An hour with Bob Dotson

from alderson auditorium in the kansas union at the university of kansas a pr presents an hour with bob thompson and k mcintyre dobson is a graduate of kate you he started his broadcasting career at k a n u in the nineteen sixties where he worked for years as a student announcer then announced news director he's been with nbc news for more than thirty years now he's special reports american story with bob that's an error on the today show and on nbc nightly news watch or is part of you this editor's de france of it is william allen white school of journalism and mass communications and now here is five thousand walruses quite a crowd in the piano part i remember fridays and saturdays got my one of my grandfather be throw the city now graduated from r k u in nineteen ten

and i remember the first football game we can never came to worse it was the family lived in hiawatha kansas and he dragged me out in front of a law school where you're that statue of the older guy with his arm around the younger person so that's a degree that the law school i do ah got thomas gold are running well oh those are dangerous words for a kid growing up so it was in the fifties you know most of my friends are growing interest in missouri but i thought well what the heck it was walk on the wild side and so here i came my first roommate was the jade park mascot famous john carter and he was a red shirted football player a scene and back in those days before they gave mascots over to the journalists and made all the suits lightweight they tumble around they needed a big football guy because it was a heavy metal box covered with the

first game i went to oakland university was on its way the orange bowl once again i had gone to meet again before that i thought what the heck that this point of clarity maybe some of your hurt and gale sayers and so i thought i would show up inside a lot of support my my new roommate jon carder the j hawk master well they'll say are is scored on the first kickoff of the game he scored on the last point at all university of kansas won the football that everybody went nuts right forty five thousand fifty thousand how much that station stadium held back in those days they all tried to get down and grab the goalpost but you received inspiration spark those days as well that all recyclable posted countries they couldn't get him up so they turned on the mascot and john told that republicans or that they got about the economy both teams up with field so the only person that was him and they did they went oh like that

carried him around for a while now but will get a beer refreshments one way up in the stadium and what about in this would've been a great life magazine shoppers areas below three stooges said on the ground you know like and i knocked on his beak message on you ok he says he can't get out and leave prestatyn on john wayne about to fifty right just said wait here the fire station i know down the road like i'll be the jaws of life so i run down a fire station but there are celebrated and there's nobody around so i finally got like four friends and we carry that guy up until we relive that the delta thought all the house which of those cases the top of eleven street and two hundred and sixty pounds is a true story on monday jon we find out about and john went to the coaching he gave him the mascots outfit and he says i'm through and changing my major

to become a chiropractor well they talk about flying back reforms will be back and you know but more important i think we are at eight watershed moment in our business and not telling anything about that but i might be able to give you a couple of insights given the fact that i hung onto this career now thirty nine years i've been thirty two years at nbc and six years prior to that and the nbc station so on the floor but i still have a job and every day i get up i'm pretty much do what i like to do and i have no deadlines i have no quota and i'd go pretty much anywhere in the world as i have done every job in his business i've been a newspaper writers i've been an anchorman of an investigative reporter and a camera man of the day documentary producer of the very much everything but i found early on the thing that i

enjoyed most was being kind of an emotional archaeologist trying to find the emotional center of stories that help tell the story better and with this huge change that we're going through we now have the democracy of journalism that we've never seen before as dan rather you know twenty years ago there were only like four people and well kept coverage every story post your vest and nobody knew until we told them what the story was and mr merle used to say back in the forties news is what i say this it was serious and it was it was by now we face a future where as journalists we're always going to be scooped by the manager who has a cellphone or a webpage so what does that mean for us how we get a paycheck on friday only make ourselves worthy and i think it's actually a wonderful challenge for people in this room were younger because you guys will decide how

to do that but here's a little tip anybody in your audience elgar readers they can find every piece of information to report every day and they can find it before you know it's in the hole we have is that no one has the time to do that there're so there a tune in to you if you can tell them something and show them something they might've missed even standing next to me you know back this is not new back in the cave decades some guy goes down to the valley closer dinosaur comes back start bleeding on the wall right other five other people down there who had the dinosaur and they're all in their cave painting one cave is packed with people why because that artist is a storyteller same seven facts if you've heard all day long but that artist as a storyteller on a what your research show that our research shows that when people are asked where did you first hear about this

