Though she had already published two novels (Mama, in 1987 and Disappearing Acts in 1989), it was Terry McMillan’s third book, Waiting to Exhale (published in 1992) that catapulted her to literary stardom. The funky, fly tale of four single, black women looking for love spiraled into a pop-culture phenomenon, spending more than nine months on the New York Times Bestsellers list and spawning a Hollywood blockbuster film that featured a fairly popular singer named Whitney Houston in one of its title roles.

But aside from filling McMillan’s bank account with more money than she knew what to do with (a 1993 interview with Ebony magazine revealed that Pocket Books paid $2.64 million for the paperback rights to Exhale), the runaway success of Waiting to Exhale literally transformed the publishing industry. McMillan proved to publishers, editors and agents — and even some doubtful writers — that African Americans do, in fact, read.

Now, more than 25 years since her debut, the acclaimed novelist widely credited with kick starting the modern African American fiction movement is still writing and serving up her signature sass through characters so real they seem to turn the book’s pages themselves.

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Name: Terry McMillan
Position: Full-time author
Resume: McMillan has published a total of eight novels, including her latest, Who Asked You? [released today]. Several of her books (Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Disappearing Acts) have been made into films, for which she served as screenwriter and/or executive producer. McMillan also taught fiction writing at the University of Wyoming, Stanford University and The University of Arizona, where she received tenure.
Birthday: October 18, 1951
Hometown: Port Huron, Mich.
Education: Graduated from UC Berkeley in ’77 with a journalism degree. Later dropped out of the Master’s of Fine Arts Program (film) at Columbia University.
Marital status: Single
Media mentors: Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow “because they are both brilliant and know their history and the story behind the story.”
Favorite TV show: Dateline
Guilty pleasure: Hamburgers
Last book read: The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate
Twitter handle: @MsTerryMcMillan

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You’re known for writing such authentic characters. How do you keep them all straight?
Well, first of all, it’s not as hard as you would think. If you take [people] that you know really well, and you had to capture them on paper — their gesticulations, how they talk, how they think — from what you know about them, you could do it. But before anything, I do a lot to profile my characters so that I know them. I know almost everything about them, in terms of their educational background, how tall they are, what color they are, what they like and don’t like, what their favorite class was in school, what they’re afraid of, what their biggest secret is, if they lie, if they pay their bills on time, what they wish they coulda, woulda, shoulda done, etc., etc.

As you’ve aged, your characters have aged with you. Was it difficult to write from an 8-year-old’s perspective, as you did in Who Asked You?
No. I mean, I’m not around 8-year-olds every day or anything like that, but I remember my son at 8; I remember other people’s kids at 8; I remember his classmates. And I have sisters and relatives and friends, [and] I was around their kids at 8. And not only that, but I know certain things about the language that they have. Some of it is based on their environment, and some 8-year-olds that grow up in the hood are a lot more savvy. They have a lot more information, and they know how to process it, and they imitate what’s around them. So that’s sort of where I came from.

“When I’m writing a book, I don’t feel like I’m writing a book. I am basically dramatizing the lives of people that I have made up.”

Was it intentional to write a cast of multi-generational characters, perhaps to appeal to a wider fan base?
No. I don’t tailor make my books to appeal to a certain audience. Oh my god, no. I tell the story that I want to tell because I am fascinated by and curious about people who behave a certain way, and [I am intrigued] when sometimes they are victims or [are] victimized and they have to figure out how to tackle certain problems that loom very large in their lives. And in this case, I was just real curious about grandmothers who are put in a position where they basically are forced to either abandon their grandchildren or parent them. And the only thing I ended up doing was trying to show how people react to each other’s behavior. I tell the story to answer a question — many questions, sometimes — but the last person I’m thinking about is my audience, my readers. When I’m writing a book, I don’t feel like I’m writing a book. I am basically dramatizing the lives of people that I have made up and believe are real while I’m telling the story. And then, when I’m finished, my respect level for human beings rises, and that’s the whole point because I usually write about people that I don’t have much patience for or understand.

Why do you choose those characters? Is it fun or more challenging to write about them?
I’ll put it this way, as a writer and as a human being, I just want everyone to be happy. I want everybody to thrive; I want everybody to be in love. I want everybody to be healthy, myself included. But it doesn’t work that way. We have hard times; we have valleys and hills. And, you know, a novel is about conflict. A story is about conflict. Plays are about conflict. And something is wrong with the photograph. So if I chose to write about a smooth picture, it’s boring. Why write about something if it’s not broken? So I write to get over stuff. I write about things that I’m tired of seeing. And it’s painting a dramatic picture of our behavior — not everybody’s behavior, just the folks that I have chosen to zero in on. And that’s pretty much it. And the idea is to put them in a challenging position where they have to at least take a baby step in trying to address some of what they’re going through. And it doesn’t have to resolve it. [They] just realize that they’re not doing something right, and that maybe if [they] try to do this, or put forth a little more energy, [their] life might improve. That’s it. That’s how I try to live.

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NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Sara Shepard, Author of Pretty Little Liars?

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So you’ve never felt pressure to try to duplicate the Waiting to Exhale phenomenon?
No. You can’t repeat yourself. And I had no way of knowing… I remember my editor said, “Terry, this is going to be your breakthrough book.” I said, “My what?” “Your breakthrough book.” And I said, “What do you mean?” “It’s going to be a bestseller.” And I was like, ‘What is she supposed to be, telepathic?’ And then it was a bestseller, and I was like, well, it was a fluke. And then it was on the bestsellers list for 37 weeks. I couldn’t even believe it. I still don’t believe it. I still don’t believe the references that are made to that book and that movie, and how many folks still watch it. I can’t believe when it comes on television.

Who Asked You? is such a great read, and you’ve been getting positive reviews. Do you feel any differently about this one than you have about some of your other books?
Well, I’m proud of it. I won’t lie. I feel as if I grew as a writer in this book because telling this story in the manner that I told it, I hadn’t done it before. And it was challenging. Not just in terms of writing in 15 different characters’ points of view, but [also with] the structure of the book. And the story dictated the structure. I didn’t just sit down and arbitrarily decide that, oh, I’m gonna be clever and tell the story from 15 characters’ points of view. That is not how it happened. I had to figure it out, how I was going to tell this story, because I knew I wanted Betty Jean (she’s the protagonist), but I knew, also, that there were going to be other people in this book — her sisters, in particular. But I didn’t know until I started that all these other people in her life were going to have an impact on it. So I wanted to be able to show how they saw what she was doing, and in order to do that, I had to make sure — because I wanted write in first person — that Betty Jean was in every chapter. And that was a challenge [to do] and still move the story forward. Let me tell you, it was not easy.

“[Writing is] not a career to me. It’s what I do. And to me there’s a difference.”

You’ve had such a long and successful career, what advice do you have for a new writer who wants to break into the industry and have the kind of longevity that you’ve had?
Well, I think first and foremost, they don’t need to think of it that way. I think that’s a big mistake. Do you think when I wrote my first book, Mama, in 1987, that I was thinking, Oh, I want to have a long writing career? No. This is not a job. It’s not that. [Writing is] not a career to me. It’s what I do. And to me there’s a difference, you know? But I would suggest that young writers take the craft very seriously [and] not worry about fame. But read. Everything. And I do mean everything. Take some writing classes. And they’ll know if this is what they really are compelled to do. But it shouldn’t be an ambition. “I want to be a famous writer;” “I want to be a bestselling author.” Those are the wrong reasons for doing this. And if those are your motives, chances are it won’t happen.

Andrea Williams is a freelance writer based in Nashville. Contact her at williamsandread@yahoo.com.

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NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Sara Shepard, Author of Pretty Little Liars?

When news broke that the Chicago Sun-Times had laid off its entire staff of photographers last May, journalists around the country were in disbelief. Now, instead of just scrutinizing sentence structure and verb choice, the possibility that journalists would also have to generate images to accompany their stories was very real.

In today’s Internet era, multimedia reigns supreme, so it’s no longer enough to be a master of the pen. And even if taking photos and video isn’t currently part of your job description, learning to wield a camera like a pro will only raise your stock and give you versatility — plus, hopefully a bit of job security.

Photo Tips

Tip #1 ___ Buy a Real Camera

Sure, your iPhone was perfect for snapping pics at your BFF’s birthday soiree, but for on-the-job tasks? Not so much. “If you’re just interviewing people and you’re taking pictures, almost any newer model camera is going to take a remarkably better picture than you’re going to get on any smartphone,” says Matt Sweetwood, president of Unique Photo in Fairfield, N.J. — the state’s largest camera store. He recommends that journalists spend at least $200 to get the most benefit from the device.

