How Orson Welles War of the Worlds Led to Geraldo Rivera's Capones Vault

I have written two books on high risk high reward moments in media where boundaries were pushed and careers on the line and the result was that the mediums were changed forever and the men behind both events were pushed on to greater heights. At first glance there may seem to be no through line from Orson Welles to Geraldo Rievra but in fact for one night in both of their careers they were mirrors of a moment in time. My book Dead Air The Night Orson Welles Terrifed America tells the story of a twenty three year old boy genius who in 1938 put on a radio show that terrified the nation by telling people martians had invaded and were exterminating humans. Orson was growing tired of radio and was looking for a way out and it was in his DNA to push boundaries. His breaking news radio format had people convinced the human race was being exterminated. By the time it was revealed it wsa only a radio play that nation was in full blown panic. Orson was pilloried and received death threats.He was sure his career was over. But then at the last minute an editorial by Dorothy Thompson saved him and he was pushed onto Hollywood. The thinking was that anyone who could fool a nation could make a hell of a movie. Capones Vault tells the story of an unemployed edgy jounralist named Geraldo Rivera who became famous for opening a vault in the Lexington Hotel on the South Side of Chicago. This was to be Geraldos comeback after being fired from ABC.The two hour docutainment went on the air on April 21 1986 and for two hours crews blasted their way thorugh walls and brought down slabs to find only more dirt. It was quickly billed as the greatest disaster in television. Geraldo went and got drunk and knew his career was over. But the next day the ratings came out and Geraldo found out 30 million people watched The Mystery of Capones Vault. He had tweleve job offers and was given his own show. The opening of Capones Vault proved reality television had arrived as the networks realized that people didnt care about the payoff they just wanted the ride. In Orson Welles case radio was never the same. Dramatized news was forbidden by the FCC from then on which was the standard format. Only real news could be reported. So there you go. Orson and Geraldo were at the junction of change in two different mediums at two very different times but they were agents of change. High risk high reward moments that changed the lives of not only the men but radio and television forever.

We Don't Need Any More Death Projections....We need Action

If you are on the Titanic you don't need someone telling you how much time you have before it goes under. You want to find someone who can get you into a lifeboat. When we have a global pandemic we dont need people from the government telling us that if a  hundred thousand people die then the government did a good job of stopping the virus. We just don't need any more projections that get splashed on CNN and MSNBC and then end up as headlines on the New York Times. We don't need panelists telling us what they think of a hundred thousand people dying. We need action!

We need gloves. We need masks. We need ventilators. We need to a therapy that will stop the flu. We need a vaccine. We dont need DEATH PROJECTIONS. That is just sensational garbage. We get it. We have to social distance but stop the numbers that everyone talks about ad nauseum. How about a Manhattan style project to develop a therapy or a vaccine. Lets talk about that. Lets talk about how many people we can save not how many people are going to die.

For one thing is it s depressing, defeatist, and usually just wrong. The truth is no one knows. They have ideas but they dont know why China was able to stop it or why South Korea was able to stop it or why so many died in Italy while so few die in Germany and why young people are now getting it when everyone said they would be fine. The truth is we dont know a lot and so lets quit with the projections and deal with the things we can know. We know we need masks, gloves, and ventilators, vaccines and a therapy. Lets start there. 

Those Black Headlines...I Say Read Them Only Once

My agent said she is having a hard time focusing. Of course. Nothing like working under the black cloak of the apocalypse. And if you are not sure it is the apocalypse then just go online and start reading. Now my normal routine is to read the NY TIMES and then start to work. Now it is like trying to get through some very dark woods at midnight hearing all sorts of sounds and seeing creatures lurking just beyond the path. Fight or flight. That is what those headlines trigger. A fight or flight response and the problem is there is no fight and really, there is no flight short of packing up and running for the hills.

