Turning Local News Into Viral Stories

WBZ NewsRadio reporter, producer, and on-camera personality Matt Shearer joins Jack Moran to break down what it takes to turn everyday local moments into stories people actually care about. Matt shares how his early love of radio shaped the way he communicates today, treating the audience like a friend in the passenger seat, not a crowd he has to “perform” for. He unpacks the core storytelling principles that drive his work: earn attention fast, keep the pacing tight, and make sure every story delivers a real payoff. The conversation also explores how trust is built, both with strangers in the field and with viewers online, by staying human, curious, and consistent. This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at modern journalism and content creation, and a reminder that the best stories aren’t the biggest… they’re the most honest.

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Host: Jack Moran

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Transcript

Matt Shearer 0:00

One of the first things I ever spent my money on, my own allowance money, was a little AMFM boom box, you know, with a couple cassette decks in it. And I hid it between the crack between my bed and my wall. And when my parents went to bed, I'd put on headphones and just scan the dial and see what cool voices I could find and people telling me really interesting stories, news, uh telling me about a cool artist, music, something like that. And so I always wanted to like do that. And then as I got older, got my driver's license, I'd be driving around by myself at night, and whoever I was listening to on the radio was like my companion.

Jack Moran 0:34

Welcome to Shaking Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe, and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack from Random. And this is Shakin' Hands.

Matt Shearer 1:12

Are we already rolling by the way? Yeah, we're going. Oh my god, I didn't realize that. Um cool. Oh, well, I am. Don't let that change anything. No, this is good. I I love this. I love just getting right into it. Um, I am just busy as hell, man. Like, all good stuff though. Like it I've tell people all the time, I would way rather be too busy than too bored. Because when you're bored, you're not working. And that's bad. I've been there. That's not fun. So I'd way rather be completely busy and losing sleep or whatever. But basically, I'm under a mountain of uh really interesting, cool stories that I need to finish, videos uh that I need to post. Um, and I've got my very first live show ever coming up that I gotta prepare for. So I'll go and on top of all that, I'm a dad. I got two kids, and that takes up a lot of my time too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's good. I I love it. And um, I love the fact that I can do all of this cool stuff right here in Massachusetts, where I grew up, where I live, where I love. You know, it's like everyone that I care about is here. You know, don't get me wrong, traveling seems cool. I'd love to leave the state someday, but uh for now I'm really happy to uh be doing what I'm doing here.

Jack Moran 2:16

Where would you go if you left the states? Like to live somewhere else? Would you live somewhere else?

Matt Shearer 2:24

That's a good question. No, I just mean like live anywhere else. Literally, like Rhode Island would be an exotic trip to me at this point because I spend so much time in Massachusetts. Big story in Rhode Island the past couple days. Oh, I know. Seriously. Yeah. Luckily, we uh we have some amazing reporters who do a great job of covering the more serious stuff, which allows me uh to kind of focus on more features, fun, human interest-driven stuff. But you're right, um the it it was a tragic story. But yeah, I mean, if I could live anywhere else, man, I don't know. I've been uh I've been playing a lot of GeoGesser lately. Do you know what that game is?

Jack Moran 2:57

Is that when they're like the guys are like on the maps and they're like trying to guess where the spot is? Exactly. I've never done it, but I've seen eclipse.

Matt Shearer 3:03

Puts you in a random place in the world on Google Street View, and you have to figure out where you are. And the closer you are when you pinpoint on the map, the more points you get. So I've been playing a lot of that and I've been seeing all the- That's how you're getting your travel. That's how I'm getting my travel, and I'm like, man, I'm learning like a ton about geography and history, and like it's super cool. So I don't know, man. There's a lot of countries that I've got my eye on that I like over in Europe or even like Namibia and South Africa is like randomly beautiful. Have you left the country before? Barely. I've been like on a cruise. Seriously, like it's it's bad. Like I have not really done a lot of traveling in my life, but it's just because I've been so focused, laser focused on my career this whole time that it's like I don't even think. So when we do like take vacation time, it's like we're going to Cape Cod, you know, we're going to Mashpee, you know, we're going to uh New Hampshire, sometimes uh California, sometimes Florida, where just uh places around here. But yeah, I've barely ever left the country.

Jack Moran 3:58

So when you say you've been laser focused on your career, yeah, are you doing what you've always thought you were gonna be doing, or has it changed over the years?

