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| My dad reporting outside Boise Cascade in Duluth, MN |
Gagnon, K: This is the John Gagnon Oral History Project, session number one with Mr. Gagnon on November 26. We’re near his home, 10670 Blackhawk Dr. Boise, Idaho in the café of Hastings bookstore. The interviewer is Kristin Gagnon, Brigham Young University.
Gagnon, K: You were born February 5, 1961 in Minneapolis?
Gagnon, J: St. Paul actually.
Gagnon, K: What sparked your interest in broadcasting at BYU?
Gagnon, J: It goes back to when I was a junior in high school involved in speech and debate. My speech teacher Mr. Langly told me, “John if you don’t get into broadcasting you’re going to kick yourself down the road”. He though my writing was good with descriptions and adverbial phrases and so I did a piece on a funeral director who was our bishop, Bishop Farmer back in St. Louis and it was such a fun thing to do. I interviewed him, asked him all the question and wove all his answers into a description about being a mortician. I loved the piece and I got the best grade in the class. The teacher even held it up and told everyone how good it was. I learned so many important things and myths about being a mortician. He loved his career as a mortician and this was traditionally not the case because drunks and other being usually took the job because of what you’re doing getting through all the dead bodies. He told all of his close friends and relatives that he wanted to do their embalming for them because he takes great pride in how they look in the casket. The coloration for the skin and hair, he just makes them look really beautiful. I felt the spirit as I was listening to that because it’s just such a sacred thing anyway.
Gagnon, J: I did an internship, as it was part of the degree to do an internship. As I was approaching the last semester I signed up for an internship back in Minnesota at KLDH TV at Duluth and I think I spent the summer with them at least for a couple months. They were happy to do it, I made arrangements ahead of time, told them I’d be interested in coming up there. I had some ideas for stories that they and I were excited about. At the end of that they told me I had a job with them if I was interested when I was done at BYU.
Gagnon, K: As opposed to how they do it online today how were you able to find that internship back then?
Gagnon, J: I’m trying to think how I found out. That’s a good question. There wasn’t anybody that helped me or any resources in that way. I don’t even remember but it seems like maybe I had a connection before I called. I’d been in Minnesota a lot and been through Duluth and seen the station. Maybe I knew someone during my time there that was connected to the station and they referred me. I stayed with grandma like I usually did for the summers. There weren’t any previous students that had worked for them. I just had the Minnesota connection with relatives on the iron range and they loved to have interns like anyone does because there was stuff for them to do. They didn’t have to pay them anything. It was much more common back then to have unpaid internships at least for broadcasting. There were a couple of reporters that interned there that got hired by KDLH and others that found work elsewhere. It was a small station, the 120th market. Maybe in Minneapolis they would have given you something for working but at KDLH there wasn’t any pay. I knew the station because it came through to grandma’s house. I wanted to get back to the family there so it all seemed to work. I didn’t’ want to go back to where my mom lived in St. Louse because it was a much bigger market and what dictated my decision was my desire to be closer to relatives and be kind of rural and small versus the big time. It was a more emotional decision.
Gagnon, K: What were some of the first stories you worked on?
Gagnon, J: One of the first ones was the Hullrust Mine, in Hibbing, Minnesota. They were having some kind of anniversary. Supposedly the world’s deepest mine. So it was a lot of fun and my first one. I had heard of iron mining because all my relatives were minors so I knew the industry a little but to be right there interviewing, reporter standup as we call it. This was as an intern and I really liked the story a lot. The first stories I did when I was hired was on seminary program. I talked to my producer and I said. “Hey what if I had a story idea where you’ve got 15 teenagers getting up at 6am to study the bible” and he said, “No way that’s great. Sounds awesome”. I was assigned to the adolescent beat when I got there because everyone got assigned to a beat. I was probably older there because I had been on a mission. I was roughly the medium age in the station. I was about 22 years old. I did a couple others stories about youth programs and I liked that because it wasn’t spot news. I didn’t really like that news that you had to go and get quickly and ask questions and get it on the air. Fast breaking news. I was more feature kind of pieces. One of the other ones I did was on a girl that tried to collect several million pop can tabs and if she did that she would get a huge donation for a kidney transplant that her or someone needed. SO the whole community collected these pop can tabs and somehow they recycled those and she got some serious money for that and it was just a great story. I got to meet the girl and you could just tell she was struggling and in treatment and then I interview the community leaders and school officials. It was just a feel good story. I had to travel about 90 miles to Northern Wisconsin. There was a KDLH news truck that we used. I was assigned to cover a murder or some of those kinds of stories and I didn’t like those. That’s why they assigned me the adolescent beat and county government, entrepreneurial businesses. I did a lot of stories in Northern Minnesota with these cottage industries they called them. That was a lot of fun. You could take time and be more creative and expressive with those kind of stories as apposed to bare bones and you had 20 seconds and here’s the source and you’re done. That was not my cup of tea.
