April 8, 2025 • 20 mins
How Much Can I Make? with Mirav Ozeri
The Job of TV News Editor
Mirav talks to Johnny, a veteran network TV news editor about the pressure-cooker world of broadcast news editing, from tight deadlines and ethical decisions to the industry's shift toward user-generated content and the looming impact of AI.
https://www.nyfa.edu/digital-editing-school/
https://nytedu.com/courses/pre-college/fundamentals-editing/
https://www.poynter.org/product-category/reporting-editing/
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Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
today.
It's interesting.
Tiktok, all these other formatsare all very short and they
play to the young audience,who's getting a lot of their
information through that thoseplatforms hi, welcome back to
how much can I make.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm a ravozeri, a journalist who loves to know
what people do for a living andhow much they can earn.
If you ever wondered what goesbehind the scene of your TV news
broadcast, ask no more.
Today's guest is John, who is anetwork TV news editor, and
we're going to find out allabout it.
So, johnny, thank you so muchfor giving us your time.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, no problem, Marav.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I have lots of questions, so first let's start
by telling me how did you getstarted in TV?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I got started when I was a junior in college.
I wanted to work at atelevision station.
I was going to SyracuseUniversity at the Newhouse
School and I was studyingproduction and journalism.
And I wanted to work at atelevision station.
I didn't have any contacts.
My dad was a constructionworker.
I didn't know anyone in thebusiness, so I had to find a way
(01:13):
to get in and I applied forsummer relief they call it as a
technical person as their peoplewent on vacation they hire
somebody to do you knowvideotape.
Back then, two guys who hired methey were one was the chief
engineer or the co-chiefengineer and the other one was
like sort of a supervisor.
They looked at my resume.
(01:34):
They seemed to like me.
They called me back.
I was just excited, I wasthrilled.
Wow, like I could work here.
This is a TV station as a kid Iwas watching they had children
programs that I've watched whenI was a kid and of course they
were CBS affiliate and was thatupstate New York?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
or was it in New York City?
It was in Hartford, Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Okay.
So they called me back.
First of all they put me infront of a television switcher,
video switcher.
I said could you do this, do adissolve?
Yeah, I switcher video switcherand said could you do this, do
a dissolve?
Yeah, I could do it, because wehad equipment at the university
and I I knew some of it andthey liked that I knew enough
about it.
They said we'll hire you.
So I was hired for the summerbecause I had to go back to
(02:15):
school and I learned a lot,learned how to program these
cart machine, which was the waythey played commercials.
I was just fascinated, like wow, I'm doing all this stuff.
Then I remember they wanted meto help with playback of the
news and they would do like afive o'clock newscast and a six
o'clock.
The six o'clock was the mostimportant newscast.
(02:37):
It was just before the eveningnews and I was being trained on.
I remember one day there weretwo engineers there and one of
them was training me and she washaving some dispute with the
management and there was anotherolder guy there and he was
sitting there smoking acigarette and he had to feed up
on the machine.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I'm like wow so they trained you as editor or is it
no?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
no, I wasn't an editor yet.
This is just an engineer.
I had to put in the tapes forthe A block of the show, they
call it.
And I put in the tapes that hadthe stories, right, you know.
So the anchor would then sayblah, blah, blah and reporting,
and then they played a tape.
The story was self-contained,so I queued it up.
I thought this was exciting.
I heard the director directingand he played a tape and the
(03:21):
woman who was near me wassupposed to supervise me but she
was not paying attention andthere was no audio.
But I saw the meters.
They were moving back and forth.
I said this is not right.
And the director goes where'sthe audio?
Where's the audio?
I said the meters are moving.
I have the audio pots up.
So then they interrupt that, goback to the anchor again, play
(03:42):
the second tape.
No audio again.
And this is the top of thenewscast.
All hell breaks loose and Ithink it was a third tape.
There was no audio on that.
Well, apparently one of theengineers turned an audio pot
that was underneath the table.
Nobody knew that existed,except maybe he did.
He turned it down for something.
He forgot to turn it back on, Ididn't know anything.
And at the time the executiveproducer he comes in and he's
(04:06):
yelling at the top of his lungs.
He goes I have egg all over myface.
I have egg all over my face.