“The biggest factor is when you’re in lower light,” explains Sweetwood. “The camera that you buy has a larger sensor in it than you find in a smartphone, and therefore it’s going to take a better quality picture when you’re outside ideal lighting conditions. The second reason is that your cell phone has too many tasks on it. You’re on the phone, you’re sending an email and then you need to take a picture. While they can do that as a convenience, you don’t really want to do that if it’s part of your job function.”

Tip #2 ___ Learn the Rule of Thirds

In photography, the rule of thirds is a basic composition rule that helps frame the subject in a way that’s most aesthetically pleasing. “If you think of a tic-tac-toe board and where the lines intersect, we call those the power points,” says Peggy Farren, a veteran photojournalist, event photographer and photography instructor. “So if you’re taking pictures of people, their eyes need to be on that top line. If you’re taking pictures of landscapes or cityscapes, your horizon needs to be either on the top or the bottom line.”

“learning to wield a camera like a pro will only raise your stock and give you versatility — plus, hopefully a bit of job security.”

Tip #3 ___ Take a Lot of Pictures

Breaking out of your comfort zone and venturing into photography is sure to rattle some nerves, especially if you’re on deadline and expected to turn in some high-quality images. Taking more than enough shots gives you a margin to take some really crappy photos and still get the perfect one to complement your story. “The nice thing about digital is that you can always throw the pictures you don’t like away,” says Farren. “So take lots of pictures, come back and sort through them — especially if you’re feeling insecure about your photography skills.”

Video Tips

Tip #1 ___ Pay Attention to Lighting

“Lighting is everything,” says Charlie Castleman, in-house videographer for esd & associates, a full-service marketing and PR firm based in San Antonio, Texas. As a general rule, if you’re having trouble seeing the subject’s face while you’re shooting, the viewer definitely won’t be able to, either. That said, lighting isn’t as difficult as it seems and, says Castleman, “You don’t have to be an expert cinematographer that spends three hours [on] lighting.”

When filming outdoors, be aware of the position of the sun. “You would never take a picture of your family with the sun behind them, and you wouldn’t take your camera right into the sun,” explains Castleman. “You would position the sun behind you, and the sun would naturally light your subjects.” He also suggests shooting in late afternoon or early morning to avoid the harsh light of high noon. When indoors, stay away from fluorescent and overhead lighting, and opt instead for lamps with bulbs that cast a softer, orange-colored glow or LEDs. And in low light, bounce cards (essentially just large, white poster board) can be used to direct light to where you need it.

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NEXT >> The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Retweeted

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Tip #2 ___ Keep Movement to a Minimum

Remember the shaky, guerilla-style footage from The Blair Witch Project? That style of filming was perfect for inducing fear in viewers of the low-budget horror flick, but to say that it has no place in traditional media is an understatement. “It can be very uncomfortable for people to watch, especially if you’re trying to tell a story of some sort, or if you’re doing a corporate or news-oriented video,” says Castleman.

To be safe, use a tripod to keep the camera steady, and also avoid zooms, pans and other unnecessary filming techniques. “When you’re in those types of situations when you are very shaky and [there are] lots of zooms, it makes the camera very noticeable,” Castleman adds. “And you shouldn’t have that; you should never know that there’s a camera there. You should be able to watch something and let the story move the narrative forward.”

Tip #3 ___ Get Good Audio

When it comes to recording audio with your video, Castleman says that in-camera microphones are “the worst” because they’re omni-directional, meaning they pick up every sound all around the filming area. For interviews or other situations in which you need to focus audio on an individual, Castleman recommends lavalier microphones — those small mics that clip to the lapel. “That’s really the best,” says Castleman. “[Lavalier mics] can really isolate the sound, and you don’t have a lot of the background noise occurring.”

After years of experience, however, Castleman actually relies on both internal and external microphones during all of his shoots. “I’ve [used] lapel mics when there was interference,” explains Castleman. “[So] if something happens to one of my tracks of audio, I always have something to fall back on.”

“Taking more than enough shots gives you a margin to take some really crappy photos and still get the perfect one to complement your story.”

And one more audio tip: When you’re recording indoors, stay away from electronics and air vents. “There [are] hums and buzzes that we may not hear, but the mics and cameras pick all that stuff up,” Castleman says.

Certainly, adding photography and videography responsibilities to a journalist’s already full plate can be a bit overwhelming. There are complicated devices to get familiar with and shooting techniques that may take years to master. Sweetwood actually recommends that journos take a class to get comfortable behind the camera, and it’s true that a good dose of training never hurt anyone — just ask the managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, who offered up mandatory iPhone photography training just days after the paper’s massive layoffs.

The move was blasted by just about every other media outlet, but there may be a valuable — and encouraging — takeaway: You can work with what you’ve got. The media landscape is constantly evolving, making it nearly impossible to stay abreast of all of the new rules. And while some writers may never have a reason to add “photojournalist” to their LinkedIn profiles, brushing up on basic skills proves that you’re easily adaptable and always willing to learn new things. Those are qualities that are attractive to any employer, regardless of economic climate.

And just in case you do find yourself on assignment with only a smartphone in hand, go ahead and review these iPhone photo tips, courtesy of National Geographic. You’re welcome.

Andrea Williams is a freelance writer based in Nashville. Contact her at williamsandread@yahoo.com.

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NEXT >> The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Retweeted

It’s hard to remember the pre-social media era when folks called each other on the phone to give “status updates” and all the tweeting was done by actual birds. Certainly, there are some advantages to an uber-connected world, namely the fact that our ability to make personal connections is no longer confined to a single zip code. Just ask Paul Smith, who traveled from England to New Zealand via Twitter, relying on his new “friends” to put him up for the night, feed him a meal and give him a ride to his next destination.

Trusting people you know only online — and strictly by some cleverly devised handle (Smith goes by Twitchhiker) — may seem like an express route to the back of a milk carton, but Smith lived to tell the tale and parlay his tech savvy into a new career. We caught up with the author of Twitchhiker: How One Man Travelled the World by Twitter to find out why he did it and what’s next.

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Traveling the world via Twitter comes off a bit novelty on the surface. What was the most challenging aspect of proving that you’re not just a gimmick and that this wasn’t something you just woke up one morning and decided to do?
The thing was, it was something I woke up one day and decided to do. Coming at it from a marketing perspective, I had the idea in a supermarket one day and I quickly realized that, if I attempted to do this as myself, that I’d have potentially less credibility, that I wouldn’t be taken as seriously, that people wouldn’t talk about it as such. So, I guess the brand I created to do it was based more on a gimmick, in that coming up with the name “Twitchhiker” was very deliberate. It needed something which sounded a little cliché. It sounded a little odd, but actually said what it was I was trying to do. So, it was quite deliberate, because I realized it needed something catchy in order for people to talk about it and for me to grow the proposition and for people to come on board with it.

“If we don’t actually believe in ourselves and our ideas once in a while, then what’s the point of anything?”

So, you knew in advance that you wanted to take this trip but, at the same time, did you always have plans of monetizing and profiting from it?
No, not at all. I honestly didn’t do that. At the time, I was a writer but I didn’t have any intentions of writing a book. The book deal didn’t appear until six months later after I finished. By taking the trip, I lost about $3,000 in lost work and in phone bills. So the point of it wasn’t longevity, and it wasn’t to have some sort of legacy to it. It was more to just explore that spontaneity of having an idea and technology enabling it to happen instantly. So, within an hour of thinking of it, I had the domain name and the Twitter account, and 48 hours later I’d launched a website and I’d started pushing the message out, and people were already reacting to it. So, it was more an exercise in how technology enables ideas, rather than anything that I looked to feather my nest with.

So considering how much you lost before you got the book deal, did you feel as though the trip was worth it? Did you think it was an experiment well done?
I don’t know how well done it was; I could have probably done it better. But, yeah, absolutely. Of course, it was worth it. We all spend our days having whimsical ideas and never trying them because we have mortgages, and we have jobs, and we only have so much vacation and we have responsibilities. But I’ve got all of those things as well, and had them all then four years ago. But if we don’t actually believe in ourselves and our ideas once in a while, then what’s the point of anything, if we don’t actually just try things out that are different and unusual?

So, how did you land the book deal?
The book deal came about because of Twitter. The story was original, and I did it as the first person to try something like that using Twitter (although it’s been attempted since), and the story sort of disseminated around the world. I had a Twitter search running on Tweetdeck to tell me when people talk about Twitchhiker, and every couple of weeks it would appear in another newspaper and there would be a couple hundred tweets about it that would appear. And eventually it caught the attention of an editor at a publisher in the UK. He just got in touch by Twitter and said, “Do you want to talk about a book?” So Twitter sourced the book deal. Twitter ended up sourcing the cover; we found the artist who provided the cover for that book and my next book through Twitter, as well. So everything comes back to Twitter in the end.