Matt Shearer 4:06

Yes and no. And I mean, this is gonna show my age a little bit, but like growing up, I really wanted to be on the radio. Like that was the goal. I wanted to be got the voice for it. Thank you, appreciate it. No, um, but like I always just thought I could be like that cool guy on the radio, the cool voice, you know, because one of the first things I ever spent my money on, my own allowance money, was a little AMFM boom box, you know, with a couple cassette decks in it. And I hid it between the crack between my bed and my wall, and why my parents went to bed, I'd put on headphones and just scan the dial and see what cool voices I could find and telling me really interesting stories, news, uh telling me about a cool artist, music, something like that. And so I always wanted to like do that. And then as I got older, got my driver's license, I'd be driving around by myself at night, and whoever I was listening to on the radio was like my companion in the passenger seat, keeping me awake and keeping me engaged and entertained. And I was like, I want to do that. There's something magical about that. You still get that today, even if it's not on the FM dial, maybe if it's it's in a podcast. You feel that sort of companionship with whoever it is that you're listening to, right? It's like that, it's a real intimate thing to be alone in your car and have somebody else telling you a story. It's cool. So that was always my drive. So, in that regard, yeah, I am doing what I always set out to do from the age of 14. I always wanted to be on radio and I now work for a radio station, being a news reporter, but I'm also kind of going in this different direction because of social media. My stories are reaching not just those people who are driving alone at night in their car, or not just the kids who are scanning the dial with headphones on. I'm sure none of them do that anymore. I'm reaching people uh where they want to be, where they are, on their couch, scrolling the apps, you know, on the train, on the bus. And uh I just think that's so cool.

Jack Moran 5:52

So, what's the transition like or the journey like from getting the boom box to like where you're at now? Like, what did you study this in college? Was there anything in ice cream?

Matt Shearer 6:00

I did, but believe it or not, it started in high school. Um amazingly, uh, yeah, freshman year. My buddies and I, I was I guess if you had to label me in high school, it would be the skaters. I was I was a skateboarder, that was a big thing for me. I played in punk bands, like that was the type of kid I was in high school.

Jack Moran 6:16

There's a lot of great skate parks in Massachusetts.

Matt Shearer 6:18

There are, yeah. And they're popping up more and more. I know, and they're actually making them good now. Back in the day, every town would just cheap out and put a couple ramps on top of concrete. And but now there are some really good ones. I love it. Um, but back then, yeah. So my friends and I were sitting at a table one time and there was a sign up on the wall for the high school radio station. You know, it was a radio station with a pickup range of like the parking lot, but it was cool, right? And we were like, let's do this. We said, what if we had a show about skateboarding, right? We'll we'll like talk about skateboarding and that'll be our show. And I was like, hell yeah, let's do it. Um, turned out I was the only one that took it seriously, right? We had guys showing up high on various substances and breaking the equipment, making fart noises in the microphone, purposely playing songs with swears to try to get us kicked off. But like here I am showing up with like show notes and prep and like, you know, we're gonna talk about this at this time, and then we're gonna play this song, and then we're gonna do this. And um, so that was when I realized, like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do with my life. This is my career. And uh, so I followed that path. I had an internship as a senior in high school, so I got kind of an early start on the internship thing at an alternative rock station in Lynn, Massachusetts, called FNX. Went to Emerson College, studied radio there. It was great because by the time I arrived there, uh, you know, they have the best college radio station in the country. So it was pretty competitive to get on the air there. Um, but I was going in with already some radio experience under my belt. Most people don't start that until they get to college. But I had already done that all through high school and I had even done an internship. So I got on the air super quick, it was overnights, which was ridiculous. Three to six a.m. was my first shift ever there. But I toughed it out. At that age, you can, you know, you can do that. And then while I was in college, I was working three nights a week doing overnights at a commercial radio station. So from midnight till 6 a.m., three nights a week, I'd be working my part-time gig there, getting paid, then go to class during the day. And then I'd have different shifts at like 6 a.m., 3 a.m., midnight, just like whatever, just to be on the air, just to be doing it. I was the guy walking around campus with like a coffee in one hand and a Red Bull in the other. Just anything to stay awake and just keep that train rolling. You know, other kids were going to do this study abroad programs and stuff, but like I had this gig lined up here, so I stuck with it. And then it wasn't long after I graduated that a full-time job opportunity opened up for me and I took it and the rest is history. Is that where you're you are now? Is that no? So my first gig out of college was at a talk radio station, political style talk. Oh, you're dumb. You're no, you're wrong. Yeah, you these people are doing this. Not at all what I wanted to do with my life, but it was something. It was in the field, it was in the market I wanted to be in. I took it, and I ended up learning a ton, meaning all kinds, and basically anyone who is anyone in Boston, Massachusetts politics, and even some on the national scale, too, which was really interesting and cool. And then that station went away. It flipped formats, and I ended up working at um a top 40 station for a while, the old 103 amp radio, doing like entertainment comedy-driven style morning radio, you know. Welcome back. But like it was so wild to take that transition from let's make people mad radio to let's make people happy radio, you know? But like all those skills I learned along the way from both stations, like help build this Swiss Army knife of unique skills that I have to get me to the next job, which after seven years at the top 40 station, the pandemic uh put the nail in the coffin on that station. Um, I ended up at WBZ News Radio. Um, it was a weird time though. I and I've talked about this before, but like the pandemic was a tough time to be in this business because nobody's in their cars listening to the radio. Nobody has the money to spend on advertising, so there's like no money going in. So every station pretty much had hiring freezes everywhere, except for WBZ. And if you think about it, it makes sense because it's an election year, it was a pandemic going on. People were tuning in for information on both of those things. They needed extra help, they needed a reporter. I had never been a reporter before. I was like, How am I gonna do this? All I know about being a reporter is what I saw on TV, the nice fancy suits and outfits and talking a certain way. And I was like, Oh my god, is this really me? But they convinced me on the phone, they were like, We think you have the skill set to do it from the different, like even it like the comedy bits that I was doing, interviewing people out on the street for the top 40 station, right? And booking interviews and like doing all the serious, more political stuff with the talk station. It was like if you just combine all that together, you could be a reporter. And plus, we don't want just another journalist with a capital J. We want somebody who can kind of come in and have a different approach in here, like think different, help pull us in this 100-year-old AM news radio station into the 20th century um through social media and all that. And I was like, all right, you know what? Now you're speaking my language, creativity. I like that. Let's do it. And so um, yeah, they they got me uh they logged, they they registered the TikTok account for WBZ News Radio and had me be the go-to guy to start posting on it, and it changed my life, changed my career.