I'm sitting there petrified.
I'm like 19 years old, lookingat this guy yelling at the group
.
But the other two didn't payattention.
The other guy was still smokinga cigarette.
You know, the woman that wasnext to me was filing her nails
(04:28):
and I'm like I'm sitting therelooking at him paying, like I
think he's important.
They didn't think he wasimportant and did they fire?
you.
No, they didn't fire me.
My supervisor said don't worryabout it, it's just the news,
people, they're this way.
Wasn't your fault.
For fault For me.
I was going oh my God, my wholecareer is like that's it down
the toilet.
It's over.
So after that I learned to havethicker skin and deal with
(04:53):
these kinds of situations Today,you edit the news correct.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
How did you get from there to edit news?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
When I graduated, they gave me a job as broadcast
engineers, so I worked on showsand news playback and things
like that, and then eventuallythey needed people to edit in
the news department.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And that's how you got into it.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I got into editing because I thought, oh, this is
cool.
And then I'm like, oh, I canmanipulate images and this is
how it's done.
You know, I had a pretty goodbackground in television but I
had a lot of theory, you know,and I watched, of course, a lot
of classic films, even silentfilms, so I knew about the power
of editing.
And at some point, you were alsoa cameraman.
(05:37):
Eventually I became a cameraman.
The place I worked had someincredible camera editors,
producers.
Some were like all in one, veryrare back then.
A lot of the guys who shot onlyshot.
They didn't edit.
You know I like what they did.
I knew when there was a goodcameraman or a bad cameraman and
as an editor you really knowwho's good.
You know people have steadyshots, nicely framed, and they
cover you.
They do wide a close-up, maybeanother close-up.
(05:59):
They give you reversals.
So you know the good ones and Iwork with the best in the
country.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So you work in hard news.
Is it difficult?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Well, everything is a deadline and especially where I
work now, it has to get out byeither 1130 or 330.
And you have a couple of hours.
Essentially, the producer iswriting the script, pulling the
videos, but a lot of timesyou're pulling video yourself
because we just don't haveenough people.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
How do you decide what footage to put to?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Well, I mean, obviously, if we're covering a
fire, it's whatever footageeither we get from a local
station or now from Storyful,which is another group that gets
footage from people who shootthings on their phone that
happen to be there.
Wow.
And that's entirely different.
Once in a while we used to havecameramen.
(06:50):
They would go out Right If theyhappen to be at a while.
We used to have cameramen, theywould go out If they happened
to be at a fire, they would getthese great shots.
A lot of times there's no onethere to take the shots.
We just did a story recentlyand the Philadelphia airplane
crashed the medical plane thatfortunately crashed in the
Philadelphia area and there wasa ring camera that was able to
get it actually coming down andexploding.
(07:11):
Where would you get that in thepast Impossible?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Nobody would have that.
So you take footage from ringcamera iPhone.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Whatever comes your way, it depends.
There's a lot of sources now,so how do?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
you balance when there is like a gory story and
you get gory footage.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I mean because we still are broadcast television
or we're still kind ofright-gated.
Plus, you know we're sendingour material to affiliate
stations and you got to becareful.
What you show, Other peoplewill show the whole thing.
We can't we blur things out,especially gory, and there's
really no need to show that.
If you blur it out and you seerubble and you see blood, that's
(07:46):
all you need to understand thatit's not a pretty scene.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
How many stories a day do you have to edit?
It depends.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
It could be two.
One we do a lot of medicalstories.
Now we do consumer stories.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Who supervises what footage will go on?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Well, usually it's the producer, the producer and
the reporter.
Sometimes it depends on whoyou're working with.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Does the reporter sit in the?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
room with you?
No, not as much Sometimes.
If they're there, sometimesthey're out in the field and
when they're out in the fieldthey rely on you and the
producer to help them put thestory together.
They'll pick out the soundbites.
You know they interview peopleand then they like a sound bite.
We insert that.
Sometimes we have to cut itdown even more because our
stories can't be more than liketwo minutes.
Usually a minute 30.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Stories can't be more than like two minutes.
Usually a minute 30.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That always drove me crazy about news, network news,
because even if it was animportant story you'll cut it
down to two minutes?