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NEXT >> Hey, How’d You Become Twitter’s Manager of Journalism and News, Mark Luckie?

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We’ve heard of the Craigslist killer and other people who have been taken advantage of via social media. As you traveled the world, how did you vet each “friend” to ensure your own safety?
Um, I didn’t entirely. There was a rule on the trip that if more than one person offered me help, I got to choose who I picked. But if I only got one, I had to take it. The thing with Twitter is, actually, if it’s an active account and people post on there on a regular basis, and they don’t just retweet all the time, but they actually post some opinions and thoughts, you get to profile them pretty easy. You can normally see what people get mad about and sad about. You get an understanding of their life and their domestic situation. So that was quite reassuring because, for everyone who would offer, I would go back through their timeline for a couple months and see what sort of person I was about to get involved in.

But there was times when I didn’t do that. There was this guy in New Zealand who was very, very keen to put me in the back of his white van, and he used caps lock quite a lot, and he was very shouty at me. And there was another guy in New York who put a bounty on my head for $500 to see me killed. So they were kind of interesting. But, ultimately they didn’t impact on the trip. And everyone I met was brilliant and giving, and I guess it’s that kind of project and event that attracts that sort of person. But other people tried to derail it; other people tried to get me into trouble, but they were very much the minority.

“That’s my job now: helping people out.”

So what’s next for you, and what do you ultimately want to be known for in your career?
I started actually, last night, looking up trips to Campbell Island to try to finish that bit off. This next year, it’ll be five years since I did the trip. So I’ve been thinking about a trip back to New Zealand. What’s next? I think more travel writing; I still do a lot of that. Also, my day job now is running an early-stage startup accelerator for digital teams. So, I look after teams from all over the world and bring them to Newcastle [England] and find them funding and help them with their ideas. What do I want to be remembered for? I don’t know. Just [being] the guy who helped people. That’s my job now: helping people out… I don’t know; I’ve no idea. No one’s ever asked that question. Just not being a dick. That’s a good one.

Paul Smith’s tips for using social media to launch your brand:
1. Just do it. “There’s only so much planning you can do. Until you take the first step and experiment and try it and play and then seek the feedback that comes from that, then you’ll never know. Just go out there and just get on with it.

2. Know your medium. “Twitter is a conversation. If you don’t engage people, then you’re just shouting into a vacuum. So if you have something to say, make sure it’s relevant or engaging or interesting.”

3. Be authentic. “People aren’t looking for heroes. If you have frailties, there’s nothing wrong with sharing them, and you become a lot more believable as a person.”

Andrea Williams is a freelance writer based in Nashville. Contact her at williamsandread@yahoo.com.

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NEXT >> Hey, How’d You Become Twitter’s Manager of Journalism and News, Mark Luckie?

Just as we were speaking with Pat O’Brien for this very interview, the broadcast legend alerted his Fox Sports Radio publicist who was on the call that he was about to break some news. The man whose career has taken him from the heights of TV, radio and film told us he is planning a personal podcast all about drug and alcohol recovery issues. Although there’s no official start date, it’s a topic O’Brien is all too familiar with.

In 2005, The Insider anchor made front-page headlines when kinky voicemails he left for a woman were leaked to the Internet. He blamed the incident on his own drunken stupor, and a series of mea culpas and stint in rehab followed. In addition to the podcast, O’Brien also plans to address lessons from his recovery in a memoir, due in 2014.

“The scandal was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me, because I would have been dead,” he said. “Honestly, I almost feel like I went to the wizard of Oz. The alcoholism grabbed me, and my house blew away and my friends and all that… Then they had this jungle of trees trying to kill me in poppy fields and kind of looking for the wizard of Oz when all along all I had to do was click my heels and go home. I think alcoholics don’t realize that there is help. There is a way to click your heels and get back to a better, normal life.”

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Name: Pat O’Brien
Position: Co-host, FOX Sports Primetime featuring Pat O’Brien with Steve Hartman
Resume: Worked for CBS covering sports from 1981 to 1997 and also hosted its primetime variety show How’d You Do That?. Rose to greater prominence as anchor for Access Hollywood and The Insider and appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, like BASEketball, Murphy Brown, The Simpsons and Everybody Loves Raymond. Hosted various shows for major networks, including the 2000, 2002 and 2004 Olympics. Author of Talkin’ Sports: A BS-er’s Guide and a memoir, due in 2014. Also appears in the Funny or Die short O’Brien & Brian, which chronicles his adventures with his new manager.
Birthdate: February 14, 1948
Hometown: Sioux Falls, S.D.
Education: B.A. in political science from University of South Dakota and advanced study in economics from Johns Hopkins. Currently enrolled at UCLA for addiction studies.
Marital status: Divorced
Media idol: David Brinkley and Anderson Cooper
Favorite TV shows: Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Newsroom
Guilty pleasure: Two and a Half Men
Last book read: We Have Only This Life to Live: The Selected Essays of Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939–1975
Twitter Handle: @POBPATOBRIEN

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If a reporter gets caught up in some sort of public scandal, what would your advice be about the best way to handle it and take responsibility?
I say this all the time: the best way to handle if you did something is to admit it. Cover-ups always worsen the crime. And we’re talking about low-level scandals here, obviously, not murder or anything. I always say the three A’s: admit, apologize, advance.

“I think alcoholics don’t realize that there is help.”

In other words, if you did something wrong, own up to it like I did. Be a man about it. I really didn’t need to apologize to anyone but my family, but I did. And it worked out in a really great way. I took a couple of years off, got myself together. I’ve never felt better; my career is completely on track. I never really lost much career-wise and I’m still here. I talk to a lot of people in trouble — politicians, celebrities — they will call me and ask what to do. And that’s what I tell them. Get in front of the first camera you can find and admit it if you did it. And apologize to somebody and move on.

You’re coming up on three years with Fox Sports Radio. What are, so far, a couple of your favorite moments from the show and why?
What I love about this job is that I can go back and get all those people that I interviewed during those great years with CBS Sports. They all come on the show now and we reminisce… I had a personal relationship with each and every one. One of the things I hear from Fox Sports Radio listeners is, “We love your stories and we love you talking to your friends.” So the best part of it, for me, has been that out of all these years that I did the Olympics and the NBA and the NCAA and the U.S. Open and all that television work, I can come back and make a radio show pretty entertaining. And I do drop a lot of names, and I do it for a reason: I was there. People say I’m a name dropper. I say, “Look would you rather read about this or hear the real story about this guy?” It’s not name dropping when you were there. I was there; people were not.

Adult Swim announced recently its new show Hot Package, a spoof of entertainment news magazine shows, will air in the fall. You’re a co-star on the show. What can people expect?
It’s an interesting idea. It’s a 15-minute show that’s going to run about 10 times, and it’s a take-off on the entertainment shows. And it’s almost juvenile to the point of being ridiculous. But it’s funny, and the fact that I’m there doing it is fun. I’m a big hero on Adult Swim, because I was the swearing reporter on Robot Chicken. I get to say f*ck and things like that. But Hot Package should be really entertaining for folks. On this program, I am — as Jimmy Kimmel once called me — the Walter Cronkite of crap. And in my book, I spell out what these entertainment shows did to pop culture — they ruined it.

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NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Jay Mohr, Comedian and Fox Sports Radio Host?

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Can you tell us a little bit more about that part of your book?
Yeah. I was part of the invention of these entertainment shows. They went from being entertainment shows to freak shows. The problem is people will watch what you give them. And so these shows decided to instead of just talking about George Clooney and Brad Pitt and people like that, they end up finding the biggest freaks in the circus and portray them as news.

And then, the other thing I write about is we used — and I was a willing participant; I made a lot of money doing it — every celebrity event for something else. In other words, I’ll make a scenario up. For example, Paris Jackson attempted suicide. The shows will find an event somewhere (a premiere, an opening, a cancer event), and they will pretend like they’re covering the event, but all they want to do is get reaction to Paris Jackson attempting suicide. So they’ll grab — I’m making this up — Michael Douglas on the red carpet, and they’ll ask him how’s the Liberace thing going and then, “Would you respond to Paris Jackson?” And when they show it, it’s “Celebrities Come to Us to Respond About Paris Jackson!” It’s madness; it’s insanity, and I had to shower and drink a bottle of wine after each one of these. But I was, again, a willing participant.