story they can't remember where anymore they're not they sought the world and they say we're not that they don't because all that information is so much around us but then you ask a follow up question who would you go to if you wanted to make some sense out of an unbearably they start talking about people who tell stories were so because of this new democracy in journalism the way to survive is to go back to our roots and tell better stories it's not enough to learn who what when where and why it's not enough to do a quick technical job and get the news out to refine my first boss in oklahoma city said you have to remember hey you see so that's really nice it was probably sung the president told me that when they would say whatever story when you go out to be so complex that you're going to get nervous and youre going to forget how to do it in it's too much information people invest in your head around how you should think about a story and

so you remember hey you see so hate you get their attention right away could be a case of natural sounds beautiful july night pictures from your newspaper column where you get their attention right at the top you can read david copperfield can't wait seven chapters so while the waiters david and then you go on the italy to you it may be a train derailment in pakistan but this is why you input all cancers should care about the siege is the most important part of the two or three things that you might have learned that's different that everybody else who's standing there covering the same sort of the most important for that matter it is so so why should i care as a reader or viewer doesn't make a difference if you're doing a seventeen part series orators of twenty second video every story it probably should be written as if you're making a little movie or

writing a good now it should have a scene setter it should have for shadowing it should have a conflict which is easy to find in journalism is always a conflict in our stories and a resolution or two used and sat words hey you see so and to this day thirty nine years into this odyssey i still when i get confused as a war where i am i am at the hay and what do you say or so i write the middle of my story's first season of car and computer is that it that's right sal write the story you know what that bird is they say do what i do going over all facts in your mind you're given the five report by the fact that you really like and that during that process or finding good information there that might give you the opening la soul you know when i was coming up my heroes and an angels are all but he had such a terrific writing i get so depressed and said know what would charles wright

into one time i was working opposite him to write i think you saw that last one but how did you write the middle of your story first you're going to find a couple that quote that you loved and robert frost said a story begins with a lump in the throat it mean to make you cry it means that when you start a story you have to do an emotional and yet to make people happy that angry curious you can't just say they met here in this room and they were all kind of hot white bravado done so much you know so if you approach it like that where you're looking for the martian ocean colonel you got a couple of coats or soundbites one of which you have time to put in your story the other one is about her story it move you emotionally you paraphrase a major opening line easy you could not write like for instance i went to covered

at a concert one night in the camera man's there who'd been there all night and out picking up his home back that long ago and i said what issue isn't world recklessly the smoke oppressed around the bottle as well as an opening line right there pretty much like the twenties and from the moment that i think that i may have to do a story i started they played this little mantra if i had put right now would be my last line now changes all that long because those changes all that long but it does its little theater trip because if you know what you're going to get off the stage you know how to get it otherwise you wander all over the place you know these days news is a little like a circus it's a lot like a circus but we all those professionals in this room applaud each other every night because we got the circus tent up right why light shot across town worry about that we put our story we caught on the computer in the newspaper that the audience doesn't show up to applaud the tent

it doesn't and are our days are so complex and so busy my job is it is always somebody in new york city that they are asleep an idea forming constant deadlines it's one of our deadlines you know the kinds of cuts you're time too thin to think if we just like to do that so we have to figure out how to work efficiently so that you can save time everyday to move on beyond the who what when where why and that's a given and be able to quickly do our job better than they used to so it's overdue mr moreau used to say i'd like to tell a story that i would never insult intelligence or somebody who knows a lot about it but if the main were listening from the kitchen she would be fascinated to and i said i was talking about not journalism storytelling while my great friends a

signer in fort worth local stations you'd get a lot of people right out of college and they were very efficient in doing stories but they were kind of frees up the stories of the step and so he set the time like my desk his offense and every time you come back and when she leaned over my desk and spin the er that was that just tell me that damn story and so they talking with all kinds of great you know verbal image originally said before you forget that we're watching right it was about a year ago after one of my friends was covering governor and having trouble story he was a former journalist and didn't think it was important to be a storyteller much like in this room people who have different job titles that it's not important to the other thing but now come holler high water were all going to have to do everything so he shows up late for governor dawkins news conference he said his camera dawkins levy and he said governor lawton wichita i got i asked a question