Jack Moran 11:31

So peel back the curtain on being a radio personality. You said you've learned these skills. What are the skills to be to be on the radio?

Matt Shearer 11:39

I think the biggest thing is to not worry too much about stumbling or messing up. That's the biggest mistake people make when they do it for the first time. It's like a microphone's in front of their face, and for anybody, you know, maybe not you because you do this, but like for a lot of people, you put a microphone in their face and suddenly their psychology changes. They're overly conscious about every word that comes out of their mouth. And not only that, but like how they sound when they say those words and how they look when they say those words, especially if there's a camera.

Jack Moran 12:05

That's why we don't tell people we're starting.

Matt Shearer 12:07

I love that. So it's just more natural. Yeah, that's exactly what you got to do. And I think um, and this is also why when I do interviews with people out on the street for the videos and stuff, I've just got my phone and I'm making eye contact. And the phone is here and it's recording and it's capturing the video, but we're having a conversation, we're engaging, and it's much less intimidating, I think, than like, I don't know, being out on the street with like a TV news crew with like a giant camera, you know, and a light intense in their face, and then a second journalist there with a microphone, you know. What do you what do you think of this? It's like, no, I'm not trying to be intimidating, I'm just trying to relax and be that guy. And so the other thing, you know, going back to your question about like what are the other skills and stuff, you know, you can put yourself in the mindset of remember earlier I was talking about being alone in my car and the person on the radio was my companion in the passenger seat. When you're on the microphone, be that companion in the passenger seat. Talk like you're talking to your friend who's driving you somewhere and you want to tell them a cool story, you know, or a funny story, or just any story. But don't talk to you, don't have to talk to them with a radio voice or or a TV news voice. Because that's just not real. That's not natural. Just talk like yourself. And people say all the time, like, thank you, by the way, for complimenting my radio voice. You know, it's like, but people worry about that. They say, like, oh, you have good radio voice, radio, but at the end of the day, what you say is more important than how you sound when you say it. People care, it's like content, you know, if you're if you're posting some content online, it's much more important like what that content is than how pristine and perfect it looks.

Jack Moran 13:41

Are you conscious of those communication like techniques as you're using using them, or you're just naturally riffing and it just happens to have influence on people?

Matt Shearer 13:50

I think just I'm uh just trying to be as natural as possible. And like I've I've said, I've been doing this for a long time, you know, since I was like 14 years old. So I'm not intimidated by a microphone being in front of my face anymore. Although I will say, and this is a true story, because I've been on the radio for so many years and we have FCC rules, you can't swear on the radio. Now, whenever there's a microphone in my front of my face, I'm wired to not swear. So when my friend had a kid, the first of our friend group to like have a kid, and I'd be with my friends like swearing like a sailor, like I usually do in real life, he was like, dude, there's a kid around now. You can't be doing this. He started making me hold her little toy Barbie phone when we'd hang out so that there'd be a microphone. Yeah, it worked. I stopped swearing around the kid because it was a microphone.

Jack Moran 14:31

That's hilarious. Yeah. So you said that you you basically got this opportunity and they, you know, gave you a little more creative freedom to it seems like modernize um the radio. Um once you got in, what do those like you know, first 90 days look like? Or, you know, what was that creative like what did you come up with?