What drove this change in entertainment news show coverage when you were there?
Not sure. But like, for example, I interviewed Larry Hagman about his career, and when it airs all it is about is alcoholism. And when you get George Carlin and talk about his brilliant life, when it airs all it is about is cocaine. I got Brian Wilson to sit down to talk about making Beach Boys music, but all they aired was that part about him going somewhat insane.

“I was part of the invention of these entertainment shows. They went from being entertainment shows to freak shows.”

You know, people love to look at things about people saying these things happened to them. And that’s what spiked the ratings. These shows are dying; they’re kind of running out of topics: anorexia, suicide, plastic surgery…whether someone weighed 70 pounds or 1,000 pounds. They’ve exhausted all that stuff and have to come up with something new, but do they cover Hollywood? No. Twice a year, Emmys and Oscars. And even then they’ll say, “By the way, three months ago, Paris Jackson attempted suicide. Have you ever thought about suicide?” Then they go and lead the show with, “Angelina Jolie Considers Suicide!”

But please put this in: I’m not bitter about it. My problems were not those shows. My problems were my problems — I’m an alcoholic. I can walk out of here today and drop out of the planet I’m on. My problem is I had a disease of the brain, and I’m not blaming it on these shows. I was blessed to make millions of dollars, and I did it the right way and the best way. But my problem was all me, not them.

For those Mediabistro readers who are currently studying broadcast or sports journalism, what’s your career advice to them, as someone who blazed the TV trail?
When I grew up and took the career path that I’ve had, there really were, like, only five people: Bob Costas, Matt Lauer, you can make your own list. Now there are hundreds. I envy the kids that come up today, because there are so many outlets now and blog opportunities. People used to laugh at blogs, but now they’re quite good; they create media television opportunities.

And when I speak to students, I tell them, “Look, I know there’s no jobs out there, but, if you look, there are.” You have to get in the door someplace and the Internet is the best way. I also say to kids, “No matter where you studied — Yale, NYU — just get your foot in the door somewhere. Work for free; show up every day; do your work.” Because what happens in this industry is they’ll eat you alive if you’re not good. The bottom line is if you’re good you’ll advance; if you’re not, go on to something else. It’s as simple as that.

Richard Horgan is co-editor of FishbowlNY.

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NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Jay Mohr, Comedian and Fox Sports Radio Host?

In the past year, alumni of MTV’s reality shows have made headlines for everything but their starring TV roles. 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom star Amber Portwood has been locked down in an Indiana prison since June 2012, serving a five-year sentence stemming from a parole violation, her co-star Farrah Abraham is currently enjoying her new status as a certified porn star, and Jenelle Evans of Teen Mom 2 was arrested in April for heroin possession and assaulting her husband. Meanwhile, the network was left with the difficult decision to cancel its promising Jersey Shore replacement, Buckwild, when star Shain Gandee was killed in a car accident.

It’s uncomfortable but familiar territory for MTV development exec Lauren Dolgen. The fact that the Teen Mom girls have become regular tabloid fodder is an unfortunate byproduct of Dolgen’s calculated risk to get folks talking about the staggering rates of teenage pregnancy, she says, and it’s that aversion to the status quo that she believes makes for great TV — and successful executives. Here, the newly promoted Dolgen discusses the behind-the-scenes drama, the components of a great TV pitch and what really happened to all the music on MTV.

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Name: Lauren Dolgen
Position: Head of West Coast reality and EVP of series development for MTV
Resume: Began in 1997 at VH1 as a production associate. Went to MTV production in 1998 and became a development coordinator in 1999. Quickly moved up the ranks to manager of development, director and VP, and was promoted to her current position in May.
Birthdate: March 10
Hometown: Los Angeles
Education: BA from Pitzer College
Marital status: Single
Media idol: Her father, Jonathan Dolgen. “They don’t make them much tougher, smarter or more sweet and loyal than him.”
Favorite TV show: “I am a true TV junkie. I like it scripted; I like it unscripted; I like it all. I consider it unfair to all the shows I love to pick just one.”
Guilty pleasure: Trashy autobiographies and the ID Channel
Last book read: Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants

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The TV business is notoriously difficult to break into, especially at a popular brand like MTV. What can someone who is mid-career do to get a foot in the door? Is it even possible to get a job on the programming side without interning?
I think there’s so many different ways to break into the development side. I do actually think internships are such a great way; MTV has such an amazing internship program. I actually was an MTV intern, like, a gazillion years ago, but it really sparked my interest in television, really sparked my interest in MTV in general. And just because MTV’s such a young company, I think there’s so many great opportunities for people in college who are getting the intern experience. I also think that production assistant work and getting in on the production side is a really great experience, and I think that it has helped me, as well, in my career. Especially on the development side, knowing production a bit really does help, because when you are asking your producers for things, you recognize what you’re really asking for and will help strategize to get those things and accomplish them.

“I think people hear [about] 16 & Pregnant or Teen Mom and get one idea, and then if you watch the show you realize that it is nothing like what you expected.”

Critics have accused two of your most successful shows, 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom, of “glamorizing” teen pregnancy. How do you respond to the backlash?
My response to that is, I don’t think we glamorize it at all in the show. I think people hear [about] 16 & Pregnant or Teen Mom and get one idea, and then if you watch the show you realize that it is nothing like what you expected. It is a very true, very real portrayal of what these girls are going through and how challenging it is to be a teen mom. And I think if you watch the show you realize there’s nothing glamorous about being a teen parent. And the truth is that when I do see the girls in the tabloids or [hear] people asking about the glamorization, I really do say, “At least people are having the discussion now.” I mean, they were not talking about teen pregnancy at all when we first created the show. So, I say bring on the criticism, because we are actually dealing with it in a very real way, and at least it’s being talked about and discussed now.

So what was your initial mission for the show? Was it just about creating that dialogue?
Well, I had read an article that had this statistic that was sort of like getting punched in the gut a little bit. It was [that] 750,000 girls get pregnant every year in the United States, and I was like, oh, my gosh! That’s our audience. That’s happening to them; it’s happening to their friends; it’s happening to girls in their school and we need to address this issue. And, when we started developing the show, our public affairs department got us in partnership with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, who are the experts on the issue, and they were really able to educate us as producers and storytellers on the issue to make sure that we really tell the story in a responsible way and that we send the storytelling path in education. We have a lot of contraception guides that we do; we have a lot of extra stuff on It’sYourSexLife.com and on the MTV website that is a resource for our audience to gain education.

One of the downsides of reality TV is that the stars become famous and less of the everyman/woman figure that initially got them casted. How does that affect your job as a producer?
You know, I feel for some of the girls and the kind of attention that they get. A lot of these girls did not get into this — I would say most of them did not get into this — to be TV stars. And we certainly don’t use the word “star” or “celebrity” when dealing with them. When we first did 16 & Pregnant, these girls thought they were going to be a part of a one-off special that focused on their experience during a very fragile and very serious time in their lives. And a lot of them got involved in this to actually help educate other girls. So, I do feel for some of them that are portrayed in a negative light, and I think it’s always hard for someone to put themselves out there on television [and] to accept the criticisms and all that comes with having the attention on them.

You must get more than your fair share of pitches. If you had to break down a good TV show pitch into two or three ingredients, what would they be?
I think something fresh, something that people haven’t really seen before, something that’s still relatable, that a variety of people can connect to. I think, if you look at 16 & Pregnant, not everyone can relate to being a pregnant teen; however, they can relate to being in high school, trying to graduate, dating, parents… But then throw a baby in the mix, and it amplifies the stakes a lot. So, I think that relatability is always really important to us. But I think really vibrant, energetic personalities are always very key, and then I think you have to take risks. So 16 & Pregnant is the example I keep bringing up, but, you know, that was a really big risk for us. I mean, we knew what our intent was on the show, and, while we knew that we were going to add the level of education and be responsible about our storytelling, it was edgy subject matter. And, that’s what I love about MTV: we are willing to take the risks. And sometimes you win and sometimes you lose on that, but if you don’t take the risks, you don’t really have the wins.

What is the worst pitch you ever received?
I can tell you a funny story that won’t name names or anything, and it really had nothing to do with a pitch. It was a show about a boy band, and they came in and performed for us. That happens a lot at MTV — people perform and it’s always really exciting to see the variety of talent that comes through our doors — but, in this case, it was actually very funny. They played the track, and they were lip syncing to the track and dancing. So they were trying to prove to me that they were really good singers, but they weren’t actually singing in the room.

“That’s what I love about MTV: we are willing to take the risks.”