Yeah, because they have acertain format and they have to
adapt to that format becausethey have commercials to go into
Again.
That's why the medium, again,these platforms like Instagram
what is the most popular oneright now, or one of the most
popular is TikTok, right andeverything is these small short
clips the young ones get theirnews from TikTok.
Unfortunately, my daughter getsher stuff from TikTok, I go.
(09:00):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
What was the most challenging story you had to
work on?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Oh, probably 9-11.
Yeah, there's no doubt 9-11 wasthe most difficult, but it was,
I think, our best moment asnews people, because it happened
in the city, it happened infront of most of us, right?
I knew people who were downthere.
I wasn't there initially, Iwent down later and it was
horrific.
I mean, I was at the top of thecbs building with my camera and
(09:29):
shooting the buildings comingdown.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Right, I remember.
Do you ever run into ethicaldilemmas, like there is a story
that has footage that is toographic, too sensitive?
That's really important.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
That's where a senior producer or news producer
determine they normally have.
Well, they usually take a lookat it before it goes on the air,
as we would say, and if theysee something that they don't
like or you know, there'snetwork standards.
So there's certain things youcan't do right and you can't
show, you can't recreate certainthings for news, not for
(10:03):
entertainment, right and allthat so it's a union job correct
.
Yeah, if you edit for a network, yeah usually in a union, what?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
What is the going rate for the union If somebody
breaks in at the beginning?
What is the going rate?
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Well, it depends on the level of skill you have.
I think we have something goesfrom like one year to five.
Most of the people we hirealready have four or five years
experience.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So they're at the top level.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Well, let's put it this way, you could easily make
six figures.
You can make more with overtime, but in a lot of places they
don't have as much overtime aswe did in the past.
You know you can workfreelanced.
If you're freelanced then youcan work for a variety of
different people.
So you know your income could.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
But the network doesn't have a set price for an
editor.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
No, but usually it's, let's say, over $90,000 or
$100,000.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
That's not bad.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And then overtime is time and a half correct?
Yes, yes, but that used to bethe case many years ago.
Where we get more overtime,they've cut back on that quite a
bit Really.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Oh yes, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Matter of fact, some of us get four days instead of
five.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Wow, and they pay you by the hour, or they pay you by
the week, they pay you by thehour, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Now the people who would make the most obviously
are the photographers who wenton assignment.
Cameramen make more Becausethey're out on assignment.
So they got to fly to thelocation, have to set up and
normally you get paid for travelexpense travel and your travel
expense.
Then when you're there as soonas you hit the ground.
(11:34):
If you're working, you start toget paid.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
What advice would you give somebody who wants to
break into TV news editing?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
First of all, you have to love what you're doing,
and then you have to bepersistent.
You have to really want it.
You have to make some sacrificeto get to that position,
because a lot of people you'recompeting with a lot of people.
There's a lot of talentedpeople too, and many times it's
just you're at the right placeat the right time.
(12:02):
And the best advice is tonetwork with people once you get
your first job and to get toknow different people at
different levels.
Be curious, go around, askwhat's going on, because
whatever company you're workingfor, you just know that
particular department or thatarea Right, I think you have to
motivate yourself to go outsideof that, find out what someone
(12:24):
else is doing.
You may not want to do that,you may not be interested in
another aspect, but that's thecompany, and the company does
different things and the betterthat you understand the company,
the better you find yourselfwith the right job and the right
fit for you.
But you have to be verypersistent and you can't give up
and you're going to get a lotof no's and a lot of people
won't believe in you until theysee your work Right.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
What is your typical day like?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, I go in and if I'm editing what they call the
package for, the 11.30 is ourdeadline, that's for the noon
newscast.
Or if I edit the 3.30, it's fortheir 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock
newscast.
You go in, you find out whatthe story is, find out who
you're working with usually aproducer.
You would get a scripteventually.
(13:09):
But before you get the script,they send you footage that you
should pull and have in your binIn the Avid it's called a bin.
You place your footage in thatbin and then you screen it and
you look at it.
I mean, you kind of know whatthe story is by the title of the
story and eventually theproducer has a rough draft and
they send it to you.
Then it gets approved and thenthat's when you start working on
(13:31):
it and you get the sound andthe audio that you're going to
use From the reporter.