Matt Shearer 14:53

Yeah, I mean, it was a it was a transition, right? Because like at first there was no social media element to it. When I first got hired, I was strictly on the radio. And being a reporter for the first time, too, I was trying to emulate like again what I had seen on TV. And don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great TV reporters out there who do a great job of standing out and being original, but there's also like that stereotype, right? They all kind of look and talk the same. And so, like, I was kind of trying to just like dumb myself down a little bit and like just be that generic voice. And my boss said to me after the first story I filed, he was like, you know, it was fine, but like it's a fun story. Like you could have a little bit of fun with it, like let loose a little. And I was like, oh yeah, I guess I can. I guess I did. And then slowly over the course of the the next year, I just experimented more and more with different sounds. I I knew I had a really strong production background, so I could do really cool things with audio. And I was like, why not like experiment with that and just see seeing how far I could push it and what how what I could get away with before they stepped in and said, Can you please stop doing that? Um, and they pretty they pretty much never have. They there's been like one or two instances where they said, Hey, all right, we got to pull it back a little bit, but it's almost never happened because they trust me and they see, especially a year or two into this when I started doing more social media stuff, then they really started seeing the success in the numbers. And they're now it's to a point where they're just like, All right, keep doing you. Um and in the beginning, when I was posting, it was literally just me taking the audio pieces from the radio and slapping random B-roll on top of it. Not the most engaging things to watch, but it was just something to get our stories out there to a new audience. But then over time, I started again experimenting, playing around with how I capture video and how I edit the videos and putting myself in front of the camera more. That was a big transition. Because for a long time I had been building this audience without ever being on camera. And when I finally put myself on camera, the comments blew up like, what the hell? Like he's a real person. He's not just some figment of our imagination. Like there's a human behind this voice. And so that became even more fun to play around with that a little bit. And now I'm at this point where I've been doing this for a while, and you know, I've kind of developed sort of my how my voice is on social media, but also I want to keep pushing, I want to keep experimenting because that's how you keep people engaged and interested and not allowing them to get bored. You know, if you're constantly posting the same video over and over and over again, eventually they're gonna get tired of it. You have to find ways to mix it up. And I for me, it's really important to never post the same video twice.

Jack Moran 17:34

So if you had a cookbook, your own cookbook, what would be the recipe for a uh good video?

Matt Shearer 17:38

Well, the secret ingredient is to experiment every time. Because yes, there are certain things that you need to keep in mind every time, like, oh, you need to, you know, you need to have a really good hook, right? In those first three seconds, because otherwise people are gonna swipe away. You need to deliver on whatever it is you're you're you're promising so that by the end of the video they feel satisfied. They feel like that was worth my time to watch that video. You want to be relatable so that maybe they're gonna share it with people and their friends and say, like, check it out. Like, I know this place or I know this guy, or I know this video speaks to me for one reason or another. But beyond that, just always be trying to do something different, even if it's just a different editing technique, to constantly push yourself and try to put yourself out of your comfort zone and also keep the audience on their toes. That makes it fun for me. And if it's not fun for me, if the process isn't fun for me, why should I expect it to be fun for anyone who's watching? Valid. What's the hook psychology? The hook in terms of things in the very beginning? Yeah. I'll give you a couple examples. I mean, so sometimes it's like a visual hook, right? Sometimes it's something like you see something on the screen and it's so visually intriguing that you want to learn more and you gotta stick around. I've been doing uh some interviews recently with this realtor in East Boston. His name is Benjamin Smith, and he absolutely cakes his face and makeup every single day. And he really stands out. Like when he, I mean, he's building this online uh uh persona, but like just the makeup makes you say, like, whoa, okay, I gotta learn more about this guy. So just like an interview, just like start the video with a shot of him, and then let's explain who he is. But then there's other videos where it's something I say. It's not, you're not looking at something particularly interesting. Yes, it's me in a microphone, but the first words out of my mouth are interesting. An example of that is a video I did that um did really well late in the summertime. I live in the city of Framingham. We had a mayoral election, which by the way, you're already bored, I can tell. But one of the guys who ran for mayor in Framingham's name is Jeffrey Epstein. No way. Jeffrey with a G. Yes. And so my opening for the video was His life just got tough. Yeah, right. My opening for the video was Jeffrey Epstein is running for mayor of Framingham. And like that hook alone, I think, made people say, hold up. I never, I don't think there was a better hook to get people to stick through a municipal election in a city that nobody outside of that city cares about than that.

Jack Moran 20:09

That is hilarious.

Matt Shearer 20:10

And so, um, yeah, so those are the things that are in my mind when it comes to the hook.

