Transcript
BOB GARFIELD: To create a sort of public profile, a personal brand that can make life easier as a freelancer, journalists sometimes moonlight as pundits on the networks and cable news channels. Not just freelancers, of course. The airwaves are abuzz with media personalities of all stripe, including print and radio reporters pulled from their desks and parked awkwardly in front of the cameras. It's not an easy transition, to be sure, but now there's help. A Washington public relations firm is offering journalists with little or no TV experience some training for their star turns as talking heads. Earlier this year we sent our own John Solomon to pundit school and he came back with this report.
JOHN SOLOMON: I was once a promising TV pundit prodigy. [TV SHOW THEME MUSIC: TO TELL THE TRUTH] At age 13 I appeared as an imposter on To Tell the Truth, the old game show where contestants who are not experts try to play one on TV. [THEME MUSIC UP] In my episode, I pretended to be a hot young painter. [FILM CLIP]
ANNOUNCER: Number two, what is your name, please?
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: My name is Vwodek Kos. This black and white painting is - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: And to know enough about art to fool the celebrity panel, including Nipsey Russell. [FILM CLIP]
NIPSEY RUSSELL: All right. Number two, do you do all abstracts or do you do some representational things?
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: I've done - I - I'm an abstract painter but occasionally I'll do things that follow a - a - what would you say? - a - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: In the midst of my abstract answer, Nipsey jumped in and rescued me. [FILM CLIP]
NIPSEY RUSSELL: I see. Who is your favorite painter, number two? I'm still talking…
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: Um, Jackson Pollock.
NIPSEY RUSSELL: I see. [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: I didn't convince Nipsey but I did get panelist Bill Cullen's vote. [FILM CLIP AUDIO]
BILL CULLEN: That - that is number two. I think number two has it very well thought out. And that's not - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: And host Garry Moore seemed to hint at a limitless TV future. [FILM CLIP]
GARRY MOORE: …the rest of us too. What is your real name and what do you do?
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: Uh, my name is John Solomon. [AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]
GARY MOORE: You're a good contestant, I'll tell you that, and the same goes for - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: However, it took more than two decades to return to the tube. Fox News Channel invited me to talk about an article I had written for USA Today on a potential baseball strike.
NEIL CAVUTO: Welcome, everybody. I'm Neil Cavuto and this is Your World. My next guest says that a strike would be a good thing. He's John Solomon. He's a sports journalist right here in New York.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL): I say the sport needs a strike. Right now they're negotiating, really, a very stop-gap situation. They're going to - [END AUDIO CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: I was not invited back. So when the folks here at On the Media assigned me to do a story about a Washington, DC company that was training journalists for TV punditry, I saw it as an opportunity to jump-start a career that had peaked just before my Bar Mitzvah. [MUTED SOUNDS IN BACKGROUND] On the train down, I heard someone a few seats back speaking on his cell phone. He said, "Well, Tina heard me talk about Enron at a dinner party and asked me to be on the show next week." Was there a real life TV pundit aboard my train? I turned around. It was Joe Nocera, a long-time print journalist, currently at the New York Times. Nocera moved into radio as a commentator for NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, and now was a regular on TV. He tried to put me at ease about my own potential transition.
JOE NOCERA: When people ask me why I'm so relaxed on television, I just say it's simple - the stakes are so low. What is there to be worried about? For so many of these shows, the audiences are pretty small, because the knowledge required is so minimal. Because - this isn't always true - but a lot of times the hosts are idiots.
JOHN SOLOMON: Nocera quickly added that he wasn't referring to Tina.
TRAIN ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, our next station stop will be Union Station, Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C. will be next.
JOHN SOLOMON: As Nocera and I walked off the train, the first person I saw was an old college acquaintance. I hadn't seen him since - well, since he was on TV as a legal pundit during the Clinton impeachment. He has since returned to real law and didn't want to be interviewed. As I continued through the station, I recognized yet another face from cable - Joe Watkins - a conservative co-host of CNN's "Crossfire."
JOHN SOLOMON: I mean, should you - should you feel somewhat bad if you haven't been on TV - [LAUGHTER] - and you're in Union Station?
JOE WATKINS: [LAUGHS] They're everywhere!
JOHN SOLOMON: A few weeks before, I had asked Watkins' co-host Paul Begala whether a class at Pundit U. Could make a good "Crossfire" guest out of me.
PAUL BEGALA: No. [LAUGHS] Maybe you either got it or you don't.
