Mike Cerre: Tanks it is!

Embark on an expedition with Mike Cerre, a Notre Dame alum, and former Marine and his adventures on his path to journalism. Witness the paradox of a man who felt a duty to serve his country while wrestling with his own anti-war stance, a man whose roots in the Midwestern ethos and exposure to global cultures have forged his unique narrative voice. 

As Mike recounts his transition from the Marines to his career as a journalist, he brings us into his world of tenacity and ingenuity. From capturing footage on a mountain's peak to embracing the pulse of 1970s San Francisco, his journey is a powerful testament to following one's passions against all odds.  

Join us as we navigate the collaborative trenches of television news reporting with Mike, who shares stories ranging from high-stakes drug raids to enriching interactions with iconic journalists like Ted Koppel. We also unpack cultural misconceptions, highlighting the transformative power of journalism to foster understanding and challenge our preconceptions. As Mike reflects on his storied career and peers into journalism’s future, his insights are a beacon for aspiring storytellers navigating the evolving media landscape. This episode isn’t just about where journalism has been; it's about where it's going, and how each of us can contribute to its journey.

Link to Mike's website
https://www.globetv.com 

Clips from Mike's site:
1. ABC Nightline Iraq Invasion 2003
2. ABC News- Care  Packages for Syrian Refugees

www.slightlyprod.com

Transcript

Journey From Marine to Journalist

Speaker 1 0:00

Now remind me again what your training was in college. And I said well, I was in film, television, journalism. And he said well, we've got the perfect occupation for you You're going into tanks.

Speaker 2 0:10

Hello and welcome to Everyone Is I am your host, jennifer Coronado. The intent of this show is to engage with all types of people and build an understanding that anyone who has any kind of success has achieved that success because they are a creative thinker. So, whether you are an artist or a cook, or an award-winning journalist, everyone has something to contribute to the human conversation. And now, as they say, on with the show, welcome, mike Ceret.

Speaker 1 0:41

Jen, it's an honor to be here. Thank you for including me.

Speaker 2 0:43

Oh, thank you for taking the time with us today. The challenge with this interview is going to be Mike, there's a lot about you. You're a special correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. You have an Emmy for your embedded war reporting during the Iraq War. Actually, you have an Emmy for your first documentary called A Closer Look at Football. You've been a foreign correspondent for ABC News, a documentary producer. You've been on Good Morning America. You've been a ski bomb in Colorado. But before we jump into all of that, I want to start with some basics. Where were you born?

Speaker 1 1:17

I was born in the Minneapolis area. Our family was mostly from the Minnesota area but we moved at a very early age to Detroit, so I was pretty much raised in the Detroit area.

Speaker 2 1:26

So Midwestern gentleman.

Speaker 1 1:28

Midwest, all the way.

Speaker 2 1:29

I know you went directly from being born to attending Notre Dame University, where you studied communications. Why was that interesting to you?

Speaker 1 1:38

Well, my father was in advertising and so I kind of was interested from that standpoint. But I was more interested in, maybe film, not really journalism and they didn't really have much of a journalism department there. But I was fascinated with the overall concept of communication. And so the program at Notre Dame was very, very broad, not much technical equipment, not much technical training at all. It was really more on theoretical stuff and film, history and whatever. And so I really never thought I'd be a reporter. That was never on my mindset, I think until I came back from Vietnam.

Speaker 2 2:11

So, when you're thinking about communications because you weren't thinking about reporting what did you think it was going to be?

Speaker 1 2:16

I liked what my father was doing in advertising, but he was really more on the sales promotion side. I liked the creative side of advertising. I thought that was fascinating how they could take a concept and the mix of visuals and text and narrative and music and all these things come together. I thought that was a really interesting creative crossword puzzle to be working on and I thought it entailed so many things that I liked. I guess, growing up with my father being a businessman, I thought I'd go into some kind of business that was a business of sorts and that was as close to my interest I think.

Speaker 2 2:47

I like how you refer to it as a business of sorts. When something is super creative, like advertising, people don't always think about it as a straight-ahead business necessarily. They think about it as something a little bit more ephemeral. So I think that's an interesting point of view about that. You talked a little bit about your military service In an interesting point of view about that. You talked a little bit about your military service. In looking at your past, you seem to hold two opposing ideas. At one time you joined the Marines when you were a sophomore in college, but you did this interesting thing where, at the same time, you wore a white armband in protest of the war. How do you reconcile those two ideas?