From the reporter from theproducer and they can pull it
from different sources.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And then you begin to edit.
You lay down a skeleton, youlay the audio track, the sound
bites and the final track, andthen you know how long it is,
the length at least.
Then you start covering it withvideo.
Right, that's appropriate.
And sometimes you have graphics, sometimes there's a spelling
mistake, you have to redo it,things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Do you ever watch, or your family watch, the pieces
that you cut?
No, nobody watches anything Ido.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
No, I'm kidding.
I mean yes, they have in thepast.
Certainly, when I worked at atelevision station, they watched
it.
A lot of people watched it,because that's the only way they
watched anything.
You didn't have phones.
You didn't have iPhones.
You didn't have, you know,video on it.
You didn't have a video.
You didn't have anything likethat.
You had television Turned it on.
(14:27):
It came at a certain hour.
You either saw it or you didn'thave anything like that.
You had television turned it on, it came at a certain hour.
You either saw it or you didn't.
You missed it or you didn't,you know.
Later people had DVRs and canrecord it.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Right.
Your job is every day.
Nine hours, eight hours a day.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Right now it is.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yes, before, it used to be longer, because we just
would have more to do.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Right, so if there is a huge disaster, and do they
call you, and then can you.
You have to work many hours,many shifts.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
No, it depends.
I do the what they call thegenerics and where we would do
live shots of an important event.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Live shot is when the reporter stands.
A live shot where there's areporter.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
He's, let's say, in Atlanta or someplace, like, for
instance, jimmy Carter.
When he was released fromhospice and they thought he only
had limited time to live, theycalled me in early because they
thought he may pass away at anytime.
I was there at 4.30 in themorning for a 5 o'clock live
feed, you know the reporter, butnothing happened.
(15:25):
They didn't have anything toreport yet and he lived much
longer than they thought he wasgoing to live.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So they were pretty off base on that one, so you
just sat there and they paid youWell it's just similar to the
Pope.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
now Everybody's waiting, but who knows right?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did you prepare an obituary already for the Pope?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I'm sure they have one.
I didn't do it personally, butthey may have one.
I'm sure they have one.
They have one, because you knowwhen he does die it's going to
be so quick.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right, no time to edit.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Yeah, they don't have really time to edit, but a lot
of these stories you know wecover we used to cover a lot
more Hurricanes, tornadoes andstuff like that.
Yeah, we do if it's prettymajor Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It has to be quite.
Is that because everybody hasiPhones and there's so many
streaming services?
It's all kinds of differentthings.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
They've pared down our organization, our news
division.
We just don't have as manypeople and flying people out,
putting them in hotels andpaying them all the extra, all
the extra pay that goes with it.
They've been cutting back onthat because they find other
ways to do it.
For instance, in our case, wehave local affiliates that can
give us footage or they can.
(16:35):
We could use maybe theircameraman for a certain time,
but that becomes problematicbecause they have their own news
to cover, so it doesn't alwaysquite work out.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Where do you see AI and automation coming into news
editing?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Oh well, I've seen examples of it, but nothing
concrete where they could takeall this footage and put it
together that quickly.
I mean, I'm sure they can atsome point and will.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Oh, but not yet.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
But not yet.
But yeah, I can see that.
I can see someone just callingup AI and say you know, first of
all they could write the story.
It can eventually pull thefootage and it can edit it into
a sequence.
So it's coming.
How it's going to evolve?
It's always hard to say.
I think everybody thinks okay,that's it, but not really.
There'll be other things to do.
(17:27):
And AI still makes mistakes,somebody will have to supervise,
but it will cut a lot of jobs.
Yes, I think it will certainly,but I think the people that
will guide it are still going tobe like an editor, but
overseeing certain things, andit may be manually, themselves
going in and fixing something orsaying I don't like this and
I'm going to change it intosomething else Hard to tell.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
But you think network news is here to stay.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Hard to say.
I mean, it still has anaudience, albeit an older
audience, although you have tothink that whatever they do for
the evening news or for whateverprogram they're doing gets
clipped sent on the internet.
So I do think that technologyobviously is going to play a
role in how the news isdisseminated.
