A SURVIVAL KIT FOR PROFESSIONAL STORYTELLERS
How to compete with cell phones and Web sites
Bob Dotson, NBC News Correspondent
Today Show contributor to American Story with Bob Dotson
Saturday, September 22, 2007

       The electronic news business is so complicated these days, it's a lot like a circus.  Every day, we applaud the team that puts up the tent.  We congratulate each other when we manage to get live shots from anywhere in the world, forgetting that nobody tunes in to watch the tent.  What they've come to see and hear are our stories.  Unfortunately, the technical aspect of our business is now so complex, storytelling is sometimes the last thing we consider during our workday. 

        We're all faced with constant deadlines.  The twenty-four hour news clock slices time too thin for thought.  Under deadline, it's tempting to call the usual suspects for sound bites.  Politicians and pundits know how to give an eight second sound bite.

        I know a cameraman who showed up late to a Governor's news conference without a reporter and implored the Governor to stay and answer just one more question.  The Gov, up for re-election, obliged.  The cameraman focused up and said, "Go ahead, Governor, answer a question."

        "What question?"

        "Well, I don't know.  Didn't you just have a news conference?"

        "Yes."

        "Did they ask a lot of questions?"

        "Of course."

        "Well, pick one out and give me eight seconds!"

        And, you know -- he did.

        We should learn to listen to people who don't have titles in front of their names.  There are people of all ages -- in all walks of life -- with good ideas.  Cover these people as you would the Governor.    Dig for what's significant.  Don't settle for clichés.  A lot of seemingly ordinary people, standing in the shadows of well-known people -- are terrific stories.

    The most successful man I ever met was Fred Benson.  He's been a police chief, a fire chief, head of the rescue squad, baseball coach, teacher, builder and President of the Chamber of Commerce.  Five times.

        At ninety he became a Rhode Island state driver's license examiner.  If you're sixteen on Block Island and you want to drive, you have to go see Fred.

             He was eight when a farmer named Gurd Miliken took him in, and Fred still lives in the little room Gurd gave him, eighty-two years ago.

        Five generations of Milikens have grown up around him.  They've repeatedly asked Fred to join them downstairs where it's heated, but he refuses.

             A few years back Fred won the Rhode Island state lottery.  Five hundred thousand dollars.  He threw the biggest birthday party anyone can remember.  Invited all the children on the island and announced he'd pay the college tuition of any child who wanted to go.

             Fred had always thought of his community first.  In the 70s there was a housing shortage on Block Island.  So, at fifty-four, Fred went to college and got a degree.  He wanted to teach high school shop.

        The island's four builders today all got their start with Fred.

         Fred never married.  Never had children.  But, for eighty-two years, he dedicated himself to the people of this island.   

          We were sitting one sunset watching waves crash against the rocky cliffs.   I asked him, "Why?"  Fred looked past the lighthouse to the waves breaking against the rocky cliff, then turned and told me a story.

        "When I was a little boy, the farmers used to meet for dinner on Saturday night.  Each one would boast about their kids.

        Gurd Miliken had eight sons and me.  I sat way down at the end of a long table."  Fred paused to look at a pelican on a pole.

        "Gurd rose from his chair, one night and pointed a long finger past all of his boys.  He pointed right at me.  'You fellas wait and see what Fred Benson does.  He'll be the best of 'em all.'"  Fred stopped talking for a long moment.  Stared at the sunset for a while.  "I hope he knows how I turned out," he whispered.  Then, more intensely, "I hope he knows how I turned out."

             Fred Benson has found a safe harbor.  Now he shows others the way.

        That's as good a definition of what a journalist does as any -- show others the way.  Help them see choices.  Perhaps avoid pitfalls.

             Great stories are like onions.  No, not because they make you cry.  They have many layers.  They communicate on many levels.  They're laced with things that make them widely appealing.  On the surface is the tale you must tell, but under that a series of strong images and sounds -- picture and audio designed to help the viewer experience the story, not just learn about it.

        Formula reporting kills communication.  People want something from your writing -- understanding and insight.   Told in a way that will stick in the viewers' minds.

        Open your eyes and ears.  Use all your senses.  Look for things the audience members can't see or hear for themselves.  Write about people who might be in the corner of the mirror.  Don't waste time pointing out the obvious.  Tell viewers what they might have missed, even standing next to you.