Jack Moran 20:15

Okay, and then you moved on to like keeping people satisfied or they leave satisfied. What's the psychology behind that?

Matt Shearer 20:20

Yeah, I mean, it's like it's kind of like I guess writing a book or a movie or even a song, right? You want to kind of start strong and have it go somewhere. You know, you don't if most of my videos are in the like two to three minute range, which doesn't sound like a long time for like storytelling, but for social media, that's like that's like Titanic and Colin of Arabia double feature. Colin of Arabia, Lawrence of Arabia, sorry. Colin of Arabia is a great hardcore band from uh Brockton, Massachusetts, who I love. Shout out Colin. He's been in my videos before. Lawrence of Arabia is one of the longest movies ever made. So that's the point I'm trying to make here. So three minutes on social media is a very long time. Yeah, for sure.

Jack Moran 21:00

Um keeping people engaged through that time.

Matt Shearer 21:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you're gonna keep people engaged, every second needs to count. It needs to be worth their time. There's no wasted time, there's no filler, nothing like that. Um, but also every second can be engaging, you know. It's like it's it's gotta be almost like a, you know, start strong, you know, and then have a really strong middle and then like end on a high note so that the next time you post, people won't just say, Oh, it's just another video from that guy. They'll say, Oh man, this is another video from that guy. I gotta save it and watch it later, you know, if you can't watch it right now. So, what does a day-to-day look like for you now? So uh yeah, it's different. It depends on the story that I'm working on. But generally speaking, I'll wake up, I'll have a morning meeting with the newsroom, we'll all talk about what we're working on, and then we get to work. Um, so sometimes that includes just me recording just really short, quick stories just to have my voice on the radio, but then I go out and I film my. more longer in-depth stories and sometimes you know generally these days um you know I'll have like a video a week or every other or a couple a week um which isn't a ton by like in what's not a lot at all by like influencer standards but it's enough that I feel like I can tell a compelling story and actually get in depth with it and do my research and sometimes I'm out there like I've I spent 10 hours in a location once that I needed to boil down to a three minute video. You know? That's a typical what's a typical like input time input for uh the one video you're putting out below yeah I mean it depends it it depends if I'm profiling a person or a town or something like that. Sometimes it can be anywhere from like half hour to four hours but I would say maybe on average like two hours two to three hours I'll spend with somebody or somewhere. I just try to again like I want the video to go somewhere so like if I'm doing a profile on you, you know, like maybe we'll go back to the town where you grow up and we'll drive around and you'll show me stuff and we'll go to where you work and sit down and capture a little bit of a day in your life and all of this stuff takes time.

Jack Moran 23:10

So yeah so what is when you are how do I put this when you're meeting someone on the street right and you're like developing one of these stories how do you get them to open up to you and like build that trust with them if you don't have a relationship with them already?

Matt Shearer 23:35

That's a good question. And um it's one that I think a lot of people struggle with when they get into this line of work. They'll ask me like how do you get people to open up to you and stuff and really it's just about being as real as possible with them. You know I think you know when they hear that a news reporter is coming to interview them they have this idea of what it's going to be like and again they think it's gonna be that intimidating newsman showing up with a microphone and a serious stare and a really nice jawline. But for me it's just about showing up and just hanging out you know I don't go in with like a list of questions in front of me just like you don't which is great because I can tell you're actually listening and engaging and asking follow-ups and stuff like that. And I try to be the same way. You know I want the people to feel like I'm just another friend who's hanging out with them. Um and so I'll crack jokes with them you know we'll joke around and we'll not the whole thing isn't going to be like this formal conversation it's just gonna be a much more loose like hangout. Where are you getting the leads for your stories? Wherever they come in sometimes it's like people will DM me all the time like hey you got to go talk to this guy at this place. He's really interesting or you got you know stuff like that. And I love that because it's like I got eyes and ears all across the state other times it's like I'm driving around and I see some like say I'm stuck in traffic in the O'Neill tunnel and I'm looking to my right and I see the emergency exit doors and I think to myself what would happen if I just like got out of my car right now and walked through that door like what would I find back there? Have you ever done anything like that? I did exactly that. I hit up maskdot and I was like can I go through the exit doors in the O'Neill tunnel and they're like sure and so yeah and so they got me a hard hat and like we walked through the uh doors and I did a little exploration of what's back there and it went viral and it was fascinating. Same thing driving down the expressway here on my way to uh Quincy where we're meeting today. Sorry I don't know if you want me to spoil that we're in Quincy Massachusetts and I saw the big uh national grid gas tank that's painted the different colors you know and recently I thought to myself what what's it like to climb the staircase up to the top of that tower and so we made it happen.

Jack Moran 25:43

And just like I loved what's the backstory on that because there's like some artist right that's his face is on the tower.