The truth is we get the news anyway. We get it ten times over. One reason the market and everyone else is so freaked out is that in our uber connected age we are getting bombarded not with just a little bad news but truckloads and if you did not get it the first time then you got it ten times more. The point is a lot of this news is redundant. How many times can we be told we are out of ventilators, swabs, masks, gowns, beds, and short on hospitals. Probably a hundred if you go online and then watch the news at night or get the alerts in your phone. How many times can we watch the market tank over and over and over and over.

The truth is if you have work to do then going online and checking the news once is probably sufficient. This is not night of the living dead. The virus is not marching up to your front door. But we feel that way. The fear is mind numbing and it can knock out all focus. So I would say read it once, probably toward the end of the day or over lunch and then go about your work. By evening you will still know it is in fifty states a hospital ship is on the way to NY and California, we probably will all end up getting a thousand dollars and someone got injected with a potential vaccine and the market tanked again. Important information, you just dont need to know all this over, and over, and over, and over, and over....and if you do, then you get it from your phone, your radio, your alexa, your computer, your television, your paper..

The End of Brands

NY Times is cutting 100 newsroom jobs. Other newspapers are doing the same. They also said their NY TIMES OPINION app didn't really work out. Nobody subscribed. And that NY TIMES NOW an app aimed at younger viewers was not faring much better. So the question is why aren't people flocking to buy the NYTIMES on the digital format? The paper you understand but the digital format....could it be the end of brands as we know them.

The New York Times is the top of the mountain for a lot of people. But people get their news from so many sources now and like everything else brands are giving way to convenience. Take my class. Not only do a lot of them not have  cable but they aren't even watching television on their computers...they are watching it on their phones. And why is that? Because it is the easiest most convenient way to watch TV.

And there isn't a big rush to a particular show. Maybe some Kardashians. Maybe some Pretty Little Liars. The point is that the very ubiquitous nature of our entertainment maelstrom and our multiple sources for news precludes allegiance to a brand. Put another way. The NY TIMES can come up with fifty different apps. But it wont change the habits of one one eighteen year old picking up what is happening from twitter or snap chat or yahoo.

Whatever is easiest...right?

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Justin Bieber Blues

I don't really follow Justin Bieber. My daughter has a JB pillow and posters and perfume and her presents come in JB wrapping paper. He is the teen idol of my kids  and I get that. But we are confronted once again how the juggernaut of media has planted other peoples lives in ours. I know now that Justin was busted for drinking and drag racing. I know this because people I see know it and the topic comes up much the way politics floats up.

And it isn't a few people. I have hit this several times with the ensuing discussion something like this: Well he's a good kid I think he will straighten himself out. I think he just made some bad choices. Justin Bieber travails fall off the lips with the same type of concern a parent might have for an errant child. And yet we have this "kid" who is a multimillionaire and who got caught drinking and drag racing in his Lamborghini with a super model. My heart bleeds.

But of course the real question is why is this now a topic of conversation? Certainly the speed of our culture doesn't give us much time to swim through the informational overload and make our choices. Mostly we are now spoon fed from our phones or our televisions whatever the media Gods deem important  and then we find ourselves discussing over dinner weather the Bieber man is going to straighten himself out or will he go down the dark path of sex and drugs and rock and roll.

We furrow our brows and pray the Bieber will drive his Lamborghini sensibly and not drink and drive with his super model date. We should all be so debauched. Pass the ketchup honey.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Holocaust Weather

Since when did weather become a news story? There is no normal weather now. Winter storms have been named. We are in the Apocalypse every time a thunder cloud appears. I was watching the news and they said a KILLER STORM was on the way to Chicago. I looked out the window and saw the snow coming down. It was beautiful. I turned back to the news. KILLER STORM IS HERE. A man in a heavy coat stood on a street in Chicago. The weather here is getting worse he said. I looked back out the window. A gentle snow fall. I turned back to the news. KILLER SNOW STORM IN CHICAGO.

Obviously someone figured out in ratings land that weather sells. And if mother nature doesn't agree then just add a little spin. Put a guy like Ali Veshi in lower Manhattan and have him find a really deep puddle and stand there. Or better yet drive him to the beach and have him stand in the surf. Then have him try and talk over the wind and the rain. Brilliant! THE KILLER STORM IS HERE. And Ali is braving the elements to bring us the latest.