(18:07):
I do think that technologyobviously is going to play a
role in how the news isdisseminated, but you still have
to have some people decidingwhat they want to show.
The important part is thatthere's always going to be a
need for intelligent people,people who enjoy the creative
side telling stories.
There's always going to be aneed for those people, and a
computer cannot get into thehuman aspect of it as well.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well, we hope so.
Well.
They claim AI will be able todevelop sort of consciousness.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, but it's still all human programming.
Yeah, you know, and I alwaystell people if it gets out of
control, you pull the plug, andtherefore it can't work without
power, can it?
But guess what won't replace AI, a plumber who comes into this
home to fix your toilet?
Ai will not be able to fix it.
Not yet, maybe not for a while.
(18:53):
Maybe it has a robot.
You have a robot vacuum cleaner, sure, but that gets stuck.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right.
That's why a lot of Gen Z wantto be plumbers and electricians.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Well, I think the trades are a necessary thing.
Now, will AI help you withthose things?
Sure, it helps me.
When I need to know something.
I look it up, I go oh, okaythat's how you do that.
And you don't have to askanyone anymore.
You don't have to ask anyonehow to pronounce a word anymore.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You don't have to ask them a definition of a word.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You can give AI your tax return.
I just saw a picture of thePope in his hospital bed and it
was AI-generated.
Really, yes.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Wow, why would they do it?
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Because they don't Because somebody just put it out
there oh, here's the Pope.
He's in this hospital.
Nobody's taken a video of himor a picture of him.
But again, people, we have tobe very careful.
You know we even had a unit atCBS to try to detect fake stuff.
A lot of it's kind of easy todetect and a lot of it maybe not
so easy.
You know, and you can putpeople's voice, you know, if it
(19:59):
gets it goes viral somewhere.
It could be totally false, butit's out there.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
All right, Johnny.
Well, thank you so much foryour time.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Okay, thank you Very interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I hope you will still have your job, regardless of AI
or automation.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Well, you used to have this job, now I have.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
All right, thanks, no problem.
Okay, that's a wrap for today.
If you have a comment orquestion or would like us to
cover a certain job, please letus know.
Visit our website athowmuchcanimakeinfo.
We would love to hear from youand, on your way out, don't
forget to subscribe and sharethis episode with anyone who is
(20:42):
curious about their next job.
See you next time.
today.
It's interesting.
Tiktok, all these other formatsare all very short and they
play to the young audience,who's getting a lot of their
information through that thoseplatforms hi, welcome back to
how much can I make.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm a ravozeri, a journalist who loves to know
what people do for a living andhow much they can earn.
If you ever wondered what goesbehind the scene of your TV news
broadcast, ask no more.
Today's guest is John, who is anetwork TV news editor, and
we're going to find out allabout it.
So, johnny, thank you so muchfor giving us your time.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, no problem, Marav.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I have lots of questions, so first let's start
by telling me how did you getstarted in TV?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I got started when I was a junior in college.
I wanted to work at atelevision station.
I was going to SyracuseUniversity at the Newhouse
School and I was studyingproduction and journalism.
And I wanted to work at atelevision station.
I didn't have any contacts.
My dad was a constructionworker.
I didn't know anyone in thebusiness, so I had to find a way
(01:13):
to get in and I applied forsummer relief they call it as a
technical person as their peoplewent on vacation they hire
somebody to do you knowvideotape.
Back then, two guys who hired methey were one was the chief
engineer or the co-chiefengineer and the other one was
like sort of a supervisor.
They looked at my resume.
(01:34):
They seemed to like me.
They called me back.
I was just excited, I wasthrilled.
Wow, like I could work here.
This is a TV station as a kid Iwas watching they had children
programs that I've watched whenI was a kid and of course they
were CBS affiliate and was thatupstate New York?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
or was it in New York City?
It was in Hartford, Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Okay.
So they called me back.
First of all they put me infront of a television switcher,
video switcher.
I said could you do this, do adissolve?
Yeah, I switcher video switcherand said could you do this, do
a dissolve?
Yeah, I could do it, because wehad equipment at the university
and I I knew some of it andthey liked that I knew enough
about it.
They said we'll hire you.