i know the things over but you know actors the governors running for reelection isn't sure which i read as a girl park in terms of glamorizing ok governor go ahead the governors is going what is what is the press conference now and ask a lot of questions how will pick one out nearly eight seconds a true story but now that we are so tight on time we always go to those people who can give us the eight seconds problem that is they get the same eight seconds that everybody across the map so we have nothing to show that's unusual order for more i think his agenda to open up your senses and start telling stories in a way that people can't read can't see water or first subtle that cover a tornado and it's a big massive tornado in his lawn when you get there and the two of you wonder well what's going on not much you know and then you get a whiff of the fact

that he's blown down all the pine trees in a forest it might want open your story you could smell the past of the storm before you could sing at five miles wide and a hundred miles long from charlotte the city and suddenly youre telling youre adding i tackle writing to the corners of your story too much of what we do and what people click his office we do say don't see the panel's eight years dr linton is wearing a gray sport coat and he's sitting there looking up and i said dr lyons got a horse up ahead would you have something you know well this became a horseback outcome i know that well the gender on the way at your evidence that your stories like any good novel as with any good film director would we have to take that that second step i was in dublin last month and i bumped into reporter in a bar imagine a half and still got a bunch of a bunch of newspapers and i said why how happiness be where what else is struggling and i said

well you know most people we found were by our newspapers because they liked our world vision or whatever was our editorial page they bought and there's some really good job but we could see what was happening all over and having arms well so what we did was we got we hire out of work what good novelists to edit each one of our pages in other words to move us from the hague from the who what when where today you see so and they would there would suggest things like okay this is an interesting story but about the jump from page for page one to page four you want you got a winery says nearly all the night james patterson would do and so you know it now happy police said by newspapers has not these kids don't have one particular style or one novelist in an it somebody different from the sports pages a recent we've all gone to school on hold rallies these are things that we journalists used to do all a time when we have time

and i contend we've got to do it again because whenever started on the today show i could hide behind all the anchors and because they've made a lot of money i can't pay but now we have research that can say instantly whelan on a body of watching my story so if they're not watching the problems and in the next five years even though we're sort of programs really don't have a liquid hike shall put there and people come home you probably already are the other web page is a lot of quality football what's going on right now and it pops up because course was not to be too much longer before you say you know i like i like dotson stories was the dallas six months and that we're eating you become your own program director so there is a really great challenge for all of you come out next year here because you get to be in charge of your own destiny it's scary but it's also if you learn a few tips and practiced or going to do it efficiently you're already way ahead of the crowd were like a guy i was interviewing the other day who runs an alligator farm in

georgia drug wars along is you know he can run a hundred yards in the luggage for the tsunami so what we'll probably get at the festival that you broke it that's pretty much you know that's pretty much the definition of what we do is just be faster than the slowest person or you know if we're all right and a car and something happened your journals in the room would jump out of the car and raced the phone beat each other to tell the world that something happened and nbc for all these years has allowed me to go and look at the other three five retires and wonder why they're still going on how much trade they have and why they were not only my run and you guys have come back six months later a moment the fact that that what are still flat and by that time i walked onto a three stories it would have been a more thoughtful and insightful

about issues and i always tell stories three people because even though they're very serious issues people relate to people and that's the way i get it if we only cover ordinary people us in disaster it starts to look normal in a window and we talked to regular folks when katrina hits or nine eleven were forced to but mostly to go back to the mayor and the governor and the this and the that and we don't pay attention to them was truly i was covered a great see tornado urine and i call the great sea because nobody was her nobody died one mobile home slightly damaged and it was the three and we've finally gotten sloppy or by this time the mayor had awakened and he was wandering around so however i can and every journalist what i saw was following them at getting the same song i saw the thought and double world wandering around looking for something and i thought well maybe it is in the contract that you looked at

and i file them along he got them still young guy was paramount cameron and so i thought well maybe you know maybe you might prove that interest in an impossible for grabs has nothing he finally police got into a pile of rubble and he's accepted a complicated view so they turned right with him i mean at twenty three i got more reaction from that story than anything i've done that was just in a real said well the mayor says his permission for ramadan but this guy's pocket that was former rao right you know what to go cover the you know the water board meeting and stay there you go out to the neighboring states you know at eighteen it reverberates because people want to see themselves on tv you know you're going to pack is not because a lot of times people who