Gagnon, K: Do you notice any major difference in the way reporters cover a story on the news today?
Gagnon, J: You know I don’t watch a lot and I’ve seen maybe a couple of dozen since that time. I haven’t watched a lot. I can tell the ones that haven’t done it a lot that they’re kind of new. A lot of clichés which you find in this business. I did that a lot too because that’s what you rely on. Phrases you use to wrap up stories. For instance I did a story on Bob Dylan and his boyhood home was in Hibbing, Minnesota. So I ended the piece by saying, “But whether body Dylan will ever rise again in popularity, the answer is blowing in the wind”. We were encouraged at least a BYU to avoid that kind of stuff. They were about fundamentals. Avoid getting into a cutesy habit like that. Or they will end with simple information like the “press conference will end at 5pm” and you’re like so what, give me the story with a creative take home message as opposed to facts as what was happening. We were told to avoid that at BYU and that stuck with me. I avoided that like the plague. Don’t end with information that an anchor could end with as they bring the story back. Why waste airspace telling those minute details. I do watch stories now with a critical eye. Its hard not to. I watch how the sound bites are tied in. It’s a sign of a novice that a person will lead into the sound bite basically reviewing what the sound bite will say because it’s redundant. You just wasted airtime.
Gagnon, K: How did the hours affect your family life?
Gagnon, J: That’s partially the reason I got out. Those first few years I missed every birthday, wife’s birthday, thanksgiving. Your mom and I were talking about what we did for thanksgiving then and she said “well you were in the newsroom” and what about Christmas and new years day? “You were in the newsroom”. Especially the day after the holidays because they had to rely on someone that didn’t drink that could get up and cover the next day. A designated reporter. And most of them were single and so they would just go socialize and then say “John you have to cover because you don’t drink”. I was assigned specifically because of that reason. When you’re first there you just have to e there for some of the unpleasant times. They wanted me to be a weekend anchor and I auditioned for it and they liked what I did because I was a backup anchor. I told them I just didn’t want to mess with Sundays. I told myself I would avoid it and I told them thanks but no thanks. It might have been an increase in salary and more time off during the week since it was a weekend deal but it was already impacting my family as it was and I didn’t want it to impact my church life. But it was hard. I would leave for work about 7 o’clock, catch the bus while we were living in Superior, and get home about 7 o’clock at night. So it was 12 hour days every days for 5 days so 60 hour weeks. That begins to impact your family when you don’t seem them in the morning and when you come home its after dinner when the kids have already eaten. You play with the kids a little bit and then off to bed you go.
Gagnon, K: If a local station here asked you to do a story, not giving up your current job, would you? I know you’ve done radio voice-overs in the past few years.
Gagnon, J: Yea I have done voice-overs and I think I would. Mom encourages me to do that and I still hear of things and think that would be a great story to do so I think I could do that. It’s just that it takes so much time but if I thought I could work it out a little bit. It couldn’t’ be a time crunch thing but it would be kind of fun to do. I would be nervous of the technology. I guess as a reporter you wouldn’t’ have to worry so much about that because whatever you do it would just be easier to edit. I would never go back to full time. Too many hours and there were often times, covering the other kinds of stories I just didn’t feel like there was personal fulfillment. The feature pieces felt like there was personal fulfillment but the other ones felt like I just wasn’t helping people. Even though real news does, it helps people make important government decisions and helps keep government officials accountable for their actions. They have important functions that are now shared by a lot of organizations. Back in my time it was just the stations, they didn’t have the internet and other sources for news. They didn’t have cable mainstream and so it has changed a lot that way.
Afterward in the car (off record)
He really hated the pressure he got from the editors when they told him he had to shorten his stories and get to the point. He felt like he couldn’t put any emotional connection or expression into his pieces. When on site reporting a story he also could not spend too much time getting to know the people he was interviewing. The photographers and cameramen would get frustrated with him when he wanted to stay and get to know the people better. He felt like he just met a new friend and they were insensitively asking him to stop building the friendship connection. He used to have dreams all the time about having to get a story written last minute before deadline. It was so much a part of his life, spending at least 12 hour days there that it pervaded his lifestyle while he was sleeping too. Just recently he had a dream about writing a story last minute and not being able to get it to the editor on time. He knows now that this type of fast paced work environment is not for him. With seminary he feels like he can be creative and develop those close relationships with people without strict commitments or deadlines creeping up to interrupt.
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| Mom and Dad, John and Mary Gagnon |