JOHN SOLOMON: If I had it, I would find it in the thousand-square- foot mock TV studio located at the downtown offices of Corvis Communications. I was welcomed by my punditry professor Rich Masters, a gregarious 42-year-old former rock disc jockey, local television reporter and U.S. Senate aide, nattily attired in a tan pin-striped suit and ostrich-skin boots. Masters sat me down on a chair about 10 feet in front of a video camera. He fit me with an ear piece.
RICH MASTERS: Yeah, yeah. This is a base line. So feel free to screw it up, so that you look really great when it's all done.
JOHN SOLOMON: He then disappeared into a sound booth. Suddenly, klieg lights clicked on from above. The next thing I heard was:
RICH MASTERS: Good afternoon. Welcome back to "Late Edition." John Solomon, will Tom DeLay survive?
JOHN SOLOMON ("ON AIR"): I think [PAUSE] Majority Leader DeLay's days are in fact numbered and we're - we're - we'll be [PAUSE] - at any point [PAUSE] we should - um -
JOHN SOLOMON: I was in a spiral. And Nipsey Russell wasn't around to bail me out.
JOHN SOLOMON ("ON AIR"): To mu - to - uh - he'll be gone. Uh, he - he's doing as well as I am doing right now.
RICH MASTERS: Well, I guess only time will tell. Thank you again, John Solomon, NPR, for joining us.
JOHN SOLOMON: The klieg lights were switched off.
JOHN SOLOMON (IN CLASS): That's just to show that that was for the baseline, the really - [LAUGHTER]
RICH MASTERS: Thank you. Very - perfect.
JOHN SOLOMON: Next, Masters gave a PowerPoint presentation with some pundit do's and don'ts. Sample "Do": Prepare and practice in advance. For each likely question, create what Masters calls "message diamonds," which should include your main point, then a lively anecdote and finally the same point repeated in a slightly different form. Sample "Don't": a pre-show cocktail. Masters made that mistake himself and ended up inventing a new word - "authenticification" - live, on Fox's "Hannity and Colmes." Now briefed, and still sober, I return for another appearance on fake live TV.
RICH MASTERS: Welcome back to MSNBC. Gun owners have long complained that they don't get a fair break from the media. National Public Radio's John Solomon went into the field to find out what the problem was.
JOHN SOLOMON: After I finished explaining what the problem was, we went into a conference room to replay the tape so Masters could show me on a huge plasma TV screen what my problems were.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): After the election - there was a big hue and cry about the fact that the blue state media didn't understand the red states. And one of the big issues was guns.
JOHN SOLOMON: Masters froze the frame.
RICH MASTERS: I'll cut you [LAUGHS] a couple of things. Energy. Energy, energy, energy a little bit. As you can see from this, there's a need for makeup.
JOHN SOLOMON: The plasma TV had also apparently sucked all the blood out of my alarmingly peaked face.
RICH MASTERS: You know, that - because you can't control the sweating thing, but you can see you got a little bit of a five o'clock shadow. But you got a little bit of a head-bobble thing, that kind of little bobble-head thing, but not as bad as I've seen a lot of folks have it.
JOHN SOLOMON: He turned back to the screen and pressed the remote.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): I think a lot of people view gun owners as people who are unsafe, but in fact, when you - you're around gun owners, you find that they're as concerned with safety because, in fact, they're going out hunting with their relatives or their family, and - and in fact safety is a - is paramount to them. So -
JOHN SOLOMON: I told Masters that at NPR we got a ten-dollar bonus every time we used the phrase "in fact."
RICH MASTERS: Now, mine's "clearly." [CLASS LAUGHTER] "Clearly." "Clearly." "Clearly." I say "clearly" a thousand times in a two-minute deal. Word crutches, there's nothing wrong with them. You only -
JOHN SOLOMON: He said it gives you time to get ready for what you'll say next. But, in fact, that was my biggest problem.
JOHN SOLOMON (IN CLASS): I realized that every time I added more, I got myself in trouble. Is that - a common thing [OVERTALK] -
RICH MASTERS: Yes, absolutely.
JOHN SOLOMON (IN CLASS): - where you kind of hit it nicely, you got a nice little double and you go for the home run and you're - and you start wandering and - and you say, "Why did I add it? I was so - doing well and then - or decently. [LAUGHS]
RICH MASTERS: That's absolutely common. Television ain't splitting the atom. You want to get in and out. It's - it's laser surgery, baby. You get in and out and you just keep it as tight as you possibly can. When you feel that need to take it one step further, that's when you're going to end up rambling.
JOHN SOLOMON: Masters said I also needed to bring some of my personality on the air with me.