So I was hired for the summerbecause I had to go back to
(02:15):
school and I learned a lot,learned how to program these
cart machine, which was the waythey played commercials.
I was just fascinated, like wow, I'm doing all this stuff.
Then I remember they wanted meto help with playback of the
news and they would do like afive o'clock newscast and a six
o'clock.
The six o'clock was the mostimportant newscast.
(02:37):
It was just before the eveningnews and I was being trained on.
I remember one day there weretwo engineers there and one of
them was training me and she washaving some dispute with the
management and there was anotherolder guy there and he was
sitting there smoking acigarette and he had to feed up
on the machine.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I'm like wow so they trained you as editor or is it
no?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
no, I wasn't an editor yet.
This is just an engineer.
I had to put in the tapes forthe A block of the show, they
call it.
And I put in the tapes that hadthe stories, right, you know.
So the anchor would then sayblah, blah, blah and reporting,
and then they played a tape.
The story was self-contained,so I queued it up.
I thought this was exciting.
I heard the director directingand he played a tape and the
(03:21):
woman who was near me wassupposed to supervise me but she
was not paying attention andthere was no audio.
But I saw the meters.
They were moving back and forth.
I said this is not right.
And the director goes where'sthe audio?
Where's the audio?
I said the meters are moving.
I have the audio pots up.
So then they interrupt that, goback to the anchor again, play
(03:42):
the second tape.
No audio again.
And this is the top of thenewscast.
All hell breaks loose and Ithink it was a third tape.
There was no audio on that.
Well, apparently one of theengineers turned an audio pot
that was underneath the table.
Nobody knew that existed,except maybe he did.
He turned it down for something.
He forgot to turn it back on, Ididn't know anything.
And at the time the executiveproducer he comes in and he's
(04:06):
yelling at the top of his lungs.
He goes I have egg all over myface.
I have egg all over my face.
I'm sitting there petrified.
I'm like 19 years old, lookingat this guy yelling at the group
.
But the other two didn't payattention.
The other guy was still smokinga cigarette.
You know, the woman that wasnext to me was filing her nails
(04:28):
and I'm like I'm sitting therelooking at him paying, like I
think he's important.
They didn't think he wasimportant and did they fire?
you.
No, they didn't fire me.
My supervisor said don't worryabout it, it's just the news,
people, they're this way.
Wasn't your fault.
For fault For me.
I was going oh my God, my wholecareer is like that's it down
the toilet.
It's over.
So after that I learned to havethicker skin and deal with
(04:53):
these kinds of situations Today,you edit the news correct.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
How did you get from there to edit news?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
When I graduated, they gave me a job as broadcast
engineers, so I worked on showsand news playback and things
like that, and then eventuallythey needed people to edit in
the news department.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And that's how you got into it.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I got into editing because I thought, oh, this is
cool.
And then I'm like, oh, I canmanipulate images and this is
how it's done.
You know, I had a pretty goodbackground in television but I
had a lot of theory, you know,and I watched, of course, a lot
of classic films, even silentfilms, so I knew about the power
of editing.
And at some point, you were alsoa cameraman.
(05:37):
Eventually I became a cameraman.
The place I worked had someincredible camera editors,
producers.
Some were like all in one, veryrare back then.
A lot of the guys who shot onlyshot.
They didn't edit.
You know I like what they did.
I knew when there was a goodcameraman or a bad cameraman and
as an editor you really knowwho's good.
You know people have steadyshots, nicely framed, and they
cover you.
They do wide a close-up, maybeanother close-up.
(05:59):
They give you reversals.
So you know the good ones and Iwork with the best in the
country.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So you work in hard news.
Is it difficult?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Well, everything is a deadline and especially where I
work now, it has to get out byeither 1130 or 330.
And you have a couple of hours.
Essentially, the producer iswriting the script, pulling the
videos, but a lot of timesyou're pulling video yourself
because we just don't haveenough people.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
How do you decide what footage to put to?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Well, I mean, obviously, if we're covering a
fire, it's whatever footageeither we get from a local
station or now from Storyful,which is another group that gets
footage from people who shootthings on their phone that
happen to be there.
Wow.
And that's entirely different.
Once in a while we used to havecameramen.
(06:50):
They would go out Right If theyhappen to be at a while.
