously for two years, and it was very interesting to see the comparisons of audiences and the way that I would have to present a story to the two different places. At MTV, although the audience is smaller, I found it more interesting to deliver news to a specific group of people, because my story then did not have to try to be all things to all people. When I worked at NBC, they have such a huge audience that ranges in all these different age groups, they're trying to capture all these age groups both your grandparents as well as teenagers. And so every story you did kind of had to be a little watered down. You could never specifically appeal to the likes and dislikes of a 20-year-old, or make references to specific things, either in popular culture or just feelings that a person may have at that time of their life. And so I wasn't really sure if the grandparents were going to get my sense of humor on a particular topic, or if I put it in the context of Nirvana or grunge rock, I wasn't sure if they would get that reference point. So at MTV, not that everything has to revolve around popular culture, but it's very nice sometimes to be able to be very specific. So I think specificity really makes a news story interesting because you can color it in that personality to something and the people that are receiving the information are gonna be on your wavelength. So that's what I tried to do; I tried to think like the viewer, and certainly, in terms of the production, in terms of television and editing and graphics and music underneath the sound bytes and all the things that MTV is known for, I think that those are entertaining devices sometimes as long as they don't distract you from the information that the reporter is trying to impart. I think that it's a fine line. You don't want to have too much razzle dazzle or they'll forget that you're talking about abortion or aids, or pornography.

 

Q: What would you consider to be the most interesting part of your job?

 

A: The constant variety is the most interesting part of my job. The last documentary I did for MTV was about teen girls who were killing their babies when they were giving birth to them. That is much different than doing a documentary on pornography, which is what I'm doing now. That's quite a range, it's not like I just have to go to Washington, and go to the White House everyday, and go to the same press conference at 10:00 in the morning and then be briefed at 4:00 in the afternoon, and then get a story on at 6:00 and have the same spokespeople and the same concept and the same subject. And that variety is intensified at MTV because every so often they throw in a Mariah Carey or Soul Asylum, or a band that I need to listen to the record of and go interview them. So, that's a completely different part of my brain that gets used and excersized and I feel pretty passionately about music, so it's nice to have different parts of my personality satisfied by one job.