are in the shadow of famous people are infinitely more interesting i learned that the other day because i got out of a note from concordia kansas they wanted me to do a story on the opening of a new museum on the orphan trains well being old i personally don't store owner complains so i call that answer was one of the people i met the play but the more interesting answer in his four brothers rattled across america in the nineteen twenties they were the size of an immigrant the dark side of the american dream there were thousands of immigrant children who are lepers were friends when people got the united states and realize that maybe they were street arcade the goal so the children's aid society back in the eighteen hundreds thought would be a better life for them if they were scooped up and put on railroad trains and sent west indian a wonderful small town to their heart was in it the devil in the details what actually occurred as they put them on trains and they would go places like kansas know an oklahoman preston all that and at every

stop the train which would stop at the platform and the kids would be known throughout lined up and people could come along and pick who they want it and many orphans lost their brothers and sisters because people were pretty and if you act that updated like he had two weeks when the next orphan train came through you could put people back on the orphan train and send them on their way and some people got really wonderful family didn't they but necessarily about some tentative budget later but some did some were wonderful people but to this day i'm sure this isn't the museum opens next america according to this day there is an organization that still trying to fine brothers and sisters because when they move to another town la times imitate what are families name it was for them and what it has restore it was remarkable that he and his brother then a couple of town hall to tame a nebraska and four of them

were picked but the oldest brother was fourteen therefore kind of fun i'm really was not his that was herold and the road george she was six at the time for his arms around harold that and let them put it back on the tray to finally find deficit ok i'll take it but all five brothers ended up in five different homes two families want to adopt them or change the names of brothers said now we wanna make sure we find each other regardless so we're going to keep our own and we don't want to be adopted were going to just take care of ourselves as they got older the great depression before rather to put a bid for medical school and it put his brother george being hurled through medical school and jack became an architect and build the hospital where they first opened their practice and bob became the

methodist minister the largest methodist church in california and lowell george the one who had put his arm around her old snack so he wouldn't be lost the family they all put him in a big business today is a mole i knew when i met up with them when it was turning eighty one and his wife passed away when he was back for unions and he met his childhood sweetheart and they were getting married and of course bob was the minister at george you know was the best man and they were all there and the story started on full and there was more than an issue of why is the times wrote talk about something agent an anti you know and they had all night wedding day what they had in nineteen twenty nine each other so i can and i struggled for this so part of that story

a uc our data so i said you know how do you summarize lives like that and it occurred to me right away you're not that these guys have become the men they hoped it would be well all of us do journalism on this fast track heading now into the unknown have to decide what kind of stories need telling and how we can tell there is a woman who is now up for a nobel peace prize which would be announced on second week of october who has a remarkable story i just fell in love with the story but she's polish she doesn't speak english and she's older and nbc still what sen paul and go to the story so i found a way to do it is a little town just south of lawrence kansas the stories

call life in a jar at the chill take a look at the sea to gather that you saw the keys to history's treasures are often found an unexpected places and conditioning turned up in a tiny kansas town unlocking a story of a world away buenos interstate twenty five hundred children from the nazi death camps during world war two to save her story sixty years of the first child who asked why she risked her life of someone else megan feldman her friends were putting together a play for their high school district lot and found a brief mention of this assembly it's likely to call the last and we couldn't quite willing to know more they wanted to dig deeper so that what i'm going to major festival well this is the high school play she help them

right i said he entered this nicely is going to be someplace say in nineteen forty the nazis walled off a neighborhood near arenas senator's home in warsaw pressed almost a half a million people in an area the size of new york's central park five thousand each month last time on earth like it knowing that i and my heart but to be fair taubes the rescue she's only five feet tall walking out of the out of the ghetto and kenny sax errands driving our hygiene trucks with babies said at the time and she says sometimes it would make noise but she had a dog city bus rider would she do in order to cover up the crimes they get closer and

child to hit the dial on the hottest act of barking caused chaos there our own children families who agree to raise them as their own but wrote the real names on cigarette papers and put them in a jar which is buried beneath an apple tree across the street from the nazi era i know you know that's tyler one day when a senator was betrayed arrested over fee almost murdered but she never revealed where she taken the kids after the war she quietly pick up the jars after her word began returning the children to surviving relatives has the ability to change people are having questions why would care when you came from a place that didn't have a jewish family for miles and miles of mile race religion