        There's a whole area of journalism that's under reported -- everyday life.  Journalists too often focus only on life's flat tires.  Kick the other tires and figure why they're still up.  Everyday news shouldn't be a sub-classification of news.  The media shouldn't cover only people who are in disastrous or tragic situations.  A few years ago I took a step back.  I wondered what blue-collar workers do between strike votes and hurricanes.  In disaster, we make an effort to seek them out. There are intellectual people in all walks of life. It's easier to go to a politician or celebrity, but they might not be the ones with the real in sight.

        If we don't look beyond the headlines for stories, we miss so much.  Go where the pack has not.  The stories you find in unlikely places can tell us who we are.  A fellow by the name of Ed Panzer reminded me of that the other day.   Ed and his four brothers rattled across America in the fall of 1922.   They were part of a remarkable odyssey -- one hundred thousand children -- plucked from the slums of New York City and sent west to a new life.  Most -- like the Panzers -- were the sons and daughters of immigrants, found starving and alone, sleeping on the streets.  The Children's Aid Society swept them up and shipped them to towns all across the country.

             At each stop their arrival was advertised.  The kids trooped off the train.  Lined up.  Couples simply picked the one they wanted.  Orphans were often separated from their brothers and sisters.  If a child acted up, he was put on the next train west.

             In Tekamah, Nebraska, four of the Panzer boys were chosen.

                 One was not.  George, the youngest, clung to Harold and refused to let them take him back to the train.  So, Harold stayed.  But each of the five brothers went to live on a different farm.  One couple wanted to adopt two of them.  The brothers refused.  They'd made a pact to keep their last name, so they would never lose track of each other. 

       And they didn't.            

         In the midst of the Great Depression, Ed became a doctor.  Harold did too.  They worked to put each other through medical school.  Brother Jack built the hospital where Harold opened his practice.

             Bob became pastor of one of the largest Methodist churches in California. And George, the baby whose hug kept the brothers together?  They all started him in business.  Today he's a millionaire.   

          When Harold Panzer turned eighty-one, he got married ... with the help of his brothers.

        Bob performed the service.

        Ed was best man.

          The brothers still have what they had on that orphan train.  Each other.

           How can you summarize lives like that?  Deep within themselves, they found the men they wanted to be.

        All of us on journalism's fast track -- heading into the unknown -- must decide which stories need telling and find a way to tell them.  There's more to this job than just emails and airtime.  We're not just writing on smoke.

        I've made an effort -- all of my career -- to look behind the media mirror that reflects the powerful and find tales of people who are practically invisible.  I began to save original tapes and films whenever my bosses, looking to save space, tossed them out.  For three decades, I maintained them at my own expense in air-conditioned rooms -- first in the basement then, as the collection grew, in warehouses.  I felt I owed it to the next generation of storytellers to hold on to as much as I could.  Save the stories from the other side of the mirror, the ones the rest of the media seldom shows.

        That perspective, a lifetime of work, is now available to scholars at the University of Oklahoma.  Every piece I've ever crafted.  Rough drafts.  Completed stories.  Eleven hundred DVDs, video tapes, films and production elements; more than seventy-five hundred scripts; the original manuscripts for two books I've written; hundreds of rare historic photographs of Oklahoma Native Americans, Black Cowboys, homesteaders and marshals and outlaws, plus memorabilia from my 39 years in television news.

        The archives -- was donated to the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications and is housed at the new Oklahoma History museum next to the State Capitol.

        My inspiration was an early day Pathe newsreel photographer named Bennie Kent who lived in Oklahoma.   He often shot news film his bosses didn't want --Women's history, Black history - but he didn't toss it away.  He stored it in the attic of the Stillwater, Oklahoma, fire station.  The film he used was highly flammable Nitrate based.   I guess he figured if the cans exploded, help would be close.  Those films became the basis of my first documentary, "Through the Looking Glass Darkly."

        I've spent a life time holding up a mirror to the world, sticking stories to an address list of long overlooked names.  People who are changing lives.  Not just in their neighborhoods.  Significant people who don't send out press releases.  It's a sad truth:  Stories happen only to people who are allowed to tell them.

        What's your journalistic goal besides making a living?  A lot of people who climb the ladder of success find it's been leaning against the wrong wall.  We should do more than cling to the top rung and shout headlines.