Speaker 1 3:21

Well, Jen, I think I was very fortunate to go to college, starting in 65, graduating in 69. So we were right in the middle of that very profound sociological sea change and I'm glad I was on both sides of that. Going to college in 65, pretty rah-rah, innocence and whatever. By 69, it was pretty sobering because people were going off to Vietnam and the war was in full swing. So I had a chance through Notre Dame to really kind of analyze what was going on. What I thought change some of my preconceptions.

Speaker 1 3:51

Of course, growing up, son of a World War II veteran, it was always service Yours, not the reason why yours not to question the government. And over my course of studies at Notre Dame, my opinion changed dramatically and I was not in support of the war. What really came down to at the very end was, even though I was in opposition to the war, I couldn't face the thought of facing somebody later in life that had taken my spot and suffered the consequences. I just felt a sense of duty that I'd be better off over there than being just another college student protesting the war. Not that I was going to protest the war, it's not what I had to do when I was in the Marine Corps but I felt within the one unit I was with the actions I was going to do. I maybe trusted myself as much or other people in some situations where there might be some ethics involved or moral clarity or feelings about the war.

Speaker 1 4:44

And so I was pretty naive. My father called me out on it right away. He said you're crazy. You can't walk those two lines. You can't be in the Marine Corps and be responsible for what you're going to have to do and still think that you have any independent thinking or thought. That's not going to happen. You're just not going to survive. And he was probably right in many ways. But as the war progressed as I was over there in 1771, yeah, things were changing. I think it was probably as obvious to anybody, especially the military over there, that was not a winnable war and it was really weird questioning why we were there in the first place. I think it actually got easier the longer I was involved, because you could just see a change of heart, change of mind, and that was happening amongst my colleagues even while we were in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 5:31

You talked about being a young man who's naive, and I think we frequently say that about kids, about they're naive, but I think that naivete is what actually keeps the world going, like if you have a spirit of I believe in this, I believe in I can do this and you haven't given up on your ideals. That's what keeps other people driving towards their ideals as they get older. Is that energy of youth and aspiration, and I think that's probably, to your point, why the war finally ended. Is that aspirational youth aspect of we don't want to do this anymore.

Speaker 1 6:05

But you talk about the naivete saw it all over again play out 40 years later when I was an embedded reporter in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the reason why I wanted to do it was I wanted to see another generation going through the same process I had gone through years before to see if there's any different. And it was exactly the same. Everyone kind of. Of course, most of these guys signed up after 9-11. So there's a lot more conviction for what they were doing. But you could see the change in their personalities as the war progressed, as we went over further with the invasion. Then they went back for subsequent deployments and it just kept changing, just like the Vietnam War. And now in fact, I'm just starting a new documentary on how much that war changed their lives and has changed the country. And it's once again. You get young people who go to war who you know, I guess, are a little bit naive and misinformed and their feelings change over the years and it keeps playing out all the time.

Speaker 2 7:03

Do you think you took that development of focus and used it when it came to developing your career down the road as a journalist?

Speaker 1 7:11

I think the Marine Corps inspired me to become a journalist. The war inspired me to become a journalist because I was very skeptical when I came back. Once you see something firsthand and you wonder why some people weren't doing something about it or telling you differently about it. That makes you a skeptic and I lost faith in a lot of things. But my government, my religion, a lot of things were challenged by that war and so I had a lot of questions when I came back that I wanted answers to, and I felt the only way to do that would be as a journalist. I was no longer interested in advertising. I really wanted to find out what was going on. That was one of the things I didn't understand about the world how the world functions.

From Marine to Filmmaker

Speaker 1 7:53

Now I had kind of a baptism in fire of the real world experience and, as difficult as it was, I wanted to stay in that real world environment. I found it pretty intoxicating being on the front lines of a story of something was happening in the news, not being in front of the camera but just being involved, not sitting on the sidelines, and I think that's what really changed my life most dramatically. I couldn't see myself going back to suburban Detroit, becoming a businessman and doing everything that my parents or elders expected me to do. I had this supreme confidence that when I got out of the Marine Corps I could do anything. I haven't been challenged the way I was to things I never thought I could do and did. I was not intimidated by. Well, I don't have any experience in this, or I don't have any contacts in this, or this is going to be difficult because these jobs are hard to get. I was just a bull in a china shop. I was taking no prisoners until I came back.