created didn't matter to ask what mattered was dead can triumph over evil there's a similar bill and thereby with a bit of advice become like the farmers back here in kansas she said they also say for food so the seeds for good and try to make that circle got around to bigger and bigger every day yes well watch two hundred schools to reaching over the walls of guys and prejudice that adults could never temperature when the tail of a ninety seven year old woman that might have been lost forever not imprison small town kid is intent on rescuing the rescuers story

you know only my business speaking creek you know working in television sometimes i feel like i'm writing the smoke is there out there and disappears the lake much leverage that idea but i have since started to change my mind about that that made it in after all my life behind the mirror that reflects the powerful and the celebrities and the politicians which are the greatest of our news coverage these days to find people like that i couldn't get the polling but i think if the union town kansas and that's a better story and i can weave it through a little high school play you know

and the fact that it had sex staying power it's so powerful when when i was oh your age i want to be a documentary producer because in the sixties we were all into annoying or people cry if he lived in the sixties you know i'm a i am of course a documentary like i figured well you know i can tell great stories and and then my first job it reminded me that people documentary or the last hired in the first fired because unlike any money but during the time that i was working as a documentary producer that about nineteen stories i found all the that stuff in people's basements because every company that supposed to say things rosen now but as anybody in this room whose red rubber nose and tell you if they did something that they raised a little bit proud of this topic up in the basement all clicks whether it's there so when i got this

unusual job i decided i'm going to save everything and my inspiration was a fella and the beni cat who was a newsreel photographer and oklahoma from nineteen sixty nineteen forty six and my first my first job i've got a story up in stillwater really runs the university's and i met the fire chief out there and they were tearing down your fire station he called me one day he's a lap dance and film opening act on what it is you can take a look at europe and i went into this attic and was all all sixteen millimeter nitrate based film which means it's highly explosive so i think you're ready for a lot of what the fiery part of the blows up like that so i got some money from different organizations and we got this kind of bomb proof truck and sent what we could to los angeles to see what we could save and just to see what was in there and benny got to haiti usually so when there's real companies

only really wanted pictures of women in swimming suits and indians with others and a step that would sell those real threat then he's a storyteller he's out there look around so he shot everything and selling put up in the attic figuring that maybe some red that freckle faced kid might be interested fifty years later that what he had to ramos last buffalo he had the first african american federal marshal bass reeves he had women's history he had all kinds of so i had a three documentaries using that as my god look what i got a pedant of the stories in the pentagon to think i got a penny in a week when people ask me what do you do for a living i never say journalist i did tell him and a storyteller because the job classifications are changing so fast i don't wanna be out of a job you can call me not that as launcelot to go to a store and beneath my

hero so what i did was i saved not just the stories i did i saved every role of fell every field to set every piece of digital desk every version of the scripts that i get started in my basement when i had a house for libyan city and then three warehouses i don't own the copyright and the shiite government but i knew they would never be able find it again so i waited until nineteen ninety six when you know msnbc is that i forgot yours an economic engine we got cable company an internet company and i went to bob wright who was the president of nbc universal and as i go back to you if you put it in a state of the art digital form and i said if i keep it all the fall apart all in the dust and he saw an economic reason to do it and he came up with ten million dollars and he

started with my archives made all of the digital and then started back in the early seventies it was almost up to present day saving things which is something we never ever just didn't have a space in every journals roasted about the multnomah club while but not important and that are cut those videotapes now make five million dollars a year because now they're under italy connecticut making minimum wage growth fifty four i knew that there were no the goodness of their heart but what they did was they gave me a copy of it begin your copy of every story i ever did and i also i stole all my stories from job or so from age ninety one of my first documentary year to you duration six