Matt Shearer 25:49

Yeah good question. So the rumor for a long so the artist who did that her name was Karita Kent she was um a pretty famous artist uh but at the time that it was done was like the thick of the Vietnam War and a lot of people thought that she had purposely painted a profile of Ho Chi Minh the Vietnamese president I always thought it was her that her that the same person that no no it was just so the rumor is that was Ho Chi Minh because she was a big outspoken anti-Vietnam war activist and so uh it kind of would have made sense but she always laughed at that and said no that's not how it works. Basically she had a small model and just like ran her paintbrush over it and the way the paint fell is the way the paint fell. No way. Yeah so it's not purpose it's not on purpose at all.

Jack Moran 26:35

Wow yeah yeah that's crazy so it's pretty fascinating it literally looks like a like a Chinese man or an Asian man.

Matt Shearer 26:43

Yeah totally some people I the guy I interviewed for that story said he sees like Beavis and butthead in it and stuff. It's like you're gonna see different things you know people will tell you oh it's that it's this it's that but you know she always just found that funny but I did find it really interesting that that's all hand painted it's not like a big giant decal. How was it done? So same way just running letting it drip off the yeah yeah so basically they you she had like the little model and just like ran her paintbrush over it and was like okay this is good this is what we're gonna do. And so they like you some massive paint scaled that and had a bunch of people I know right a giant person. No they set up um yeah they set up like a grid and painted it out and if you get really up close to it which I did I was like up close and touching it you can see the brush strokes wow of the actual paint and they have to repaint it every like seven to ten years because uh it's right next to the ocean and all the salt air like damages the paint.

Jack Moran 27:36

How long did it take to do it the first time? That I think that's a good question.

Matt Shearer 27:40

They were representing it they had a team that was I think it was a team but here's a great fun fact for you there used to be and I learned this from doing this there used to be two tanks side by side and the one we see right now is not the original one that had the painting on it. It was just blank. But they got they got rid of the one with the blank paint on it and people were like where's the paint like we want we want the the the colors the art piece and so they had to uh go in and and repaint it on the blank one. Wow yeah that is crazy I'm mind blown I know well if that's not it what is the uh best story that you've run into oh man that's a great question so I have my stories that were like the most fun for me to do and the ones that are the you know things like things like I went up in a blimp I saw a blimp flying around the Boston marathon and I thought like what's it like to be in a blimp the hood blimp? No it was the um the Dick Sporting Good blimp oh um yeah I know it was fairly new it was it was just in here for a little while but I hit them up I was like can I go for a ride and a blimp? And that's a rare experience because they're not like making new blimps in the world right the blimps that exist today which is like there's only like seven of them left are the only blimps that will ever exist. You can't go to a blimp dealership and be like hey I'd like to buy a blimp you know so like the fact that I got to experience being in one is a super rare cool thing. And by the way that's a that's a neat experience. So it's like you know how when you're in an airplane right you you have to gain a lot of speed and go really fast and then it starts to take off. It's all shaky and it's intense when you're in a blimp literally there's just 14 guys on the ground holding it down by ropes and they just let go and then you're in the air. No way. Yeah how do they just the smoothest thing uh the pilot has to just like you know kind of sear it because they've got like sort of propellers and turbines that kind of change its direction and stuff. So they just kind of point it down and and go back down to and then they the guys are waiting to catch the ropes on the ground the 14 guys. I would be very uncomfortable uh in that thing thinking it was gonna pop or have you seen the movie um what's it called when the blimp lights on fire I I mean I've heard of the Hindenburg I don't know the Hindenburg oh the humanity yeah that was uh I was a little worried about that but I feel like by now after the Hindenburg there haven't been a whole lot of blimp incidents you know so like I feel like they've got this down. Yeah um but it was a really smooth ride. So that was a cool one but I don't necessarily I'm not saying that was my best story. I'm just saying like that's an example of one that I think is just like so cool that I got to do that. I think my best story and probably my most viral is was a series that I did with somebody from actually right here in Quincy. I met him at a mall at the South Shore Plaza. He was working at Airpostel and he was just a really funny quirky guy. He was cracking jokes and oh I think I saw this. Yeah so I included he would tell these jokes he was he was a Filipino guy and at at the end of every joke he'd say joke only joke only and I had him in a video and he stole the show so I was like I gotta do a follow-up with this guy. And so I sat down with him and made a whole video about just him come to find out he's working like three jobs to put his niece and nephew through school and like he had to give up his whole drag persona because like his father disapproved of it and it was his passion but he's not doing it anymore. So like I set up uh a night and he also said that he hasn't had a night out in since he moved to the US just because he's been so focused on all his three jobs. So like it's one of those things where it's like you meet somebody he's so funny so bubbly in the real world and you just don't know what's going on behind closed doors or like you know how sad he was that he was lonely. So we took him for a night out I took him to a drag show he had the time of his life and the drag queens there invited him to revisit his drag persona and uh perform with them. And so we made that happen. We had a show uh two shows actually both of them absolutely packed um and it was just like such a cool rewarding thing to see him revisit that part of him that brought him so much joy for so long that he had to put aside because of disapproving family members. So it was a really rewarding story. Yeah and it must be like awesome having that kind of impact uh with a person definitely the other example too that I'll give real briefly is I met a woman and this is another one that um that I feel really proud of I met a woman uh singing on the side of the road in Boston in downtown crossing and I sat down to record her and interview her and come to find out she was homeless. Um she had been through a really messy situation but she had this dream of like going into the recording studio because she had this original song that she wanted to record. And so I was like you know I I'm a musician. I know people I could make this happen. So I pulled some strings with some people I know and I got her into a recording studio. She recorded her song I set her up with a producer so that she could like actually have the song like made and we posted it on Bandcamp, which is a streaming platform where you can pay whatever you want for a song. So people were downloading it and um within you know a couple months she had made like 10 grand from her own song. Wow. So it wasn't like me walking up to this woman handing her money. It was like she made this amazing piece of art there for the world and made a ton of money off of it. And then that kind of snowballed from there to where all these other amazing things happened for her. We reunited with her with her daughter who she hadn't seen in a couple of years and like um she was interviewed by uh CBS Sunday morning and the CBS evening news and she got invited to be on America's got talent and like all this crazy stuff. So that was extremely rewarding.