Speaker 3 8:49

Like Captain Johnson, I too was predictably apprehensive and slightly naive about the realities of war. On my first combat assignment as a Marine officer in Vietnam, 75% of Fox 2-5, Class of 1968, was killed or wounded in the two weeks it took them to retake Hue City during the Tet Offensive in.

Speaker 2 9:13

Vietnam in shooting some documentaries. How does a kid who went from being in the military flying missions getting his degree just come back and suddenly find the space where you can do that? How do you make that connection?

Speaker 1 9:36

My transition to film business was kind of interesting. I had a specialty I knew something about explosions and so I got a job on a film crew that was blowing avalanches up in the mountains there. And I ran into this crew in Aspen, Colorado and they were looking for some production assistants or whatever. I'd never worked on a film before in my life and they were looking for some gophers and production assistants. And then they needed some crews to do this high elevation, explosive work. I said I know something about explosives, Put me in coach, put me in coach. And so I got on with this film crew because I had some explosives background from from vietnam and from there you know the business.

Speaker 1 10:11

Once you get inside then you start making contacts and I can remember I went on to do the next episode of this tv series with them and they had lost their permit to send a cameraman. So this director of cinematography took me in his motel room and told me how to shoot. We stayed up all night, gave me a camera, told me how to shoot, how to frame shots, what kind of shots he wanted, and I climbed up the mountain with the camera and he was in a helicopter and he told me what to do and I shot my first film. So that was the opportunity that was given to me that I took advantage of, and so in a very you know, not with a film school background or any other credentials but other than explosives and a need for someone who could climb a mountain with a camera and get some shots- First of all, I'm afraid of heights, so the idea of climbing up a mountain at all, let alone with equipment to shoot something I've never shot before, is terrifying.

Speaker 2 11:00

But it's amazing the chutzpah that you had around that.

Speaker 1 11:04

I mean, it's really the marine training. Marine training is nothing that you can't do and they instill that in you. There is no option, for I can't do this. This is not going to work. You just have to come up with a solution and I really appreciated that training that I got from them.

Speaker 1 11:20

Remember they had a thing they called it, not an obstacle course, but I think it was a confidence course. Where got from that? Remember, they had a thing they called it not an obstacle course, but I think it was a confidence course where they had set up a series of scenarios and it was these huge walls. You were down in these walls and they'd have maybe a tire and they'd have a pizza rope and they'd have a metal can or whatever. And they tell you this is the situation, come up with a solution using just the tools you had there, and they would observe this officer training to see what your decision-making process was. There was no right answer, there was no wrong answer, but they wanted to see how you came up and made decisions and came up with workarounds. And I found that training invaluable because we had to use it a lot and it was funny that it happened that I used it the most in Aspen Colorado, to start my full careerer.

Speaker 2 12:03

You know what's so great about that too. When you're talking about that, you know there's structure in the military, but within that structure you have to be a creative thinker. You have to be able to problem-solve on a dime, and I think sometimes that creates the most creative solutions is when you don't have everything you need. You just have to figure it out, and that ends up being just like a pointed way of getting to your creative process.

Speaker 1 12:30

In the Marine Corps when they're handing out your military occupational specialty. The Marines are great to put a positive spin on bad situations. Here we are in the middle of a war and they're showing all these occupation specialties that they have no quotas for Pe, pure science, embassy duty, whatever. Everybody's going over to the war. And I can remember the instructor said remind me. And he said what's good for you is also good for the Marine Corps. He said now, remind me again what your training was in college. And I said well, I was in communications, film, television, journalism. And he said we've got the perfect occupation for you. I said what's that? He said he said we've got the perfect occupation for you. I said what's that? He said you're going into tanks. And I said tanks. And he goes, and with a perfect straight pace and without losing a beat and doing the positive spin that these Marine officers know how to do. He said Eric. He said you know Phil goes from a sprocket like this tank track the same way, He'll get along great.

Speaker 2 13:23

I love that you could have been an advertising pitch man.

Speaker 1 13:26

Exactly, exactly how to put out a positive spin on a bad situation. So I said, okay, I guess I'm going into tanks and that's who I was initially trained for.