every story of an entire life is now in that in the new history center next to the oklahoma state capitol i wanted to get a ticket get any money oh medicaid me but my first boss was ek gaylor some of you may know that they it was a trillion or local and a vision or a date and the first radio station west of the mississippi he had the first intifada he went to the world's fair in st louis in nineteen oh four and go talk to a couple of sales people by the railroad stations and white so subtle home up to st joseph missouri became stepped off the train so there were five newspapers in town he bought one from an alcoholic beverage for five hundred dollars and the next day said that you know my career was made because the one city councilman shot dead out from the newspaper unrest city council came to knock the report buries if i quote you on that so that was a cat and i was well this song was also passing way and so he gave

sixty million dollars his state of oklahoma to build a new history center next is the capital all the angels that your sovereign anyplace else i gave his archival go back a dozen wooden boxes got to be like the last year in his last year or so because they're so i'd imagine easily because i've spent my entire life kind of hold up a mirror to people who were practically invisible to the rest of our media today especially today we're so celebrity and sports oriented that we overlook us and our contributions and how i approach it is i'm not jerry falwell i don't do good things i approach ordinary people is that they were the governor i ask pointed questions to get beyond the cliche is if somebody walking across kansas to raise awareness for i don't

do the stories not they stop in topeka and founded on and then win over here or it's you know when somebody took a minute had no money and suddenly you began your story but sometimes we think that when we're not going to try to go out and cover ordinary people us we have to we have to just throw you know so all of that wonderful if you're trying to raise money for cancer oh no why wells to get done what it is like when i was a kid about you but when they when they told me the george washington cut out cherry tree imposed that i set this novel will i would never cut outreach on monday without the parson weems a journalist who was trying to write a textbook for schools road sixty years later he's made it up so honoring the history about washington i find it home a couple of his officers at valley forge because they had the audacity to leak it was called non say this is a real guy he's a revolutionary that takes nothing away

from england after the war is only one of the case against dr president then another from different so you know it became it became what if we don't show people the truth that doesn't ring true but if we talk about it if we spend time doing us than you get an audience again you get readers again you get viewers again because they want to see themselves reflected very good i look for ordinary people who are changing lives significant people like these young women not just in their neighborhoods but throughout all of the world because their lives matter and they do make a difference in this watershed time of great change i think we all have to ask yourself where journalistic goals are set to make a living because i'm sure some of us in this room come to the conclusion that when you climb the ladder of

success you found especially against a long wall and here we are today we've got a professional one thing it's gone the only real test i just said that we can't continue to cling to the top rung and shout headlines like uber you're listening to a nice the news correspondent and taping moments from boston so i think we'd all time everybody would like this metallic get my job and reading the first question from the audience how long did it take you to do that story about the polish woman and the plan well you know in the network world that the time is how is getting here is not doing it and it gets some ways more difficult because you assumed certain things like you know i give them a police station there were always last but how we were with the world with those young girls

for a half a day in kansas and pick him back up or they're putting on a show in california sunset boulevard they issued it and then we had their home movies mostly center which was great so use that and nevada a data right if they get it we get it we will not we do it officially runs out doesn't sound engineer was like my grandmother you know when she she was to terrify christ with my major from through all of my grandfather to journals that she's in front page and so finally when i got that torture obviously what i do like older actors and rebel with a sick us and they'll talk like that has avoided that she said you let trade they're not going to keep a new work a day

lives and she was ninety one of the time when that live to be ninety six in every friday three years ago as a grad so one of the first documentaries i think it was black history in the west and i i started by not a civil rights history but the whole history and the local conferences that twenty eight all black towns when i had the what parcels of mayors of all what an irony is there are indian tribes in the eastern part of oklahoma which they called five civilized tracks guess what i called civilized they owned slaves but the difference is they were allowed to work their way out of certain so by the time oklahoma victims territory they had marshals and mayors and no actually these four old guys and that one dime

of their young guy and he would give me two hundred feet of all the data showed this documentary which is six minutes for a real good you know because the guy on the on the bus and went talk about not shown some picture of time magazine one of those graves yet europe and all that you know so i get it st savior you couldn't go to like fight that we just turn your camera and we had it set up lights and just wait there with a toggle switch and you know the camera over my shoulder until it at some point but he's four four guys were on or waiting at a funeral and they said the sudanese and my friend dave is he says look at look at micro he says i look like a native american i said your honor rolls up call him my friend over their jacobs he looked like a slave ship the grid is on rules is a cherokee he says it happened to figure out what they could but he said there was a commission that came through it