Speaking of music, it’s been said that the music in MTV is all but gone. So how much is music still a priority for the network and for your development team, specifically?
Music is 100 percent a part of our DNA. I mean, it’s how we started and it’s always part of the development of every show. We’re always thinking about the sound of every show. [If] you think about a Jersey Shore, that had a really specific type of soundtrack, a specific kind of story and character that it was telling. The music was a character, and that story really helped amplify the storytelling of the show and the feel. So, I think that the music is always going to be important to MTV. Our music department has come up with this idea where they have guest music supervisors, like celebrities [and] artists, that help music supervise different shows for us. And we’re always trying to come up with ways to really keep music very present. But it is our DNA. It’s who we are.

If you had to credit one thing for your success, what, or who, would it be?
I don’t know if this sounds weird, but I credit MTV. I have totally grown up at MTV. I’ve learned so much, and I’ve been part of the company for 16 years, and I’ve just grown up as a person and as an executive there. I’ve had a lot of amazing bosses who have helped support me and taught me and that I’ve just learned so much from. And the brand is so important. To me, the brand and the kind of company it is, the people that work there and the types of shows that we’re allowed to do, and the risks that we’re allowed to take is why I think I’m successful at all.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Tracey Edmonds, Award-Winning TV and Film Producer?

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Andrea Williams is a freelance writer based in Nashville. Contact her at williamsandread@yahoo.com.

For the countless number of books published each year, there are only a few that become true breakout successes, selling millions upon millions of copies, hijacking the bestsellers lists and becoming permanently etched in American pop culture.

And, while great storytelling is at least partly responsible for their success, there is also an expansive team behind the scenes, working diligently to ensure that every plot twist is meticulously crafted, that the cover is so well-designed that readers drop $25 for the hardcover without blinking, and that those same characters will hopefully transcend the pages and end up on the big screen.

The publishing industry’s digital revolution has been well documented, but the big and indie houses still need a few good men (and women) with undeniable skills to help shape and sell the next crop of bestsellers. Think you’ve got what it takes? Follow these four steps to get your foot in book publishing’s door.

The great thing about the publishing industry is that there are positions in every field imaginable, from PR to graphic design, providing opportunities for every individual and personality. Yet, for folks who aren’t sure of their interests, or which roles best match their skill sets, the road to unemployment is paved with too many options.

“The first bit of advice is know what the possibilities are and consider your skills, background and characteristics with those options, so that you pursue something that’ll actually be satisfying to you,” advised Malaika Adero, vice president and senior editor of Atria Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint. “Many people don’t understand what really happens in book publishing.”

Adero recommends continuing education courses, like ones offered at NYU and Yale, that give students a peek into the publishing industry before they take the leap.

It’s also important to research the work of each publishing house, says Mary Ann Zissimos, senior publicist of HarperCollins Children’s Books. “Look on the company’s website, see what kinds of books they do publish or the kind of authors that they publish, and really know the list that they’re trying to cultivate,” she said. “You really have to be aware of what’s happening, from the regular fiction [and] non-fiction lists, to what kind of new media is out there and who are the people behind this new media. It’s really learning how each publisher differs from another.”

Build your network
The adage that it’s not what you know, but who you know is as true in book publishing as any other industry. “In life, it always helps to know someone, and part of the point of taking some courses to learn about the publishing industry and the jobs and trends is also to meet people who can advise you and become mentors,” explained Adero. “It’s not just an academic exercise.”

But be forewarned: An “in” with a senior executive, or anyone for that matter, will likely not translate into a direct job offer.

“I think networking is important insomuch as you’ll get an idea as to whether or not you want to be in this industry, more so than somebody being able to necessarily recommend a job to you,” said Zissimos. “It’s a little bit different than other industries where you could meet somebody [and] say, ‘Hey, come in for a job.’ [In publishing], they’re going to want to know that the person has been vetted in some way through a human resources department.”

Technology has made it easier for indie publishers and small presses to produce and distribute their works, and social media has leveled the marketing playing field. However, these smaller firms are typically running low on manpower to facilitate all of those functions. While they may not have the budgets to hire full-time staff, publishers would be more than willing to hire contractors, said Betsy Lampe, president of the independent Rainbow Books, noting that editorial help is in particularly high demand.

Don’t rule out the little guys
Sure, the Big Six publishers (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster) get most of the notoriety and, incidentally, most of the applications from wannabe publishing professionals, but they’re certainly not the only book employers in town.

“Most of the authors don’t necessarily have a background in writing,” said Lampe. “And while their story may well be delightful and delicious, their grammar and their ability to edit themselves is not. I see this question all the time: ‘Where can I find an editor who really knows what they’re talking about?'”

Another benefit to contracted labor is that freelancers can work with multiple publishers and focus on projects of personal interest. “You would have the freedom of working on the titles that you chose, instead of being dictated to,” Lampe added. “If you went to work with a major press, you might get stuck in charge of a line of books that you really weren’t crazy about or thrilled to market.”

Flex your [tech] muscles
“If you’re coming in new to the [publishing] industry and coming in with skills in the new technology, that certainly gives you an advantage and an opportunity to bring innovation to the field,” said Adero.

And the same is true at small presses, where Lampe says tech overload, including Web design and social media management, is overwhelming lean staffs. “A lot of us are to the point where if we have to learn one more thing we’re going to explode,” said Lampe. “Like a self-help author who is a psychologist, they know their area really well, but they don’t know anything about social media, they don’t how to build a website, they don’t know how to blog. So, people who are looking for work could really fill that niche nicely.”

It is equally crucial that potential applicants carefully manage their online profiles, because no amount of digital acumen can fix a negative image.

“It’s important to note that most human resources departments are looking at candidates in ways that they never did before,” said Zissimos. “They’re going to Google you; they’re going to Facebook check you and see what pops up. They’re going to go on your Twitter. They’re going to go on your LinkedIn. They’re going to really investigate who you are before you even walk into the door, because if you’ve got pictures that are not appropriate or if you speak in such a way online, that is going to be your clear indication as to whether or not the person is suitable to even bring in for an informational interview.”

Andrea Williams is a freelance writer based in Nashville. Contact her at williamsandread@yahoo.com.

Even when the brand is one as well-established, on-point and cheeky as Entertainment Weekly, the challenge for a managing editor is to keep it feeling fresh.

Two of the ways Jess Cagle is accomplishing that mission this summer are the just launched Sirius XM Entertainment Weekly radio channel and the six-episode Sundance Channel reality series The Writers’ Room, debuting in July. Each episode will examine the intricacies of putting together a specific scripted TV series, such as Dexter and American Horror Story.

For Cagle, a Time Inc. veteran who helped launch Entertainment Weekly in 1990 and returned in 2009 as managing editor, it’s all part of one of the best jobs in the magazine business.

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Name: Jess Cagle
Position: Managing editor, Entertainment Weekly
Resume: Started at Time Inc. in 1987 as a reporter for People and worked on the launch of Entertainment Weekly just a few years later. Served as Time‘s West Coast senior editor from 2000 to 2002 and People‘s executive editor from 2002 to 2009 before returning to EW in 2009. Has also been a regular contributor to CBS News and co-host of ABC’s red carpet pre-show Oscars coverage.
Birthdate: August 8
Hometown: Abilene, Texas
Education: B.A. in journalism and Russian from Baylor University (1987)
Marital status: Single
Media idol: Adam Moss
Favorite TV show: Veep “at the moment”
Guilty pleasure: “Anything with Eli Roth’s name in the credits”
Last book read: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Twitter Handle: @JessCagleEW

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How does print and Web compare these days for Entertainment Weekly?
The website generally gets 7 to 8 million unique visitors a month. Within that, of course, there are tons and tons of different spikes, things like Return of the Jedi exclusive photos or our coverage of the New York upfronts. The print magazine is still the spine of our brand. Obviously, print advertising is a challenge, but there’s not a lot of overlap between our print audience and our digital audience. The print audience has held really steady the last few years. It’s about 1.7 million. They haven’t left for the digital space; our audience has just grown because of digital. The magazine’s audience is something like 11 million, and the overall audience is around 18 million. Both of these audiences are about 60-40 female-to male.

What is the mood like these days at EW given Time Warner’s plans to spin off Time Inc.? Are people concerned that the print magazine will be going away?
No; no one here is concerned that the print magazine is going away.

“The print magazine is still the spine of our brand.”

Are you doing anything on the advertising side that compares to, say, BuzzFeed’s promotion of “sponsored” content?
No, not at all. There are a certain set of rules set forth by ASME that delineate the line between advertising and editorial, and we’re constantly looking at those. Obviously, advertisers want more and more and more integration. You do find those times, even in print now, where the advertising is intrusive or it’s hard to distinguish what is what. Look, we want to make advertisers happy, but we don’t want to confuse the reader at all. So how do you accomplish the advertiser’s needs and wants? I don’t think it’s impossible at all. Even on the iPad side, we haven’t blurred the line at all. Most of our work with ads is still actually being done in print.