Speaker 2 13:36

Wow, so you went from Colorado to San Francisco, to the Bay Area. How did that happen?

Speaker 1 13:42

Volkswagen bus windows down, brick on the accelerator pedal. I had come through San Francisco on my way being sent over to Vietnam and the orders were screwed up and so I had four last nights in San Francisco, enjoyed it immensely, went down to Washington Square, saw the Mime Troupe acting, went into the bars in North Beach and sat next to authors I'd been studying in college just the semester before Richard Brodick and Ken Kesey. I thought this was the center of the universe in the 70s and it really was the music and whatever. And coming from a town like Detroit, a big city that didn't have big city amenities, to be in a place like San Francisco that did have all this vitality, I was totally hooked and I made a decision right there that when I was coming back I was going to come back to San Francisco. And as soon as I turned in my obligatory sports car, which all aviators have, and got a Volkswagen bus loaded up and headed west, I didn't have any contacts here. I didn't know really anybody, and so the only job I could get that would free me up to work on film projects or anything else I could do was to work as a loanshoreman, Because you didn't have to call in sick if you didn't want to work. You just didn't show up at the hiring hall. And it was a great union. There were some great characters down there, A lot of writers in the hiring hall. I think I ran into a couple of filmmakers. It was a fabulous job for someone in the creative business. So I would be working down there.

Speaker 1 15:05

Of course, Columbia Longshoremen is a little bit glorious. I was so low in the union's seniority we were called scalers and we got the worst jump up, which was really cleaning out the holes of the ships after they were unloaded, because there was an A-card, B-card Longshoremen guys who had been doing it for years, and Eric Hoffer, that whole crowd of philosophers, some great people down on the waterfront. But I really enjoyed it. It was a great place to be. And then it got me into the Dolphin Club, because that's where the guys used to hang out when they were at the hiring hall and there was a lot of creatives down at the Dolphin Club, the Dolphin Swimming Club down at the Aquatic Park and some great characters. I think I got most of my professional contacts in the sauna, the Dolphins Swimming Boating Club, because everybody was in there. It was the police, undercover agents, judges, city officials, the dons of North Beach, everyone, and that's where I developed most of my news contacts in the early days of my reporting.

Speaker 2 16:03

I want to talk to you about some of your influences, and one of which was Charles Kuralt, who was a longtime journalist for CBS and he did the On the Road series if people aren't familiar, and one of the things that he didn't like about journalism was he found it to be very competitive, and is that something that you've experienced being a journalist, particularly in your early days trying to find your way?

Speaker 1 16:24

It's a fiercely competitive business and was from the very get-go and at the beginning, yes, I think it was good. It really made you really push very, very hard in a very competitive business. Later on in my career I found it a real obstacle to the process of doing good news and I was very fortunate to work with Ted Koppel of Nightline and now with the NewsHour, which are the kind of the least competitive and I think think for the more professional operations in the news business where they put that all aside, you're not going to gain ground by making someone else look bad within the staff or whatever. So I found it to be kind of a detriment later in my career, but certainly a real impetus to gain the career because it really separated the people that do it and the people who wanted to do it and probably weren't capable of doing it as well. But yeah, it is fiercely competitive.

Speaker 1 17:10

I'll never forget when I was the NBC affiliate in San Francisco. I was doing sports because I kind of wormed my way in the station by way of John Brody, the all-pro quarterback in 49ers, and I'd done a documentary on him. He got me into television. I'd never even been in a television station. He snuck me in and got me a job, but I didn't really want to do sports. I didn't know that much about sports, quite frankly, and I played sports, but I wasn't that interested. I was a fanatic. So I wanted to do news and there was an incident where the evening nightside reporter was sick and couldn't work. He was having an operation and I volunteered to take his place and the news director said we can't do that, you don't know news. I said listen, we can't do that, you don't know news. I said, listen, I don't know sports and I've been doing that. I think I could think about the news. And so he said well, all right, I'll let you do it for a week, don't screw up. And I went to the whole week and there weren't any decent stories. I wasn't getting anything, I was just doing aiming his chases, police calls at night, not much happening.