We used to have cameramen, theywould go out If they happened
to be at a fire, they would getthese great shots.
A lot of times there's no onethere to take the shots.
We just did a story recentlyand the Philadelphia airplane
crashed the medical plane thatfortunately crashed in the
Philadelphia area and there wasa ring camera that was able to
get it actually coming down andexploding.
(07:11):
Where would you get that in thepast Impossible?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Nobody would have that.
So you take footage from ringcamera iPhone.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Whatever comes your way, it depends.
There's a lot of sources now,so how do?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
you balance when there is like a gory story and
you get gory footage.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I mean because we still are broadcast television
or we're still kind ofright-gated.
Plus, you know we're sendingour material to affiliate
stations and you got to becareful.
What you show, Other peoplewill show the whole thing.
We can't we blur things out,especially gory, and there's
really no need to show that.
If you blur it out and you seerubble and you see blood, that's
(07:46):
all you need to understand thatit's not a pretty scene.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
How many stories a day do you have to edit?
It depends.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
It could be two.
One we do a lot of medicalstories.
Now we do consumer stories.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Who supervises what footage will go on?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Well, usually it's the producer, the producer and
the reporter.
Sometimes it depends on whoyou're working with.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Does the reporter sit in the?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
room with you?
No, not as much Sometimes.
If they're there, sometimesthey're out in the field and
when they're out in the fieldthey rely on you and the
producer to help them put thestory together.
They'll pick out the soundbites.
You know they interview peopleand then they like a sound bite.
We insert that.
Sometimes we have to cut itdown even more because our
stories can't be more than liketwo minutes.
Usually a minute 30.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Stories can't be more than like two minutes.
Usually a minute 30.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That always drove me crazy about news, network news,
because even if it was animportant story you'll cut it
down to two minutes?
Yeah, because they have acertain format and they have to
adapt to that format becausethey have commercials to go into
Again.
That's why the medium, again,these platforms like Instagram
what is the most popular oneright now, or one of the most
popular is TikTok, right andeverything is these small short
clips the young ones get theirnews from TikTok.
Unfortunately, my daughter getsher stuff from TikTok, I go.
(09:00):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
What was the most challenging story you had to
work on?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Oh, probably 9-11.
Yeah, there's no doubt 9-11 wasthe most difficult, but it was,
I think, our best moment asnews people, because it happened
in the city, it happened infront of most of us, right?
I knew people who were downthere.
I wasn't there initially, Iwent down later and it was
horrific.
I mean, I was at the top of thecbs building with my camera and
(09:29):
shooting the buildings comingdown.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Right, I remember.
Do you ever run into ethicaldilemmas, like there is a story
that has footage that is toographic, too sensitive?
That's really important.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
That's where a senior producer or news producer
determine they normally have.
Well, they usually take a lookat it before it goes on the air,
as we would say, and if theysee something that they don't
like or you know, there'snetwork standards.
So there's certain things youcan't do right and you can't
show, you can't recreate certainthings for news, not for
(10:03):
entertainment, right and allthat so it's a union job correct
.
Yeah, if you edit for a network, yeah usually in a union, what?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
What is the going rate for the union If somebody
breaks in at the beginning?
What is the going rate?
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Well, it depends on the level of skill you have.
I think we have something goesfrom like one year to five.
Most of the people we hirealready have four or five years
experience.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So they're at the top level.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Well, let's put it this way, you could easily make
six figures.
You can make more with overtime, but in a lot of places they
don't have as much overtime aswe did in the past.
You know you can workfreelanced.
If you're freelanced then youcan work for a variety of
different people.
So you know your income could.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
But the network doesn't have a set price for an
editor.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
No, but usually it's, let's say, over $90,000 or
$100,000.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
That's not bad.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And then overtime is time and a half correct?
Yes, yes, but that used to bethe case many years ago.
Where we get more overtime,they've cut back on that quite a
bit Really.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Oh yes, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Matter of fact, some of us get four days instead of
five.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Wow, and they pay you by the hour, or they pay you by
the week, they pay you by thehour, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Now the people who would make the most obviously
are the photographers who wenton assignment.
Cameramen make more Becausethey're out on assignment.