The reader comments on EW.com are generally very intelligent. How have you cultivated that part of the website?
The website, which is separately managed by Bill Gannon, has really taught us that Entertainment Weekly is a brand with this tremendously engaged audience. We’re currently looking at how we can engage that audience more. I think there’s an exponential potential there in the reader comments for growth. They believe that they can cover a topic better than we can cover it, which is a fantastic position to be in, because they’re really interested in engaging and arguing. We’re looking very closely at video and audience engagement. Those are two really tremendous areas for growth on EW.com.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, James Heidenry, Editor-in-Chief of Star?

One of the big reasons actually that we struck up the partnership with SIRIUS was to get video. We’re going to have cameras in the radio studio, and we will put some of that on the website when there is compelling video, like an interview with somebody interesting in studio.

Has the way you deal with publicists for print cover stories changed much in recent years, or is it still pretty much the same?
EW is in a unique position, because we’re not trying to get celebrity baby photos. We’re the only magazine that will do a first look on Steven Soderbergh’s movie about Liberace, or Arrested Development on Netflix. Those things, we still fight to get. But we are kind of the place, so I’d have to say that we turn down more covers than we can use.

EW doesn’t use freelancers much, but what is your advice to anyone seeking to pitch a story to the magazine, or website?
We’ll use freelancers to cover events and things like that, but what I would say to any freelancer is that everybody today has an opinion, and we don’t need your opinion. All we need is news. So come with a great bit of access to something that we can’t get ourselves. For that, I’ll write a check, immediately.

“What I would say to any freelancer is that everybody today has an opinion, and we don’t need your opinion.”

What about the trend of social TV? How does that factor in to your general coverage plans?
One thing EW.com has taught us is that there is tremendous engagement around television. Not only is that audience more engaged than ever because they’re able to communicate with each other as it happens, [but] TV is also just really, really good right now between Mad Men, Breaking Bad and all these other terrifically written shows.

So I will very often look at the social media surrounding of a particular show and make the decision based on that. Two covers that I can think of: Game of Thrones, which we’ve done several covers on — also, when you do a cover like that, it has tremendous life; beyond the newsstand, that cover is discussed in the social media realm — another example is the cover we did on Vampire Diaries more than a year ago. We thought there is so much social media going on around the show, and it went crazy. [Vampire Diaries star] Ian Somerhalder tweeted it out to his legion of followers, and that actually translated into print sales. With social media, you basically often get so much free press. We did a Doctor Who cover that was so successful that we just did another Doctor Who cover a few weeks ago.

EDITOR’S NOTE: After this interview was published, Jess Cagle emailed us this clarification of the magazine’s stance on sponsored content:
We’re launching a big initiative around native advertising and sponsored content on EW.com and on mobile; we want to create that kind of advertising in clever and organic ways consistent with the EW voice and do it without confusing our audience. We’re looking at ways to accomplish that on our site, on mobile and in print. I’m sure we’ll eventually find interesting ways to do it on the tablet, as well.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, James Heidenry, Editor-in-Chief of Star?

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Richard Horgan is co-editor of FishbowlLA.

Award-winning journalist Ed Gordon has interviewed countless celebrities and political figures for the likes of BET, Dateline NBC and the Today Show, during a career that has spanned almost three decades. While young journalists opt for the get-famous-quick approach, Gordon is decidedly old-school, coupling proven skills with an enduring work ethic that recently resulted in the nationwide syndication of his show, Conversations with Ed Gordon, produced through his own company, Ed Gordon Media.

“Back in the day, you hoped to get on with a network or station, and you could work there for 20, 25 years and retire there, and that was the model,” he told us. “In today’s world, you take a look at somebody like Oprah or Tyler Perry, and it’s about producing and owning your content.”

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Name: Ed Gordon
Position: Host of Conversations with Ed Gordon and founder of Ed Gordon Media
Resume: Started as an unpaid intern at Detroit’s PBS affiliate. Became host of the weekly talk show, Detroit Black Journal, in 1986 while freelancing for BET on the side. Named anchor of BET News in 1988 and went on to host several other shows with the network, including Conversations with Ed Gordon and BET Tonight. Correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes Wednesday, NBC’s Today and Dateline NBC, NPR’s News and Notes and Our World with Black Enterprise. Currently hosts the nationally syndicated radio show WEEKend with Ed Gordon and his signature TV interview series, Conversations.
Birthdate: August 17
Hometown: Detroit
Education: B.S. in communications and political science, Western Michigan University
Marital status: Married
Media idol: Bryant Gumbel and Ed Bradley
Favorite TV shows: Scandal, The Voice, 60 Minutes and The Cosby Show. “Either you wanted your family to be like the Cosbys, or you were glad your family was like the Cosbys. I think it helped change America to some degree.”
Guilty pleasure: Gordon Ramsay
Last book read: “I am getting ready to start the book on the morning television wars, [Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV by Brian Stelter]. I’m not a big reader because I read so much for work.”
Twitter handle: @EdLGordon

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When you were named the host of BET Nightly News in 1988, the network was still fledgling. What do you think about the fact that now the network has no daily, or even weekly, news program?
That’s a hard question in the sense that it just depends on who you ask. Some people think that BET should just get out of the news business because it’s “entertainment” — Black Entertainment Television — and if you’re not going to be serious about it, why dabble in it? BET will tell you that “the numbers just don’t justify the return, and we’ve attempted to do it on any number of occasions.” So it’s really difficult to kind of make the argument in the middle.

You know, I see both sides of the coin. I think that people are going to have to not just look to BET to provide news. There are any number of other outlets out there, and, if BET is not servicing that fix, we ought to demand that other people get in the game, as well. I never thought that BET should be the only one. Competition makes, I think, better work on all sides. So, for as much grief as BET takes, and, I think, sometimes they should take it, there are other places that should take some grief [too].

“Now, it’s very hard to get an exclusive interview because people just don’t believe in talking to one person.”

What is your advice for securing an exclusive interview?
Well, it’s not as easy as it used to be in what I call the “old days.” I mean, it used to be that you got an exclusive and it was exclusive, and you were the only one who could talk to that person for, let’s say, at least a week, or a month, or during that period. Now, it’s very hard to get an exclusive interview because people just don’t believe in talking to one person. They’ll talk to you, and then Dr. Phil and Entertainment Tonight and everybody else. So, I think what you want to shoot for is getting someone to talk to you in a way they don’t talk to everyone else.

Your new show Conversations with Ed Gordon will be nationally syndicated on all 10 NBC owned and operated stations. How did you go about getting NBC to sign on?
I wish I could tell you that I had a lot to do with that, but we have a great team that works with us, and the gentleman who was in charge of going out there and selling the show in syndication reached out to the folks that make those decisions, and we were very pleased that all 10 NBC O&Os took the show. Over the years, I’ve been very proud of the [interview subjects] I’ve been able to get, and the caliber of them and, most importantly, what they’ve talked to me about. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people who open up to me in ways that they don’t open up to most interviewers, and I hope that the people that made the decision that they were going to take the show saw some of that.

How can other professionals best position themselves in their careers to be able to have access to those opportunities?
You know, again, that’s one of those questions that I wish I had the answer to because I would probably have a lot more things on TV if I knew… You know, there are a lot of people who’ve given up trying to get on commercial television and have gone to securing their own YouTube channels, and I think, at the end of the day, that’s going to be the future of broadcasting. People are just going to put stuff out there. They’re gonna have their own YouTube channels, and eventually you’ll be able to buy things from those channels.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Tracey Edmonds, Award-Winning TV and Film Producer?

But I think one of the things that people have to understand is it takes perseverance. Unless you’re just phenomenally lucky — and I don’t even say talented, ’cause there are a lot of talented people that don’t always get the breaks — but, you know, phenomenally lucky, you get an opportunity to get on. ‘Cause you think about the landscape of television, it’s just really hard to get on TV, you know? And 7 p.m. on almost every channel out there has been taken for the last 25 years by a game show or an entertainment show, and they’re locked in with contracts for another 10 or 15, so that landscape is gone. So, when you’re even talking about a syndicated show, there’s just so little landscape to get your show on that it’s gonna take some time, and it’s going to be difficult, and you’re going to face challenges where you’ll be disappointed, because you think you have the show and you’re not going to be able to find a place for it. So, you gotta persevere and keep pushing and get out there and do what you have to do.