Speaker 1 18:02

Fortunately for my career, there was an aborted drug raid in the Tenderloin on the Thursday night, one night left to go in my training period, and because of my contacts in the Dolphin Club, some of the vice squad guys were able to get me into the building where the standoff was with the hostages. And so there again the connections, connections from the waterfront to the Dolphin Club, now to a seedy hotel in the Tenderloin. And so they got me between police lines into the lobby of the hotel. Police chief came down the stairs and said oh, the guy wants a negotiator, he wants a newspaper man as a negotiator. And so I raised my hand and they said well, you're not a newspaper guy. I said he's surrounded, he can't be picky. A reporter's a reporter. He just wants your reporter. And so I was able to go up there and start talking to the guy behind the door. The door was barricaded, he had the hostages and he said don't you do sports? No, I recognize you, but not tonight. You're the only game in town. I'm here. You got to let these people out.

Speaker 1 19:06

The suspect, the alleged kidnapper, said I want to talk to my attorney. So the police stretched a telephone line down. We didn't have cell phones at the time so I called his attorney and started being in between between his attorney, and so I had this telephone line. Well before I called his attorney, I called back the newsroom and told my producer that I was inside the building. We got the story, we're in good shape on this thing.

Speaker 1 19:24

And his response to me was if you don't get them out by the weather, it's no story. What he was meaning was it was about quarter to 11 at night, the newscast was going to go on and after they finished, the weather and the end of the newscast. That's the end of our broadcast. What's the 24-hour news? So I had to feverishly try to negotiate to release these hostages to save my news career. That's how competitive the news business was. My biggest fear there was not getting shot, but not getting that story done by the weather. That producer was so tough and this was my only shot to be a news reporter that that's all that counted was we had to get that story on the air by 11.20.

Speaker 3 20:02

On the Turkey-Syria border Mike Seray reporting for ABC News.

Speaker 2 20:07

You talk about good news. You said I want to make good news. What does good news mean to you?

Speaker 1 20:14

Well, I meant that in kind of a collaborative process. Ted Koppel was fantastic. He would have the morning brief and wherever we were in the world, we would listen in on it and contribute, especially if we were doing a story that was going to be on that night. And he'd go around the room. Everybody was in there interns, production assistants, everyone. How can we make this show better? What did we do wrong last night? What can we do better tonight? And then he'd throw it to a correspondent like myself who would be a bad dad or something.

Speaker 1 20:39

Mike, you're going to be a lead story tonight. And I'd say explain to the team what we're doing. And then immediately out of the room they could hear people say hey, mike, how can I help? I'm not working on a story tonight. You want me to cover you at the Pentagon? You want something from the Defense Department? Someone said I'll pull up some archival footage here.

Speaker 1 20:55

Someone piped in from London saying why don't you send the first part of the story? We'll edit it in London because you're going to be under a time crunch and this kind of collaborative effort that really made the story the best possible story to do. And that was Ted Koppel and that was Nightline and whereas other newsrooms I've been in it was like it was my story. I'm going to do it myself, I don't want anybody else involved or I'm not going to help him or her, because they're going to look good at my expense, because it's so competitive.

Speaker 1 21:25

I can remember when I was an anchorman at the NBC affiliate, like a lot of other people, I was afraid to call in sync because someone would come in and sit in my spot, maybe do a better job, get better ratings, and that was it. So it was that kind of a competitive business. So it was really great later in my career to work with groups that were really collaborative, like Ted Koppel, nightline, and now a lot of that staff is with the NewsHour and they continue that and the people in NewsHour are really wonderful people to work with. It's very collaborative.

Speaker 2 21:55

The medium here is television or now online, versus writing for a paper for the New Yorker. Why was this the medium that you chose versus writing?

Speaker 1 22:04

I never thought of myself as a writer. I always thought of myself as conversations. I love talking to people. I love I'm curious, I want to get to know people. I love being in different situations. I like being dropped in a situation I have no run up to at all and start to figure it out. I think those are my skill sets, as opposed to being more academic and research and theoretical and being a great writer.

Exploring Reporting and Cultural Misconceptions

Speaker 1 22:27

Writing for television is completely different. It's writing the picture, it's not prose. And so I think it played in my strengths that I'm a people person. I like getting with people, not in a confrontational thing, which we often had to do as a reporter, but more on, tell me your story. I want to know what your story is. Show me, teach me why don't I know about this? And I think that was my strength and I tried to play with my strength.

