seattle

PODCAST EPISODE #74: John Sharify & Joseph Huerta, “Bob’s Choice”

The most powerful 60 minutes I watched last year came from two storytellers at their best.

John Sharify has won umpteen awards through a reporting career that has spanned decades. Joseph Huerta is assembling an equally impressive resume as a photojournalist, now at WFAA-TV in Dallas. Last year, for their final story together at KING-TV in Seattle, Sharify and Huerta produced an hour-long documentary about a man named Bob.

That man, 75 years old and diagnosed with terminal cancer, had chosen to end his life.

Bob Fuller planned to utilize Washington’s Death with Dignity Act to request a lethal dose of medication on a date of his choosing. Several months before that date, Fuller reached out to Sharify to see if his story was worthy of being told.

Sharify knew he wanted to tell it.

He teamed with Huerta to produce “Bob’s Choice,” which is embedded below and available anytime on YouTube. It is stirring, touching, moving, and just about every other emotional adjective you can name. It is also musical, downright funny at times, and a thorough look at a difficult subject.

Sharify and Huerta are my guests on Episode #74 of the Telling the Story podcast.

This is among the longest episodes I’ve done. That’s partly because of having multiple guests, but it’s mainly because this subject cannot be rushed. Sharify and Huerta discuss their many storytelling decisions on “Bob’s Choice,” but they also open up about their own emotional journeys and the experience of watching someone voluntarily – but peacefully among family and friends – take his own life.

The discussion is heavy, but it’s worth it.

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring Team Ortho, Kyle Korver, & laughter

Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

Running for a cause? (11/12/15, KARE-TV): One of the hardest jobs in reporting for television? Making investigative stories look good.

TV stories are often built around moments, and with many pieces, one finds those moments naturally and visually. Investigative journalists must produce those moments informationally and confrontationally — a much tougher task in a visual medium.

In this piece, KARE 11’s A.J. Lagoe and Steve Eckert show how it’s done.

Uncovering deception and monetary misuse from a local non-profit, the duo layers this story with “Didja see that?” moments. Eckert edits nicely the sequence that shows the misuse of funds over several years, and Lagoe leaves the viewer with a jaw-dropper through his final revelation and confrontation with the man behind the non-profit.

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PODCAST EPISODE #33: Katie Stern, photographer, KOMO-TV

If you follow the Telling The Story podcast, you have heard several guests describe the process of covering a huge story.

But I have never interviewed a guest who had to cover such a story while dealing with the massive personal tragedy it brought.

Everyone at KOMO-TV went through it last March, when the station’s helicopter crashed in downtown Seattle, killing photographer Bill Strothman and pilot Gary Pfitzner. The journalists and employees in the KOMO newsroom suddenly needed to bring the news of a major story while processing their own emotions.

Katie Stern had worked at KOMO for nearly a decade when the crash occurred. She sprung into action and spent the morning as the roving photographer, collecting B-roll and gathering interviews around the scene; then she set up for live shots with reporter Denise Whitaker. All the while, she fought back tears and, she says, at one point could not keep a steady shot because her hands were trembling.

Stern is my guest on this episode of the Telling The Story podcast.

I received the immense privilege of listening to Stern last month when she spoke at the NPPA Northwest Storytelling Workshop. She shared the stage with Bill Strothman’s son, Dan, and the duo reflected upon the experience with composure and eloquence. Their presentation kept the audience silent and attentive; we were all confronted with the potential of finding ourselves in a similar scenario.

But regardless if any of us ever cover a personal tragedy, journalists everywhere can take major lessons from Stern on how to cover tragedies in general.

“I think that talking about trauma and journalism — and how the two are forever intertwined — is so important,” Stern said on the podcast. “Slowly we’re starting to talk about it more. I think there’s a stigma that comes with showing any kind of emotion as a journalist, and I’m really hoping we can wash that away.”

I completely agree.

I greatly appreciate Stern’s time and appearance on the Telling The Story podcast, and I hope you find her words meaningful and instructive.

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PODCAST EPISODE #19: Ted Land, reporter, KING-TV

When I started in broadcast journalism, I encountered a very vocal school of thought from more experienced colleagues regarding backpack journalists — or, more simply, reporters who shoot and edit their own stories.

I was told repeatedly that the rise of backpack journalism would (A) be a passing fad in larger markets and (B) bring down the quality level of TV news as a whole because (C) backpack journalists could never do as good a job as two- or three-person crews.

More than a decade later, all three of those predictions have proven spectacularly wrong.

For starters, more and more large-market stations are making room for reporters who do it all. Cost is one reason, obviously; one employee is cheaper than two. But stations can get away with that now because the overall quality of backpack journalism has increased dramatically over the last few years. Check out this winter’s award-winning stories in the NPPA’s quarterly solo video competition. They are strong pieces done by more than a dozen backpack journalists.

And at the top of the ladder, the best backpack journalists can produce work every bit as good as that of larger crews.

The latest example? Ted Land.

This month he begins his new job at the prestigious KING-TV in Seattle. But last month, he received a National Edward R. Murrow Award for writing in small-market TV, all thanks to stories he produced at WSBT-TV in South Bend — by himself.

Let me elaborate. The “small-market TV” category covers reporters, both solo and traditional, who work in any television market outside the top 50. In the category of writing, a backpack journalist bested an entire nation of competition.

Land is my latest guest on the Telling The Story podcast. (more…)