Do you think that the YouTube culture has created a need for instant gratification, especially among younger professionals, that preempts their willingness to persevere and pay dues?
Well, yeah. I mean, our society has moved to instant gratification; it’s not just young people… You can become a star overnight with YouTube or a reality show where you’re really just pretending or exaggerating yourself. You can do that and not have had any other experience in the business. So it’s a different business, but most of that fame is fleeting… You know, there are one or two people who found a way to make themselves relevant and really found a career in the business, but 90 percent of the people who come up that way, they’re hot for a year or two and then you don’t see them anymore.

I try to tell young people all the time, learn your craft; learn where your craft is headed. The news that we did when I started is certainly not the news today. The programs that we produced when I started — certainly not the programs that we produce today… So, you gotta figure all that out, and it’s hard for young people who want to make their mark on the world, particularly if they’re just getting out of college and have been out for a few years.

“The news that we did when I started is certainly not the news today.”

You’ve said that the aim of Ed Gordon Media is to “create projects that will rival those of major producers.” Detail your strategy for doing so and the type of content you plan to produce, outside of those featuring yourself.
We’re working on two documentaries as we speak. I’ve been traveling the country doing some of that. One is a faith-based project and the other is a documentary that we’re really excited about, that I think people will find entertaining and fun, and we’ve got a lot of celebrities involved in that. So, we’re working on that simultaneously with producing the quarterly specials. Part of the issue is finding the team that will work with you. I’ve been blessed to work with some of my team for over 20 years now, 25 years. So, it’s really about finding content that you believe will work in the market that you’re trying to service, and that’s the key: knowing your audience and convincing advertisers and others that you know your audience and what you’re producing will be worth them advertising with and putting money behind.

How does being the boss on the business side affect your job in front of the camera?
It doesn’t other than you don’t have anybody to answer to in the sense of, if you want to do something, you don’t have to sit and argue or try to convince somebody else that this is the way to go. The other side, and the obvious side, is that you’re the one counting pennies now. It’s a lot easier to spend somebody else’s money; I’ll tell you that much. You have to watch as tightly the change of a plane ticket, because you’re gonna incur extra costs. Yes, it comes out of the budget, but you don’t wince as much as you do when it’s your money.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Tracey Edmonds, Award-Winning TV and Film Producer?

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Andrea Williams is a freelance writer based in Nashville. Follow her at @AndreaWillWrite.

For a number of years, Jay Mohr was a dynamic fill-in host for Jim Rome on Fox Sports Radio. In January, he finally got his own daily show and it’s been nothing but growth since. At last count, the program was closing in on 150 U.S. affiliates. Meanwhile, at this year’s New York upfronts, Hulu announced a new game show hosted by Mohr called Money Where Your Mouth Is, coming later this year.

In many ways, Mohr was made for AM radio. He’s energetic, dynamic, funny, and as comfortable in the radio booth as he is on stage doing stand-up. But the Jersey boy and veteran actor still says chatting with millions of listeners about everything from NBA dunks to AutoZone wiper blades is his best gig yet.

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Name: Jay Mohr
Position: Host, Jay Mohr Sports, FOX Sports Radio
Resume: Acted in more than 200 episodes of network television and 25 feature films, most notably 1996 favorite Jerry Maguire and the 1999-2000 series Action. Authored Gasping for Airtime, about his experiences on Saturday Night Live, and the more personal memoir No Wonder My Parents Drank. In radio, did several guest hosting stints for The Jim Rome Show and appearances on Opie & Anthony before getting his own show on Fox Sports Radio in 2013.
Birthdate: August 23, 1970
Hometown: Verona, NJ
Education: “Barely”
Marital status: Married to Nikki Cox
Media idol: Ron Bennington
Favorite TV show: Sanford and Son
Guilty pleasure: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo on TLC
Last book read: Nixon: An Oliver Stone Film by Oliver Stone and Eric Hamburg
Twitter Handle: @jaymohr37

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How does doing a daily three-hour radio show compare to doing stand-up, SNL, TV and movies, and what has surprised you most so far?
What surprised me most is how huge a company Fox Sports Radio is and the [interview] access that comes with that, when you can interview a member of the Knicks, a member of the Lakers, a member of the Utah Jazz, Don Mattingly, manager of the Dodgers, and so on. I come in to work every morning and the guests we have lined up are consistently top caliber.

As far as how it compares to other mediums, I’ve always really loved structure. I wake up at the same time every day, come home relatively at the same time each day, and it’s perfect for me. It’s sort of like a shotgun structure: you go like crazy when you first wake up; you just sort of go nuts for five hours, then go home and refuel. And there’s no waiting around, which is the absolute worst and only bad part about acting. You spend 95 percent of your time in a trailer, eating candy and doing push-ups, wondering when they’re going to use you.

“Anybody can get the gig, but the real trick is getting asked back.”

When you first met with Fox Sports Radio, how did you pitch the vibe of the program you wanted to do for them?
Robert Morton told me when we were putting together [the 2002 TV program] Mohr Sports back in the day, rule number one of a talk show is that it has to be a “hang” for people that they don’t want to leave. And I just let Don Martin, the guy who really showed me the playbook of sports talk radio, know that this is what I wanted. A lot of radio shows when I listen to them, they come off as standoff-ish, a little superior than thou, and I didn’t want it to be that way. I say it all the time on the show: it’s not “me”; it’s “we.”

If my listeners don’t call, tweet, text, email or Facebook, I don’t have a show. And I think that extends from coming from stand-up comedy and the idea of me talking to people after a comedy show about being happy I came to their city. Anybody can get the gig, but the real trick is getting asked back. So I’m very happy about that, and so far we’re off to a great start.

Have you made any adjustments to the show since debuting in January?
No, you can’t tweak your vibe. It is what it is. We have a little pirate ship that we work on, and there’s obviously a few FCC regulations and corporate guidelines that you stay within that you can just call the ocean. And, once you know the parameters of the ocean, you sail wherever the hell you want.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Elvis Mitchell, Film Critic and Host of KCRW’s “The Treatment”?

You make great use of Twitter during each broadcast. As someone closing in on 250,000 followers, what is your advice for being successful on social media?
Be yourself. I post pictures of my dogs; I do jokes about my stand-up act; I tweet about football or some other sport during the show. Beyond that, I would say the golden rule of Twitter is you cannot ever respond to somebody saying something negative to you. It took me a good three years to learn that, and, even still, I’ll start to type something and be a sentence or two in before I realize, “What am I doing? Why am I answering this person?” I’ve blocked about 3,000 people. I’ve made Twitter this ivory tower of Babel where people only say nice things about me.

Your listeners are also doing really creative things on Twitter with sponsors, mentioning them in joke-tweets. What’s the story there?
My gosh, we’ve created this beautiful beast and it was completely unsolicited. The listeners seem to be exceptionally smart, really, really funny people. These sponsor-joke tweets just started trickling in, and now there’s about five to 10 every single day. Someone will tweet about Auto Zone and wiper blades; anything we’re talking about that day they’ll work into a tweet about sponsors. And so one day I said, “If you tweet about a sponsor and it’s funny, it will always get read.” That opened the floodgates, and I think it’s hilarious. The tweets I read are very clever, and people really earn their way onto the airwaves with them.

In light of the backlash to everything from Michael Richards’ heckling at the Laugh Factory to Lisa Lampanelli’s Lena Dunham tweet, have you changed the way you do comedy because of cell phone cameras or social media?
Not at all; I think that’s living in fear. The late, great Patrice O’Neal said it best: “You may not like what I say. You may find it offensive. But you must allow me to at least try to say it once.” That’s the gig. It’s like monkey bars when you’re a kid; you’re always reaching for the next bar. You’ve got to let me reach to see if there’s another bar there. There may not be. I may fall and it may be offensive, but you cannot strip me to reach for that next bar.

“If you tweet about a sponsor and it’s funny, it will always get read.”

I’ve actually been doing a lot of corporate gigs lately. What’s weird in that respect about the Fox Sports Radio show is that clients get to hear me clean for three hours every day. So suddenly, I’ve gone from being the edgy guy who could ruin the event to a safe bet, and I’m welcome there.

How has the new radio show affected your pursuit of TV and film acting gigs?
I did [The Incredible] Burt Wonderstone right before I started the Fox show, and I’ve been very lucky that people have made the schedule work for me. I just did the season finale of Suburgatory, and they were very accommodating. So, I thought I might have trouble continuing to do the acting, but so far people are making it work.

And, actually, my bosses here at Fox have also been great about continuing to let me do other radio shows. They know I’m friends with all these other radio shows around the country, and they know that me being on there helps everybody. When the tide comes in, all the boats rise. So I’m very grateful to them for letting me continue to do those other shows. In today’s corporate world, that’s an exceptional thing to have presented to you.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, Elvis Mitchell, Film Critic and Host of KCRW’s “The Treatment”?