Speaker 1 22:50

I never really thought I was that good on air. I didn't think I was a very good anchor. I didn't feel very comfortable at it. But I always felt comfortable on the streets. I always felt very comfortable as a reporter being on the streets, being in different environments. That was my comfort zone. And like Charles Kuralt I mean, as you mentioned, my idols were Charles Kuralt and Studs Terkel, who wrote the book Working, and George Pliton, who did this experiential type writing, and I thought if there was some way I could combine those into some style of reporting, that'd be something that'd be very fulfilling to me personally and might produce some interesting work.

Speaker 1 23:25

And sometimes it could fall wrong on the other side of kind of showboating, like Geraldo Rivera and whatever, and you being more of the sentence story than the subjects, and I respect that, I understand that, and I found myself crossing lines on that on occasion and kind of being chastened for it and having to try to regulate that.

Speaker 1 23:43

So it's not about me. But then again, if you can ask the questions you think the audience are asking themselves, and if you can almost concede to your own ignorance on some stuff, sometimes I think you have to kind of back up and say I don't understand this, I don't know why. I'm doing a story on guns and gun control with a family in Nebraska, a person I know, and he explains their long tradition of gun culture. And you have to appreciate that, even though a poor gun control gun culture, and you have to appreciate that even though a poor gun control. They don't have any guns in the house. Don't adhere to that at all. But hearing from their perspective where it's almost kind of folkloric for them about it's part of their tradition, growing up as a family and whatever, I have to respect that.

Speaker 2 24:23

Keeping that in mind. You've said before that dispelling preconceptions about people and their wives is very important to you. Have there been times when you're diving into something, where something comes up and you have an aha moment where you're like oh, I didn't see it from that point of view?

Speaker 1 24:40

Jen, I think the most direct response to that would be a series of stories we did for the first anniversary of 9-11, where I was part of a journalist exchange with Middle East reporters and we took five journalists from Middle East broadcasting stations and five journalists from NBC stations and we took turns hosting each other and that was a real eye-opener for me, eye-opener for the rest of the journalists, about how little we knew about the two cultures and that was a real eye-opener and it was like all the other journalists. We said we've got to be open to what we don't know and these preconceptions we have. And so we said that right out front when we started doing the series of reports and I think it made for better reporting because I think other people had some more sane misconceptions. I was hosting a reporter from Egypt and she mentioned something she said I know Americans are Muslims, obviously, but I don't even think they're that religious.

Speaker 1 25:36

And I took her to Cedar Rapids, iowa, where you go down First Avenue in Cedar Rapids Iowa and every other building is a church and Cedar Rapids Iowa is also the home of the largest mosque in the United States.

Speaker 1 25:49

It was people who immigrated from Lebanon during the agricultural crisis, and so that was a real eye-opener for her that we may not be religious Muslims, but we are religious, and same thing for me going over there. I went and actually I was able to take my daughter, who was in college at the time, and we were fascinated with wearing the Haji headscar, and we went to the University of Cairo, which is their primary university in the Middle East and certainly the one in Egypt. My daughter and I had this preconception that it was maybe the less educated females who were stuck at home, not as exposed to the world. They were the ones who'd be wearing more of the traditional dress and doing the more conservative, religious selling. And we got the University of Cairo and 80% of the women were wearing hajji and headscarves, and so I thought that was very interesting for us to be confronted with that kind of misconception and deal with it on the streets of Cairo.

Speaker 2 26:47

At the end of the day, I think what people want is choices. If I want to represent my culture and my community by wearing this, then that should be my choice, and if I don't want to, that should be my choice. But it is interesting when you're an American, you're so American-centric. Our news plays that way. You've done a ton of international stories, but we focus mostly on domestic issues as a society. So when you're able to do something like share cross-culturally with journalists just makes you a better journalist and a human.

Speaker 1 27:19

Well, I totally agree and it's exciting, especially if I'm in a situation where I can learn about it. So, to me, coming off a story where it's changed me, I've done a complete 180, that's as invigorating as getting some scoop on something else. I'll come back on the plane, I'll think about what I've just seen and experienced and as much as I see the bad parts of this country, the dysfunctional parts of this country, I've often seen the spirit of the country and spirit of people so overwhelmingly positive. Whether my travels and meeting these people and experiencing what they do, I often come away with the question where do we find these people? How does this country produce people like this who still continue on doing these great things despite all odds? It never ceases to amaze me. It amazes me as much as the dysfunctional situations that we have to cover.