RICH MASTERS: In sitting here, you've got just this great energy - engaging, talk - and, and watch this. It drops off. Your energy level drops off a full quarter, if not more than that.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): Because, in fact, there is much more common ground on this issue than has been portrayed in the press.
RICH MASTERS: Thank you, John Solomon, National Public Radio.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): Thank you.
JOHN SOLOMON: The screen went black and I awaited my final evaluation. Was I any good at this TV thing? I used to be. [FILM CLIP]
GARRY MOORE: You're a good contestant. I'll tell you that - [ECHOING] - tell you that - tell that - tell you that- [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: So I was excited when Masters asked if he could use part of my performance as a model to show future students. Until I found out what part.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): Majority Leader DeLay's days are, in fact, numbered and, uh, we're, uh, we're, uh - we'll be - uh -
MAN IN CLASS: What do they call that in the business?
RICH MASTERS: Oh, that would be a - a "brain freeze."
MAN IN CLASS: A "brain freeze?" [OVERTALK]
RICH MASTERS: That's what we call the "Solomon." [OFF-MIKE COMMENTS]
JOHN SOLOMON: Still, Masters saw enough potential in the full Solomon that he offered to pitch me to talk show bookers. It turned out I didn't need his help to get my next TV interview about another type of delay. The following morning I was waiting in Union Station because brake problems had caused rail cancellations all along the Northeast Corridor and a local television reporter was looking for reactions. [TV NEWS SHOW INTRO MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: Live from the area's leading news station, this is News Four - at four.
ON-AIR CORRESPONDENT: Amtrak's Acela trains are still out of service. Some passengers at Union Station this morning had to switch to regional service, which makes more stops.
JOHN SOLOMON: So I upped my energy, answered concisely in message diamonds and I had just shaved. Soon I would no longer be the only one in Union Station not recognizable from TV. But, alas, my interview didn't make it on air. A few days later I got an e-mail from Joe Nocera informing me that he too got bumped. At the last minute, Tina Brown had decided to switch the panel discussion from Enron to Michael Jackson. Well, Joe, I guess that's television. For On the Media, at least for now. [FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13): My name is John Solomon. [APPLAUSE] [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo and edited, from a variety of locations, by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We had help from Sarah Dalsimer and Anne Kosseff. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl. Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts, MP3 downloads and our podcast at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from WNYC. Brooke will be back next week. I'm Bob Garfield. (MUSIC TAG) (FUNDING CREDITS)
copyright 2005 WNYC Radio
JOHN SOLOMON: I was once a promising TV pundit prodigy. [TV SHOW THEME MUSIC: TO TELL THE TRUTH] At age 13 I appeared as an imposter on To Tell the Truth, the old game show where contestants who are not experts try to play one on TV. [THEME MUSIC UP] In my episode, I pretended to be a hot young painter. [FILM CLIP]
ANNOUNCER: Number two, what is your name, please?
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: My name is Vwodek Kos. This black and white painting is - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: And to know enough about art to fool the celebrity panel, including Nipsey Russell. [FILM CLIP]
NIPSEY RUSSELL: All right. Number two, do you do all abstracts or do you do some representational things?
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: I've done - I - I'm an abstract painter but occasionally I'll do things that follow a - a - what would you say? - a - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: In the midst of my abstract answer, Nipsey jumped in and rescued me. [FILM CLIP]
NIPSEY RUSSELL: I see. Who is your favorite painter, number two? I'm still talking…
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: Um, Jackson Pollock.
NIPSEY RUSSELL: I see. [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: I didn't convince Nipsey but I did get panelist Bill Cullen's vote. [FILM CLIP AUDIO]
BILL CULLEN: That - that is number two. I think number two has it very well thought out. And that's not - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: And host Garry Moore seemed to hint at a limitless TV future. [FILM CLIP]
GARRY MOORE: …the rest of us too. What is your real name and what do you do?
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13):: Uh, my name is John Solomon. [AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]
GARY MOORE: You're a good contestant, I'll tell you that, and the same goes for - [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: However, it took more than two decades to return to the tube. Fox News Channel invited me to talk about an article I had written for USA Today on a potential baseball strike.