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Richard Horgan is co-editor of FishbowlLA.

For all of the Facebook and iEverything successes from the past two decades, there have been just as many tech flops that fizzled before the ink on the dot-com registration could dry. But at least one player in the digital game has remained a constant.

In an industry that is less than welcoming toward women (see Adria Richards), journalist Kara Swisher is almost as ubiquitous and long-standing as the Internet itself. While much of her longevity can be attributed to her having the initial foresight to see the tech revolution coming, the Silicon Valley staple has a much more powerful tool in her arsenal: hard-core reporting chops.

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Name: Kara Swisher
Position: Co-executive editor of AllThingsD.com and co-executive producer of the D: All Things Digital conference
Resume: Worked at an alternative newspaper in Washington, D.C. before moving quickly to The Washington Post, where she started as an intern and was later hired full-time. Wrote aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web in 1998 (the sequel followed 5 years later). Recruited by current partner Walt Mossberg to join the Wall Street Journal where together they launched the AllThingsD conference in 2003 and later expanded it into a website.
Birthdate: “I don’t ever give the date, but everyone knows I just turned 50.”
Hometown: New York City
Education: B.S. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, 1984. M.S. in journalism from Columbia University, 1985
Marital status: Married
Media idol: Michael Lewis (“He’s a great writer and really good reporter”), Connie Bruck and Nora Ephron
Favorite TV shows: Law and Order, Game of Thrones, Scandal and Nashville, among others
Guilty pleasure: Eating donuts and sleeping
Last book read: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Twitter handle: @karaswisher

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You’ve been covering the digital scene for so long. With so many new ventures popping up daily, how do you determine which are newsworthy?
After doing it for almost 20 years, you see a lot of things and you start to get to know the people involved. A lot of the companies have a lot of the same people involved, so you get to know people and you get to know their record and their ability. So, I think you can make some pretty quick editorial judgments based on your experience. I think that’s pretty much it. But at the same time, you really can’t know what is going to pop. I think things can surprise you. I mean, I loved Instagram from the minute it started, but I think it surprised a lot of people how quickly it got huge. You have to balance not being cynical with understanding that anything can happen in this industry because it’s so innovative for the most part, and it’s so full of new ideas almost consistently. It’s one of the few industries that is like that.

“People make a bigger deal of it, but I think I just work harder than other people.”

You’re known for breaking stories and getting scoops before anyone else. Which one are you most proud of or excited you the most when you were writing it?
I’m pleased, obviously, with some of the stories around Yahoo! and the different CEO problems that they had. I think one of the things that was difficult then is that people kept saying I was wrong — and then I was correct. So that’s nice. I think it’s the consistently being accurate that’s heartening for us on our site. There’s so much speculation and rumor mongering, that it’s really nice to stick to getting it right every time. We really spend a lot of time on building relationships. And so when everyone is like, “How do you break so many stories?” it’s because I build relationships. I do it the old-fashioned way, and I build sourcing relationships, and then I take advantage of those relationships over time. So, whenever someone says, “Oh, how do you do it?” I tell them that I make more calls then they do. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. People make a bigger deal of it, but I think I just work harder than other people. That’s all. There’s no secret sauce or anything.

How can other journalists become influential in their own reporting?
Well, it’s really easy. Be accurate; know your stuff. I think what’s really amazing is that people just jump into it without any kind of expertise. People just start mouthing off on things or printing rumors without doing any checking, and they think that’s the way to glory. It’s the way to laziness. And I think the way to be an influential journalist is to be accurate and to be fair and to get things right and to really characterize things in an honest way, versus being really snarky or cheerleading. There’s sort of a happy medium between them, where you’re excited about some of the things, but at the same time, you want to give the reader the truth because this stuff can get hyped pretty quickly.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, David Ho, Mobile and Tablets Editor at The Wall Street Journal?

During the D: All Things Digital conference, you have interviewed top technology leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. What is the key to getting good answers from high-level people, who typically only give PR talking points when discussing their companies?
You have to ask really good questions. Really smart people don’t want to say stupid things, and they really don’t want to be a part of a PR-engineered interview. People really do want to be smart and they want smart questions. So, if you ask smart questions, there’s no way you can’t do well.

What was your primary motivation for launching AllThingsD.com?
Well, we started with the conference. We actually wanted to start with the website, but the people at Dow Jones didn’t want us to do that. But we felt like there was a real lack of accountability, fairness and accuracy involved in tech blogging, and we felt that we could bring all of the traditional standards of old media and mix them with this very exciting new medium that has quickness and wit and fun and immediacy. We liked all that, but what we didn’t like was the rumor mongering and the lack of standards. We felt that we could combine them both, and I think we’ve done a nice job of that. We just really thought it was a great way to reach readers, and we’re going to go where the readers are.

Your wife is a Google exec. You’ve disclosed how you keep her job from interfering with your reporting, but how do you ensure that your job doesn’t interfere with your marriage? Do you have a “no talking about work” rule at home?
We don’t talk about Google at all. I don’t have any financial stake; we separated our finances. It’s very clear on the site what we’ve done, so there’s no financial benefit for me. The second thing is we don’t talk about what she does, and I don’t tell her what I’m doing. She reads about it like everybody else. I avoid things that I think she’s near. She’s moved on to a different part of Google, which I’ve never covered, so that makes it a lot easier.

We had one instance where I ran into her when I was writing about Facebook, and the minute I found out — and not through her — that she was working on it, I got off the story, and I explained it to readers. So I moved off the story; I didn’t ask her to move off her job, and I said I would give [the story] to someone else until she was out of the equation. It’s only happened once, and we explained to readers immediately why I wasn’t going to write about the story anymore. It certainly hasn’t had an impact. I think it’s only hurt her career at Google, if anything, only because I insult them a lot. I’ve made a lot of commentary around their issues of privacy and power and monopoly. I think I was very tough on them when they were trying to hook up with Yahoo! a couple of years ago.

“People just start mouthing off on things or printing rumors without doing any checking, and they think that’s the way to glory. It’s the way to laziness.”

Has she ever told you that she was bothered by something you said?
She’s never said a word. I’ve heard it internally from other people, though. I covered Google a lot before she got there, so I have relationships myself. I suspect it probably has hurt her, but I don’t know. She’s never said anything. But, you know, people can think what they want. The only thing I can say is that we have it in the disclosure [on AllThingsD.com]; you’re either going to have to believe us or not. But that’s the truth.

Adria Richards was recently fired after the backlash surrounding her tweets about sexual harassment at the PyCon Tech Conference. What are your thoughts on that situation, particularly her tweeting pictures of the alleged offenders?
It’s a terrible, terrible situation. Most of all, it’s an interesting issue regarding what social media can do right now. I’m not clear she should have published their pictures. I don’t know. It’s a great debate [around] what should have happened in that situation. When you’re irked by somebody in a car next to you, do you tweet a picture of them swerving into your lane? It’s sort of really interesting how we deal with these normal, everyday occurrences of irritation between people and difficulties between members of society. And usually they say something, throw the finger and move on. But now you have these tools that amplify your voice. The question is how much amplification should you be doing?

I don’t know what happened [with Richards]; I don’t know if it was an overreaction, and I don’t know if it was an under-reaction. What I do know is that what was horrible about the whole thing were the comments that happened after it from other people. It was really interesting that people feel like just because they can say something that they can say something — and they can’t.

With the success of Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg, there’s been a lot of talk about women leaders in technology and business. Why do you think there aren’t more women and people of color in the tech space? Is the onus on those groups to “lean in” or technology leaders to reach out?
That’s a big question, and I’ve talked to a lot of people about this. I think it starts really early, for both women and minorities in terms of joining a club that’s full of a certain kind of person. If you want to be the “only,” it’s really hard to be the “only.” And so, one of the things that’s interesting, and someone told me this recently, is that people can only tolerate one differential. So if you’re black, you can’t be a woman. And if you’re a woman, you can’t be black. It’s a really interesting thing, and, if you think about it, it’s actually true when you start to look at things. It’s a super interesting question of where it starts and how we can change that so that math and science become attractive to everybody, so that we can find talent everywhere versus just this self-selected group of people, which is typically white males. You change the equation, and then you create more opportunity for everyone; then you create more diversity; then you create better products. It’s a deep question of where we begin, and I suspect it starts very early in the elementary school time period.

NEXT >> So What Do You Do, David Ho, Mobile and Tablets Editor at The Wall Street Journal?

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Andrea Williams is a freelance writer based in Nashville. Follow her at @AndreaWillWrite.