Speaker 2 28:06

And I think also the thing about the dysfunction is. Dysfunction is pretty loud. The people who do wonderful things frequently aren't the ones that are yelling. They're just living their life every day and being a good person. When you were on your way to basic training, you were going to try to stop at Woodstock on the way.

Speaker 1 28:23

I got the shirt but I didn't make it. I was trying to get there and we got caught in the traffic jam on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I was supposed to report for a duty for officers training in Quantico Virginia, as with another colleague, and we thought it would not go over well if we showed up late for officers training because of our excuse for us we got hung up in traffic in Woodstock. So we turned and headed south to Quantico Virginia to make it there and we got there. But what happened was some friends used to always joke and they gave me the T-shirt. I never made it to Woodstock, but I got the shirt.

Speaker 2 28:56

Well, I bring that up because you did go on tour with CrossFit Studios National. What was that like and how did that come about?

Reporter Reflects on Career and Future

Speaker 1 29:03

Well, that was after I came back from Iraq and I had been in Embedded Rock and I'd done a couple of specials on ABC. I was contacted by someone with Neil Young's organization and they were telling me about a tour that they wanted to do called Living With War, which was based on some music that Neil had done. That was taking on the Iraq war because the midterm elections were coming up in 2008, which would be a referendum on the war. Elections were coming up in 2008, which would be a referendum on the war, and he wanted people to be focusing on the war and felt that they had started their careers in the late 60s and 70s taking on the Vietnam War. It was their role to do it again. And they were upset that younger musicians weren't taking on the war because they were afraid, through their careers Consolidation in the music industry where radio stations owned the arena they didn't want to take it on. So he had to take it on, but he wanted to be anti-war but pro-truth at the same time. So he asked me if I would do something, if I would embed in a tour and interview people along the way to see what their thoughts were about the war. So it was a dream come true for me, because Neil Young, crosby, stills, nash and Young were some of my favorite recording artists, loved their music. So I was able to travel with them for about six months on and off and across the country and really hear what the country was thinking about the war, and along the way we connected them with veterans that I had been embedded with in Iraq along the way. So it was a wonderful experience for me, a wonderful way of combining both my interests and gave me a much greater respect for musicians like Neil Young and Bronsby, stills and Ashley Young, their focus on their work.

Speaker 1 30:36

I can remember they started the tour up in Oregon and in Washington, on the left coast, so to speak, in the blue states, and it was going on swimmingly. And then we were heading to Atlanta and I said, neil, I don't think it's going to fly as well in Atlanta as it's doing in Seattle. I want to put on a couple of camera crews here because I think you're going to get some real pushback. And you know I said, no, mike, that's just your negative news reporting background. No, it's going fine, the tour's going fine.

Speaker 1 31:11

Well, sure enough, that night in Atlanta all hell broke loose and they were throwing stuff at the stage. We had to get the state police to in fact get Neil Crosby, stills Nash out of the auditorium safely, because it was a completely different audience and they reacted quite negatively to the music. The riots started before the encore and his agent and everybody was trying to get him off the stage, to get him in a car to get him out of the auditorium. He said no, we started this conversation we. He said no, we started this conversation. We said it was a freedom of speech tour. He said I'm going to go back up there and let them throw the stuff. They've got the right to say or speak their mind. I thought it was pretty courageous for him to do that. What everybody else was saying get off the stage, run. He said no, I'm going to. I started I'll go back up there and he did.

Speaker 2 31:43

Well, that's, it's your integrity and that's who you are. If you're going to represent something, then you want to really represent it.

Speaker 1 31:50

And something he did along the tour was I hooked him up with a young Marine musician who I'd met over to Kuwait just the night before the invasion and won a talent contest, singing out in the desert and singing about the just let's get it on, let's go to Baghdad. The only way home is to see Baghdad, so let's get going. And then I was embedded with him again two years later and there's been some change about the world. But anyhow, he was trying to make it as a musician. And when the tour went through Columbus Ohio I wanted him to meet Neil. And Neil was very gracious Not only met him, he had listened to the kids' music.