Jack Moran 33:21

Do you stay in contact with these people?

Matt Shearer 33:22

Yeah absolutely that's awesome yeah totally are people starting to like recognize you I'm sure a ton yeah definitely what's that like it's great because it's not like I'm like some A-list celebrity that gets swarmed everywhere I go you know but Boston's a small community it is yeah but every once in a while people just like shout out hey what's up Matt Shearer and Matt Shearer, you know, can I get a picture real quick? And like that's that's cool. It's like what's better than just like random people telling you you're good at your job. You know I like that um it's funny to see how like my kids respond to it too because like if I'm with them and somebody recognizes me there they could be a little confused by it. It actually just happened yesterday I took my kids sledding and some guy at the mountain or not the mountain the hill happens to be from Belgium and he had been seeing my videos he was just in town visiting family members. I guess his family members had initially turned him on to me. But yeah and so my kid my my six year old came up to me and was like Daddy why does that person know you and like stuff like that. And I have to explain I was like well you know how like you like to watch Ryan's toy videos on YouTube. I don't know if you have you ever seen this kid Ryan on YouTube. He reviews okay it's because you're not a dad that's the there's this kid who's like really popular on YouTube who just like reviews toys and like plays with toys and like that's his whole channel. He's a child or an adult? It's a child. Okay. And my kids are obsessed like not just my kids kids in general are obsessed this this kid is probably no more than 10 years old at this point and he's already like a billionaire. Like it's ridiculous how much money yeah anyways so I had to explain to my kid I was like yeah well you know how you like watching this youtuber like that's sort of like that guy likes watching my videos and I had to say like I mean I'm not as famous as he is and she goes yeah well I know that I'm like what do you mean she's like well because he has a nicer house than we do I was like listen kid when you're a famous youtuber you can get whatever the hell house you want but I work my ass off for this tiny little two-bedroom okay so you chill that's hilarious yeah but it's fun you've probably gotten like a pretty good lens on the city and gotten to explore quite a bit like if you had someone uh you know new coming to the city what would they have to see or where would they have to go if you had to give them a tour? Good question. I mean every so everyone's gonna tell you to do like the touristy stuff right you know do the Freedom Trail do all that but like some of it's actually worthwhile and like for example some of it some of the touristy stuff is good. I will say Regina's pizza lives up to the hype. Fire you know it like legit you go to that original location in the north end you may be waiting in line and you may get to the end and you say what the hell why did I just wait in line but the pizza lives up to the hype it's worth the wait it's so good. Also really underrated but amazing part of Boston that no one ever talks about is the Harbor Islands and in particular George's Island in Boston Harbor has an old military base that you can just like freely walk around. You can walk in the big giant pits where they had the cannons or like through the dark cold creepy aisles where they used to like put prisoners and stuff like crazy shit. And it's just like I oh I swore into a microphone whoops but it's like so crazy and it's like right there in Boston Harbor and it's so much fun. So that's one thing that I love but only when the weather's warm of course you don't want to go to what is Castle Island same thing Castle Island is it's a similar concept but you can't why are they there? Yeah you can't freely walk around the old military fort there um you can't the yeah I mean you you can walk around it but you can't like walk into it um whereas the on George's island in Boston Harbor you can actually walk in and around and like all the whole build it's super cool. They're not man-made are they man-made what oh the islands yeah I think they're small islands the islands were there yeah but they built the I I think anyways don't quote me on this but they built the actual uh military installations there because the cool thing about Castle Island is you can actually drive to it um it's just not as much of like a fun touristy thing it's more just like a nice place to walk around if you happen to live in Southie or something. And Sullivan's uh right there the little cat uh snack bar killer hot dogs and chicken figures telling you that's a good spot.