NEIL CAVUTO: Welcome, everybody. I'm Neil Cavuto and this is Your World. My next guest says that a strike would be a good thing. He's John Solomon. He's a sports journalist right here in New York.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL): I say the sport needs a strike. Right now they're negotiating, really, a very stop-gap situation. They're going to - [END AUDIO CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: I was not invited back. So when the folks here at On the Media assigned me to do a story about a Washington, DC company that was training journalists for TV punditry, I saw it as an opportunity to jump-start a career that had peaked just before my Bar Mitzvah. [MUTED SOUNDS IN BACKGROUND] On the train down, I heard someone a few seats back speaking on his cell phone. He said, "Well, Tina heard me talk about Enron at a dinner party and asked me to be on the show next week." Was there a real life TV pundit aboard my train? I turned around. It was Joe Nocera, a long-time print journalist, currently at the New York Times. Nocera moved into radio as a commentator for NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, and now was a regular on TV. He tried to put me at ease about my own potential transition.
JOE NOCERA: When people ask me why I'm so relaxed on television, I just say it's simple - the stakes are so low. What is there to be worried about? For so many of these shows, the audiences are pretty small, because the knowledge required is so minimal. Because - this isn't always true - but a lot of times the hosts are idiots.
JOHN SOLOMON: Nocera quickly added that he wasn't referring to Tina.
TRAIN ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, our next station stop will be Union Station, Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C. will be next.
JOHN SOLOMON: As Nocera and I walked off the train, the first person I saw was an old college acquaintance. I hadn't seen him since - well, since he was on TV as a legal pundit during the Clinton impeachment. He has since returned to real law and didn't want to be interviewed. As I continued through the station, I recognized yet another face from cable - Joe Watkins - a conservative co-host of CNN's "Crossfire."
JOHN SOLOMON: I mean, should you - should you feel somewhat bad if you haven't been on TV - [LAUGHTER] - and you're in Union Station?
JOE WATKINS: [LAUGHS] They're everywhere!
JOHN SOLOMON: A few weeks before, I had asked Watkins' co-host Paul Begala whether a class at Pundit U. Could make a good "Crossfire" guest out of me.
PAUL BEGALA: No. [LAUGHS] Maybe you either got it or you don't.
JOHN SOLOMON: If I had it, I would find it in the thousand-square- foot mock TV studio located at the downtown offices of Corvis Communications. I was welcomed by my punditry professor Rich Masters, a gregarious 42-year-old former rock disc jockey, local television reporter and U.S. Senate aide, nattily attired in a tan pin-striped suit and ostrich-skin boots. Masters sat me down on a chair about 10 feet in front of a video camera. He fit me with an ear piece.
RICH MASTERS: Yeah, yeah. This is a base line. So feel free to screw it up, so that you look really great when it's all done.
JOHN SOLOMON: He then disappeared into a sound booth. Suddenly, klieg lights clicked on from above. The next thing I heard was:
RICH MASTERS: Good afternoon. Welcome back to "Late Edition." John Solomon, will Tom DeLay survive?
JOHN SOLOMON ("ON AIR"): I think [PAUSE] Majority Leader DeLay's days are in fact numbered and we're - we're - we'll be [PAUSE] - at any point [PAUSE] we should - um -
JOHN SOLOMON: I was in a spiral. And Nipsey Russell wasn't around to bail me out.
JOHN SOLOMON ("ON AIR"): To mu - to - uh - he'll be gone. Uh, he - he's doing as well as I am doing right now.
RICH MASTERS: Well, I guess only time will tell. Thank you again, John Solomon, NPR, for joining us.
JOHN SOLOMON: The klieg lights were switched off.
JOHN SOLOMON (IN CLASS): That's just to show that that was for the baseline, the really - [LAUGHTER]
RICH MASTERS: Thank you. Very - perfect.
JOHN SOLOMON: Next, Masters gave a PowerPoint presentation with some pundit do's and don'ts. Sample "Do": Prepare and practice in advance. For each likely question, create what Masters calls "message diamonds," which should include your main point, then a lively anecdote and finally the same point repeated in a slightly different form. Sample "Don't": a pre-show cocktail. Masters made that mistake himself and ended up inventing a new word - "authenticification" - live, on Fox's "Hannity and Colmes." Now briefed, and still sober, I return for another appearance on fake live TV.
RICH MASTERS: Welcome back to MSNBC. Gun owners have long complained that they don't get a fair break from the media. National Public Radio's John Solomon went into the field to find out what the problem was.
JOHN SOLOMON: After I finished explaining what the problem was, we went into a conference room to replay the tape so Masters could show me on a huge plasma TV screen what my problems were.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): After the election - there was a big hue and cry about the fact that the blue state media didn't understand the red states. And one of the big issues was guns.
JOHN SOLOMON: Masters froze the frame.
RICH MASTERS: I'll cut you [LAUGHS] a couple of things. Energy. Energy, energy, energy a little bit. As you can see from this, there's a need for makeup.