at night and he said there was a fellow was afraid of what may judge really well become a federal judge he was a cherokee freedman leave africa american came along with that with the trial and he spoke a language so that he was the interpreter for all the indian driver hundred and nine team it's kind of all the language so you have all the military and they were trying to figure out who have basically a question of land you see him in as soon as they get these land runs an oklahoma and i wanted a dealership of the native americans and then in the what ownership as you know when iran shut the pool and that would've been built three years where they want that they want to get people to get less so as a judge reads comes up every different indian tribe known as the che the cheap what we wanted get your black citizens and she said nothing not that means that they'd have more fervently and he says so he dutifully reported that he uses black citizens that not until i got to his neighborhood around the school you and he says he said my family today has a

wonderful way she would have our winner and our friends at nine three all my friends at one of the record because judge agreed on a second thing it is even dead seventy years people were saying that he lied that he did lie cause he said when asked a pop up to charities around skill visas she said in the same thing and she said no you're not because of what he's saying is that given the same thing enough with the vote now that the credit history that pattern mirror on our world you can't can't buy you don't get that with an insecticide but that's for the fun is dr strock he was the first guy to convince people to go to these stories aside paige he was always sang all the money in the world city council new york city don't forget all the funds out there if you're twenty tonight gingrich thirty and you want it still be smiling green when your sixty ones you better figure out a way to find some

fun in this business in the best way to do that is to try them directly every day and see if you can find people who can get you information beyond what the press release this top app and the final question from the audience what advice would you have for journalists who are covering the two thousand eight presidential campaign how can you like some coverage now more like storytelling well we got a big problem because these guys started three years ago or ten years ago got nobody fifty years ago and the electorate is secure i can guarantee you they're not not in the literal way but do you know you not know where everybody stands on everything at this point so i scan like nascar or just wait for the crashes i went over there the crash of the test that we do it with this week we do a horse race and then we'd breathlessly

report every night ct watch bands of course of course just as the course is over ten years is that a set so it's the same thing if you've said a thing or will reconnect us the same question over oregon don't report it dig a little deeper asked the questions they haven't answered yet ask you about other things than once that the audience already know but what we do with people of the same thing over and over again through all these various people and you know how what how many hold meetings can we have were all stand there and another and they're better comedians and politicians so i know the one liners and i was really great britain really get like five bucks in six weeks in this ad stage a case in will now present and that's the big problem in rooms don't know that we're talking about journalism the politicians thought political conventions so literally i have a friend who's working pr democratic convention and she's going to have a film festival where you know on issues and that she says is going to be so boring

it is true i think other than street theater when you got that point and thesaurus a bottle of a journalist but the whole country and its institutions have to be much more reflective but i think it's not just accepting the cliches i said earlier about how you got to the story if you for that answer every time you say party muslim brotherhood party but giuliani party mr obama you know i've heard that before what can you tell me no and maybe they'll get off message and i've actually get a glimpse into who they are and what they're going to be a big look at the last election a lot of talk about the vietnam war or six weeks on all sides when a real question was what five years you might not be feeling better have an indy film that emit more money was the question now what you planned for that what we've we've we let them dictate over over again and i think that's really why do it again and we journalists are well that's because people don't care

course we care but we've heard it like your kid is negative energy that i can't eat now why well because every three are the arguments weren't easy to get interviewed for fear on your dinner table actually talk about all things you might get an insight into the character and then they you know they get some idea of what they might do i think most people are not they are one of the of the rich were over but that's not really you can go out with your fire at cornell you all have been so kind when this is a saturday in all of my grandmother very proud and i'm proud you've been listening to bob duff another reason he's recorded september twenty seconds two thousand seven was almost an auditorium in canvassing it was a presentation in this year's day william allen white school of journalism and mass

communications i'm j mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas and we just never hear about a really great writer was found dead freeze them but that imparts lessons next time it pr for zen mystery writer sara borucki join us at sunday night as he talks about growing up out my lawrence and her latest not mistreat leading campus i have to confess that someone cannot tell the difference between a wolf and now it's probably not ideally a quick to write about a dairy farm i gave it my guest sharon at our prisons bestselling author sarah palin's speech sunday night and eight o'clock on campus yet know yet

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