My News Days #3

     My new life at Loyola came with plenty of lessons. Some were as simple as correctly pronouncing the letter 'W.' Most others were the fundamentals I'd later use for a life in broadcast news. Still, not a single one of those Loyola lessons compared to my 'on the job' experience. Those epiphanies are paragraphs still in my knuckles, far from my fingertips.

     Once I passed English, on the first try I might add, the good Loyola Jesuits gave me the green light to proceed with the journalism courses required for major. But before the good stuff like getting on camera, we had what I considered the dull stuff.  Unbeknownst to me at that time, it was the dull stuff I'd use everyday on the job and still know by rote many years after walking away from the newsroom.

     The sole instructor charged with teaching us the fundamentals was Mr. Cremedas, arguably the most patient person on earth. Imagine if you had a classroom of students who knew absolutely nothing about their career and you had to teach them everything. That was Mr. Cremedas.  I guess he was Greek. I remember he had a raspy voice, a pretty large nose and always wore a cardigan sweater. He was a good guy. We had a phone conversation many years later while he was working at a TV station in Syracuse, NY and I was at a TV station in West Virginia. He didn't remember me at all.

     The first task Mr. Cremedas had for us was teaching us how to write. Writing for the news, especially radio and TV news, is not at all like writing this blog, a letter or a business note. J-School students and anchors/producers/reporters, at least while I was in the business, are told: "ACTIVE VOICE! ACTIVE VOICE! WRITE IN THE ACTIVE VOICE! Plus, we were taught to omit 'unnecessary words.'
     So, three times a week we'd sit in our pretend newsroom on the third floor of the Loyola Communications building. Mr. Cremedas would have each of us 'rip' copy from the A-P and UPI wires and re-write the stories in radio/TV speak.

     Here's how we were taught to write. If I chose an A-P story that originally read: "An Abilene man was killed yesterday after an attack by Africanized bees," I was taught to write: "Africanized kill an Abilene man. I'm more than 30-years removed from that pretend newsroom and that sentence still doesn't make sense to me, but that's the way were taught.
     Another technique was using gerunds to present a more present voice. For example, "Bees killing a local man..." I know that sounds so wrong, but it was so right in the old school days for radio/TV reporting.
     Later with more experience under my belt, I'd write and encourage producers to write in the past/active voice. So, the above story would read on air as: "Africanized bees killed a local man..."

     The point is, Mr. Cremedas started us all at the extreme bottom. I guess he knew, at least when it came to the active voice, that we'd stick with it long enough to find our voice. That was one of the epiphanies I learned over 16(ish) years anchoring and producing... The news should be delivered in the anchor's own voice. But if you watch the evening news, even the network anchors, they'll use present tense for an event that very likely happened days... even weeks earlier. Their point being: NOW! NOW! NOW!

    Fast forward a semester or two, we're all now taking the TV reporting classes. Mr. Cremedas, still the patient fundamental guy and still donning his cardigan, had us 'team-up' with a partner. I teamed up with Anne Fishman.
     Anne was in transition. I think she was divorced. I know she had children my age. But since I was the oldest in class second only to her, it seemed natural for Anne and me to partner-up.
     Thinking back on those days, Anne reminds me of the actor Dianne Weist in the original "Footloose." She was very buttoned up, although in her case I think her buttons came from Ann Taylor.
      Our assignment was to find a story, record a story, write a story and present a story in less than two minutes. I was Anne's photographer. She was mine.  We'd check out equipment that included a big, heavy camera, a "three-quarter inch" recorder and a super awkward tri-pod. I can't remember a single story for either of us, although I do remember a 'stand-up' that took me at least 23 takes.

     The only story I remember from those days and I'm embarrassed about it, came from another duo. One of those students was Annette. I don't remember the other. Their story was on the proper application of a condom and like all of our stories, it too was presented to the whole class.
     I remember Mr. Cremedas saying, with all of us crammed into an edit bay, "Play the tape." For the next two minutes we heard the narrated story that included a condom, a banana and step by step instructions, with close-up video. Mr. Cremedas never lost his cool, at least not in front of us. 

Bill Robertson, WDSU-TV, the Pope under a tree and roast beef po-boys from The Napoleon House