Jack Moran 37:35

Are they colonial islands or are they uh like from colonial times and from the Revolutionary War or post that they do go back to the Revolutionary War.

Matt Shearer 37:43

Um and I believe the the uh the base on George's island was used up until like World War I um they just repurposed it I think it was like a POW camp for like the Civil War and stuff like that. So um yeah really cool history and and also please don't quote me on any of these things this is just what I remember off the top of my engaged yeah but then but that's like that's uh what I remember from visiting these places and do you preface that on the videos too like ah this could be true could be no with the videos I know what I'm talking about but like you're you're you make a good point though there are people like we live in a weird age of information where anybody can just like turn on their camera and just say shit with no research or whatsoever and people just believe it because it's easier than actually doing the research that's me I'm like oh did you know that like Castle Island was built by the aliens I read it in the comment section like Assboy420 said that like blah blah blah blah blah that's hilarious. But yeah no when I make my videos everything's fact checked and and we're good there.

Jack Moran 38:49

Sick yeah yeah well final question if you had one piece of advice to give the audience that's watching this that you've learned over your journey through the years what would it be?

Matt Shearer 39:00

And the one of the best pieces of advice that I ever received when I was training to be on the radio and like pushing buttons and stuff is if something goes wrong don't immediately go oh shit shit shit shit shit shit shit what's wrong you know fix it and then go shit shit shit shit shit I can't believe that happened you know and that's just like that's life man it's just like you have a problem deal with it and then get pissed about it because you're not doing yourself any favors by just getting pissed because the longer you're pissed and not dealing with it the worse it gets so if you're in a live situation situation that certainly applies but I just think in life in general you have a problem deal with it.

Jack Moran 39:43

Okay so I lied not the last question I sorry because that was not a good answer.

Matt Shearer 39:46

I have no that was a good answer but it's maybe a follow-up question.

Jack Moran 39:49

Sure. So what do you do? Do you have a technique if you're like interviewing someone live because you have a live show coming up here and you forget the question that you're gonna ask and you start to brain fart like in the middle of it. Is there something that they teach you to get out of that situation?

Matt Shearer 40:04

So if it's live I mean I just kind of you can ask a follow up be like really tell me more about that you know like you know just try to keep them talking so you can kind of remember what you're where you were going with it. But if it's not live and it's recorded and I'm just standing there with a microphone and my camera and I know I'm gonna go back and edit it later. It doesn't matter it doesn't matter I could just say did you catch the Red Sox last night? You know yeah whoa how about that Super Bowl? Like what'd you think? You know just like whatever just anything to kind of keep them with you while you come up with okay where am I going with this? What's next? And I guess you could kind of do that in a live situation too.

Jack Moran 40:37

Yeah at least once per episode I'll like at some point like get like caught up just in what you're saying and I'm in the trance like listening to you and then I'll forget what I was gonna ask next. You're thinking about like Castle Island and then I'll just stop like I just literally and I think at one point it happened during this one and it happens all the time I'll just sit there for like 12 seconds just like thinking about it and the guest's kind of like what is he thinking about and then I'll remember it and see that's good.

Matt Shearer 41:00

That's fine though. You know you get the power of editing. And that's something and that's good advice that I always say to young people too like if they're getting into the social media game and stuff is like you have the power of editing. If you're interviewing someone on the street and you're worried about how dumb you look because you forgot what question you're gonna ask, stop worrying about that. Because like maybe the person in front of you thinks you look dumb but the potentially millions of people that could be watching it, they have no clue that that moment happened because you cut it out. So don't worry about the what the people right in front of you think. Worry about what the millions of people that are going to watch it are thinking.

Jack Moran 41:33

Well if people want to find more of your stuff and they want to engage with you, uh where can they find you?

Matt Shearer 41:38

Yes I would love it if you'd follow me on Instagram in particular which is reporter matt but I'm on the other platforms as well uh WBZ News Radio on TikTok Matt WBZ on uh X. I have not been lucky enough to get the same handle on every single platform. So let's just keep it simple. Instagram reporter Matt. Hell yeah well I appreciate you coming out it's been fun yeah thanks Jack this was a blast