Speaker 1 32:25

And when I came up to Neil's hotel room, neil said I want to know how you wrote that song, I want to know where you were when you wrote that song, what you were thinking, because I've never been in the military, I've never been in Iraq and I'm not even an American. I want to know what you were thinking about. And then sat down and played the song with the kid. He had learned the kid's song, the Marine song, and did a duet with him, which I thought was really amazing, because Neil was concerned about the process, the career process. What was his inspiration? What was the Marines' inspiration for his music and how could he run from that? And I was just blown away by that.

Speaker 2 33:03

Well, it's meeting people where they are talking to someone in Nebraska why their point of view might be different from your point of view, If you can meet them where they are actually here, though, there's a lot to be learned there. I don't know if you remember this, but in 2020, pandemic started and you were still reporting. How did the pandemic shift your approach to reporting, and is there any lasting impacts from it?

Speaker 1 33:25

Well, obviously the big shift was we had to do a lot of our interviews on Zoom and we couldn't travel and to me that was kind of taking away my best tools and my greatest interest in reporting, which is being out there and meeting with people. So we couldn't do it, couldn't meet face to face with people and do interviews. So it was quite restricted but we were able to get through it and continue reporting. And the only other good thing about COVID for me was being one of the older reporters because I was vaccinated early and because of my age I was able to go back on the road early. So for a rare time I had a little jump on my younger colleagues because I was vaccinated, I could get back out on the road.

Speaker 1 34:00

But I think it's had a negative effect in that it's limited us in the field reporting that we're not doing as much. Field reporting, we're not going out as much, we're not staying out there as long, field reporting we're not going out as much, we're not staying out there as long and we're not meeting and seeing new things as much as we'd like to. I think the local reporting has done better through all of this than the national reporting. I think local reporting has kept truer to its mission than national reporting. I think national reporting now is kind of playing to bring a lot of people in the tent, whatever you have to do to bring them into the tent, and sticking with stories that were highly rated, whereas I think the local reporting they still you know, which local is very, very important and they in some ways I think they almost do a better job than the national reporting.

Speaker 2 34:42

I agree with you there. I think my concern is always it goes back to that money thing. Well, we fund local reporting because we're throwing our dollars nationally. You miss out on local events and things that make people feel like community, and I think that's why local reporting is so very important.

Speaker 1 35:01

When I have to lecture at Berkeley or other journalism schools, kind of the woe is me. The industry is shrinking, there are fewer jobs and whatever. And I said but listen, the barriers to entry in this business now are so much lower than they once were. It's the story, stupid. If you've got a story, you now have the tools and you can use the platforms that are out there to get that story out, and that's what's going to kickstart your career. And so, in a way, even though the industry has consolidated considerably, I think there's more opportunities for people to be storytellers and reporters than ever before.

Speaker 2 35:35

I love that. I think that's such a positive note and that makes me wonder will you ever stop reporting, mike?

Speaker 1 35:42

I think I'm often asked that, especially by my family, and I think my problem is I can't think of anything more satisfying, more invigorating and things I like to do, and it's been my ticket to the world.

Speaker 1 35:55

It's given me a continuing education that I never went to graduate school, but I'm always going to graduate school as a media reporter. I've got to see the world. No way I've never would have been able to do it on my own, and so for me it's not really a job. It's, and I'm certainly not making a lot of money at this point for the amount of hours I put into it and whatever. You don't get rich being a reporter for the NewsHour, for public broadcasting, but just the opportunities, rich in opportunities and so I like doing that and I'm sure I'll find something that will. I think I'm getting more involved in working with nonprofits and still trying to do the storytelling, but be a little bit more focused on particular issues and things. So I think that's going to be an easy transition and one that I'm trying to make and I'm sure I will make at some point.

Speaker 2 36:42

Well, I would say don't ever stop storytelling, because you're pretty great at it. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. I really, really, really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 36:53

Well, thank you for having me on the show and thank you for letting me share this wonderful opportunity I've had the past 50 years.

Speaker 2 37:02

Thank you for listening to Everyone Is. Everyone Is is produced and edited by Chris Hawkinson, executive producer is Aaron Dussault, music by Doug Infinite. Our logo and graphic design is by Harrison Parker and I am Jen Coronado. Everyone Is is a slightly disappointed productions production dropping every other Thursday. Wherever podcasts are available, make sure to rate and review, and maybe even like and subscribe. Thank you for listening.