teacher

Meet my first news director, a chain-smoking, mullet-rocking legend who continues to surprise

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April 4, 2018. Dave Carew. “Happy Birthday, Tedd! Have a great time full of mischief.”

I type the name of my first boss into Facebook’s search bar. I left Sioux City, Iowa 14 years ago, but I often think about the man who gave me my start in broadcast news. His page pops up. Tedd O’Connell. Green Bay, Wisconsin. A black-and-white photo of a newsman in a trench coat.

That’s Tedd. But Tedd’s been dead for more than a decade.

April 4, 2017. Justin Roberts. “Happy Birthday Tedd!! Hope heaven is a party that never stops!”

This seems off. Tedd wasn’t the social media type, and Facebook was in relative infancy when he fell sick years ago. But this wouldn’t be Tedd’s first surprise.

April 4, 2016. Molly Fitch. “Happy Birthday, Tedd. Hope you’re snacking on donut holes and listening to Eminem upstairs today.”

Growing up near New York, attending college near Chicago, I was unprepared for the flat skyline of Sioux City. I was less prepared for my first boss to rock a full-coiffed mullet and a raspy voice born of a thousand cigarettes.

April 4, 2015. Derek Wittenburg. “Happy birthday…..Tedanator with us all.”

For 15 years, Tedd was the Ron Burgundy of Madison, Wisconsin. He flew to Cuba for a story and met Castro. He broke major stories and won major awards. Then he took over newsrooms. A decade removed from his final time on the anchor desk, he landed in Iowa to run a fledgling third-place news station. At some point I should have wondered if Tedd viewed this job as beneath his stature and legacy. Tedd never gave us that choice.

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring the art of the “reveal”

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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.

Think about a time when you had a big surprise to tell someone.

When you finally saw that person, did you blurt out the surprise right away, or did you make the person wait a little bit?

Chances are, you did the latter. Sometimes, of course, we cannot contain ourselves, but mostly we — consciously or not — try to raise the level of anticipation before we share our big news. Perhaps we ask, “Are you ready?” Perhaps we drag out our words (“Iiiii juuuust waaaanted to tell youuuuuu I’M HAVING A BABY!”). And most likely, perhaps we provide a little prologue or story before our announcement.

At that point, we all become storytellers.

The “reveal” is a time-honored journalistic tradition, to the point that it can often seem lame or stale. (e.g. “What Johnny didn’t know was …”) But the best storytellers know exactly how to tease and build the moment to give their reveals the most punch.

Here are a two examples from last month that do just that (and one stunning photo gallery about fall foliage):

Cut and run (11/1/13, Radiolab): This entire segment from NPR’s Radiolab is tremendous, but I will tell you the moment when I truly appreciated the storytelling here:

I had listened to about five minutes of the story, which is essentially a lesson as to why Kenyan runners always dominate long-distance running. The show’s producers and reporters kept teasing out the answer, providing possible (and then debunked) explanations and expressing their own bewilderment, while keeping their real hypothesis in the distance. I was listening while sitting at my computer, and I realized at that moment that, if I really wanted to learn the answer, I could probably just Google it and be done.

But I didn’t want to Google it. I didn’t want to spoil the big reveal. I wanted to stay on the Radiolab ride, because the story until that point had been so interesting and well-told.

Turned out the reveal was pretty great — and also gruesome. Ladies and specifically gentlemen, please do not listen to the back half of this segment on an empty stomach.

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3 GREAT STORIES OF THE WEEK: Starring a kidney transplant, an NFL war room, and a big move

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Every week, I will 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.

Telling different kinds of stories requires equally varied ranges of sensitivity. Some require tenderness and care; others require aggression and investigation.

Most stories, no matter what kind, require the attention and discipline to capture the emotions of the parties involved.

This past week, I saw three pieces that stood out because of the storyteller’s ability to convey the emotions of the scene:

Heartwarming gift: Inside a little girl’s kidney transplant (5/6/13, WJW-TV Cleveland): This piece is somewhat simple in scope: the sights and sounds as a teacher donates a kidney to one of her students. Reporter/photojournalist Annette Lawless presents it in documentary form, somewhat; she keeps herself out of it and lets the people speak for themselves.

This is a bold decision … and it really works.

Lawless captures the before, during, and after of the transplant, including many of its powerful moments. But she really shines in terms of presentation: from the time-lapse at the beginning to the quick cuts in the waiting room that transition from scene to scene. With these moves, without saying a word, she drops the viewer right in the world of the story.

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