In the Midwest our KILLER STORM is really tornado's. Spring. They come in the spring and we really do go in our basements and hide out when the sky turns green. The problem is that if every storm is a KILLER STORM you have a hard time figuring out what is really a KILLER STORM. Tornadoes still hit fast and they kill a lot of people. Funny how Ali Veshi is nowhere to be seen when there is a real tornado bearing down across the cornfields. I guess that is our new barometer.

No Ali Veshi. Run for cover.

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...Scouting gone wrong

Writing For Free-The Brave New World of Media

Most of us know what it is like to write for nothing. If you are a novelist then you probably wrote for years before getting paid. Writers of fiction write for something else than the almighty dollar. We write for passion, art, expression, life itself. Now it seems the newspaper business is talking about the same thing. We are all well aware of the demise of the major newspapers in the United States. Many reasons account for this and of course the biggest reason is people like us who now write for various sites and most of the time it is without compensation. The scuttle now is that newspapers will become nonprofit.

A great benefactor would allow the newspapers to continue doing their good work. Interesting. This supposes that society will not be served by the new nation of writers of which I am one. This supposes that the trained journalist...rather the Paid Journalist will do the hard investigative journalism so necessary for a thriving free press or rather a thriving democracy. This may be true. Professionals certainly have a leg up over amateurs and people just cutting their teeth on the new media.

But the truth is technology marches on. We are on the edge of the great media revolution that is taking place as we speak. We may still be served by our newspapers in various forms, but like the gas guzzler, most of them will simply disappear. The investigative press or a vigorous press that keeps our politicians and government officials honest is already here. We see it now on CNN in the I reports. We see it in the blogs or the websites like Smoking gun.com that brings down even novelist who tell a lie.

The hard truth is the old gumshoe reporter has been replaced by some guy over his garage still in his pajamas tapping out who just stole what from whom. The Internet has become a free wheeling sheriff of the Old West and just about nothing is secret if someone is willing to dig. And we now have millions who are willing to dig because likeminers in the early days of the Gold Rush they smell opportunity.

The opportunity is there for people who want to work hard and can survive these days of working for pennies or nothing. Because there will be a shakeout of sorts and the new players in the media game will emerge. Some are already here, but many are not ,and to think that some sort of life support could be put in place for old newspapers would be to ignore the revolution in our midst. Woe to those who don't see the guillotine for what it is.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

The Faulty Memory of Fame

Publishing is a rough game and has a long memory. The gentleman who forgot that he didn't receive food at the wire of a concentration camp not only forgot it once on Oprah, but twice. Twice he went onto the biggest media platform in the world and repeated his story. Then he forgot when he signed the movie deal, the book deal and the host of other goodies that go along with the slam dunk of the literary world. Then he remembered when he got busted. He is older. There is a picture of him and his wife. Nice couple. He is now spinning the canard that he just wanted to make the world a better place. PLEASE. Ok. We understand he saw a moment of glory when he entered the same story in a literary contest and won ten years ago. Then he really blew his socks off when Oprah called. He went from king of Bridge to insta-celeb. Everyone was calling. Agents, publishers, producers, go man go! His life up to this point had been a sleepy walk of normalcy. Then WHAM! Just a small lie and he is in the stratosphere of fame and fortune. Then...busted. Now he whined that "He just wanted to bring a little happiness to the world."BULL#%&*. What he wanted was a little fame and a little fortune. Not to be blamed for avarice or the white hot light of the spotlight--but to think he can turn back into the lovable codger...I don't think so. Like James Frey and every one else, there was another woman from Yale who plagiarized a novel--he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Alright. He tried and blew it. Take thy medicine, but don't whine about being Gandhi and things just got out of hand. This gentleman has already signed with another house that will turn his tale into fiction. Fiction would ascribe a higher purpose. I think the only higher purpose here would be for the gain of the man who lied.