JOHN SOLOMON: The plasma TV had also apparently sucked all the blood out of my alarmingly peaked face.
RICH MASTERS: You know, that - because you can't control the sweating thing, but you can see you got a little bit of a five o'clock shadow. But you got a little bit of a head-bobble thing, that kind of little bobble-head thing, but not as bad as I've seen a lot of folks have it.
JOHN SOLOMON: He turned back to the screen and pressed the remote.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): I think a lot of people view gun owners as people who are unsafe, but in fact, when you - you're around gun owners, you find that they're as concerned with safety because, in fact, they're going out hunting with their relatives or their family, and - and in fact safety is a - is paramount to them. So -
JOHN SOLOMON: I told Masters that at NPR we got a ten-dollar bonus every time we used the phrase "in fact."
RICH MASTERS: Now, mine's "clearly." [CLASS LAUGHTER] "Clearly." "Clearly." "Clearly." I say "clearly" a thousand times in a two-minute deal. Word crutches, there's nothing wrong with them. You only -
JOHN SOLOMON: He said it gives you time to get ready for what you'll say next. But, in fact, that was my biggest problem.
JOHN SOLOMON (IN CLASS): I realized that every time I added more, I got myself in trouble. Is that - a common thing [OVERTALK] -
RICH MASTERS: Yes, absolutely.
JOHN SOLOMON (IN CLASS): - where you kind of hit it nicely, you got a nice little double and you go for the home run and you're - and you start wandering and - and you say, "Why did I add it? I was so - doing well and then - or decently. [LAUGHS]
RICH MASTERS: That's absolutely common. Television ain't splitting the atom. You want to get in and out. It's - it's laser surgery, baby. You get in and out and you just keep it as tight as you possibly can. When you feel that need to take it one step further, that's when you're going to end up rambling.
JOHN SOLOMON: Masters said I also needed to bring some of my personality on the air with me.
RICH MASTERS: In sitting here, you've got just this great energy - engaging, talk - and, and watch this. It drops off. Your energy level drops off a full quarter, if not more than that.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): Because, in fact, there is much more common ground on this issue than has been portrayed in the press.
RICH MASTERS: Thank you, John Solomon, National Public Radio.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): Thank you.
JOHN SOLOMON: The screen went black and I awaited my final evaluation. Was I any good at this TV thing? I used to be. [FILM CLIP]
GARRY MOORE: You're a good contestant. I'll tell you that - [ECHOING] - tell you that - tell that - tell you that- [END FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON: So I was excited when Masters asked if he could use part of my performance as a model to show future students. Until I found out what part.
JOHN SOLOMON (ON TAPE): Majority Leader DeLay's days are, in fact, numbered and, uh, we're, uh, we're, uh - we'll be - uh -
MAN IN CLASS: What do they call that in the business?
RICH MASTERS: Oh, that would be a - a "brain freeze."
MAN IN CLASS: A "brain freeze?" [OVERTALK]
RICH MASTERS: That's what we call the "Solomon." [OFF-MIKE COMMENTS]
JOHN SOLOMON: Still, Masters saw enough potential in the full Solomon that he offered to pitch me to talk show bookers. It turned out I didn't need his help to get my next TV interview about another type of delay. The following morning I was waiting in Union Station because brake problems had caused rail cancellations all along the Northeast Corridor and a local television reporter was looking for reactions. [TV NEWS SHOW INTRO MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: Live from the area's leading news station, this is News Four - at four.
ON-AIR CORRESPONDENT: Amtrak's Acela trains are still out of service. Some passengers at Union Station this morning had to switch to regional service, which makes more stops.
JOHN SOLOMON: So I upped my energy, answered concisely in message diamonds and I had just shaved. Soon I would no longer be the only one in Union Station not recognizable from TV. But, alas, my interview didn't make it on air. A few days later I got an e-mail from Joe Nocera informing me that he too got bumped. At the last minute, Tina Brown had decided to switch the panel discussion from Enron to Michael Jackson. Well, Joe, I guess that's television. For On the Media, at least for now. [FILM CLIP]
JOHN SOLOMON (AGE 13): My name is John Solomon. [APPLAUSE] [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo and edited, from a variety of locations, by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We had help from Sarah Dalsimer and Anne Kosseff. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl. Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts, MP3 downloads and our podcast at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from WNYC. Brooke will be back next week. I'm Bob Garfield. (MUSIC TAG) (FUNDING CREDITS)
copyright 2005 WNYC Radio