>> Steve Corman: I'm Steve Corman, C-o-r-m-a-n,
long time television reporter, well,
television writer, producer,
some reporting but more
so behind the scenes putting it all together.
And I was very fortunate
to have worked for NBC News
for a long time both in Chicago and San Diego.
Putting a television newscast together is a
very interesting challenge every single day
and from my standpoint as for many
years a producer who put it together
or an executive producer who oversaw the
operation, I mean you start out in the morning
with so much that might have been there from
overnight and then you have a planning meeting
to sort out what you're going to cover during
the day and as the day goes on, you know,
things develop, things unfold and you know I
say fortunate to have started in the era of film
so that if you're doing 6 o'clock news in the
era of film only and processing and everything
like that anything that's shot after about
5:15 is not going to make the 6 o'clock news.
It's changed so dramatically now that you know;
you can go live in an instant,
so it was always interesting.
I mean, to me being a television news producer
is somewhat like being a baseball player.
One day you can go three for five and those
three hits might be like a little bloop single
and a little dinker that just rolls
down the line where you get a hit
and then a wind-blown three run
homer to win the game, not hit hard
but just hit enough so the wind catches it.
You're a hero.
You're the talk of the town.
Everyone wants your autograph, whatever.
The next day you come to work to play baseball.
You go O for five, you hit the ball screaming
hard every single time but two of them turn
into double plays, another one somebody
makes a spectacular catch, you're O for five.
The team loses.
It doesn't say in the box score
that you hit the ball like crazy.
You're a bum.
I mean it's somewhat comparable to that.
And you know, it's something
different every day.
The challenges of it every day, the eclecticness
of it, the opportunity to deal with people
on different levels, I mean you know,
maybe getting into a huge shouting match
with someone you think is your best
friend and then the next day you're back
to being best friends or at least
close buddies, acquaintances, whatever.
I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the challenge of it.
I enjoyed the writing part of it a lot
and later on in my career after I left NBC
in San Diego I did a series of
documentary programs, an hour and a half,
two hours in length for the PBS station
in San Diego and that was great.
I mean I really enjoyed doing that because
you really get a chance to you know,
research and develop a plan and go about laying
it out and then writing it and basically,
on some of those I did everything
but be the host.
Someone else would come in and voice it
and do some stand up pieces as part of it
but it was totally my work and some were
great and some were good and some were, so-so.
You know how that goes.
You've got to be aware of
what's going on around you.
I mean, if you're going to be a
journalism major or journalist whether,
I mean some of the best journalists I ever
worked with never took a journalism course
in their life and I can understand.
I mean I'm an advocate for journalism schools
and I taught at some colleges like a course here
and a course there but you know, the best
reporter we had at NBC 5 in Chicago was a guy
with a PhD in, let me think, Medieval
History and he was brilliant when it came
to putting a story together, just brilliant.
So I'm not convinced that you have to have
that by any means, but you have to study.
You have to read a lot.
You have to be aware of what's going on around
you and most importantly, and this goes back
to most people's childhood, you have to know
how to tell a story, whether it's Dick and Jane
or whether it's the mayor of whatever,
you have to know how to convey a story
and present the information
so that it makes sense.
Well I worked on the school paper in
the Chicago, I grew up in Highland Park,
Illinois and really liked writing, came
here, majored in journalism and the head
of the program was a wonderful
man named J. Russell Heitman
who had been a community newspaper
editor for many years and then was here
for I don't know, maybe ten years.
He is, unfortunately, long gone but he really
taught me the basics of just being a journalist,
whether it be a community newspaper, a
big time daily newspaper which are kind
of a dying breed unfortunately, magazine,
or radio and television although the
format is quite different actually
in radio and television.
And he basically preached principles, the basics
of what you needed to know and needed to do,
the five Ws and H, you know, who, what, when,
where, why, and how and then just the importance
of having a degree of seriousness in what you
were doing and approaching it in a sincere way.
And so I really felt like I learned a
lot from him when I was going to school
and when I was here I was a writer, a
reporter, then I was sports editor for a year
and then I was news editor for a year.
And I got a chance to work on
a lot of interesting things.
I was in the centennial graduating class in
1964, a hundred years old and there was a lot
of stuff going on that centennial year
that I got to cover and be a part of
and it was just really fascinating.
Well, my final words to a college student
today would be, just be ready for anything.
When I went into, when I finished at
the University of Denver and I went
to graduate school, I had every total complete
intention of becoming a print journalist
and in reality with the exception of the
Denver Clarion, the school paper here.
I never worked one day for
a newspaper in my life.
I did a few free-lance pieces over the years
but I never was employed by a newspaper.
And here that was what I wanted
to be was a newspaper reporter.
So just be flexible.
Be willing to adapt to different things
and you never know what's going to happen.
And I mean, the more you know the
better off you're going to be.