So they got to fly to thelocation, have to set up and
normally you get paid for travelexpense travel and your travel
expense.
Then when you're there as soonas you hit the ground.
(11:34):
If you're working, you start toget paid.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
What advice would you give somebody who wants to
break into TV news editing?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
First of all, you have to love what you're doing,
and then you have to bepersistent.
You have to really want it.
You have to make some sacrificeto get to that position,
because a lot of people you'recompeting with a lot of people.
There's a lot of talentedpeople too, and many times it's
just you're at the right placeat the right time.
(12:02):
And the best advice is tonetwork with people once you get
your first job and to get toknow different people at
different levels.
Be curious, go around, askwhat's going on, because
whatever company you're workingfor, you just know that
particular department or thatarea Right, I think you have to
motivate yourself to go outsideof that, find out what someone
(12:24):
else is doing.
You may not want to do that,you may not be interested in
another aspect, but that's thecompany, and the company does
different things and the betterthat you understand the company,
the better you find yourselfwith the right job and the right
fit for you.
But you have to be verypersistent and you can't give up
and you're going to get a lotof no's and a lot of people
won't believe in you until theysee your work Right.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
What is your typical day like?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, I go in and if I'm editing what they call the
package for, the 11.30 is ourdeadline, that's for the noon
newscast.
Or if I edit the 3.30, it's fortheir 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock
newscast.
You go in, you find out whatthe story is, find out who
you're working with usually aproducer.
You would get a scripteventually.
(13:09):
But before you get the script,they send you footage that you
should pull and have in your binIn the Avid it's called a bin.
You place your footage in thatbin and then you screen it and
you look at it.
I mean, you kind of know whatthe story is by the title of the
story and eventually theproducer has a rough draft and
they send it to you.
Then it gets approved and thenthat's when you start working on
(13:31):
it and you get the sound andthe audio that you're going to
use From the reporter.
From the reporter from theproducer and they can pull it
from different sources.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And then you begin to edit.
You lay down a skeleton, youlay the audio track, the sound
bites and the final track, andthen you know how long it is,
the length at least.
Then you start covering it withvideo.
Right, that's appropriate.
And sometimes you have graphics, sometimes there's a spelling
mistake, you have to redo it,things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Do you ever watch, or your family watch, the pieces
that you cut?
No, nobody watches anything Ido.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
No, I'm kidding.
I mean yes, they have in thepast.
Certainly, when I worked at atelevision station, they watched
it.
A lot of people watched it,because that's the only way they
watched anything.
You didn't have phones.
You didn't have iPhones.
You didn't have, you know,video on it.
You didn't have a video.
You didn't have anything likethat.
You had television Turned it on.
(14:27):
It came at a certain hour.
You either saw it or you didn'thave anything like that.
You had television turned it on, it came at a certain hour.
You either saw it or you didn't.
You missed it or you didn't,you know.
Later people had DVRs and canrecord it.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Right.
Your job is every day.
Nine hours, eight hours a day.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Right now it is.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yes, before, it used to be longer, because we just
would have more to do.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Right, so if there is a huge disaster, and do they
call you, and then can you.
You have to work many hours,many shifts.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
No, it depends.
I do the what they call thegenerics and where we would do
live shots of an important event.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Live shot is when the reporter stands.
A live shot where there's areporter.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
He's, let's say, in Atlanta or someplace, like, for
instance, jimmy Carter.
When he was released fromhospice and they thought he only
had limited time to live, theycalled me in early because they
thought he may pass away at anytime.
I was there at 4.30 in themorning for a 5 o'clock live
feed, you know the reporter, butnothing happened.
(15:25):
They didn't have anything toreport yet and he lived much
longer than they thought he wasgoing to live.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So they were pretty off base on that one, so you
just sat there and they paid youWell it's just similar to the
Pope.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
now Everybody's waiting, but who knows right?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did you prepare an obituary already for the Pope?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I'm sure they have one.
I didn't do it personally, butthey may have one.
I'm sure they have one.
They have one, because you knowwhen he does die it's going to
be so quick.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right, no time to edit.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Yeah, they don't have really time to edit, but a lot
of these stories you know wecover we used to cover a lot
more Hurricanes, tornadoes andstuff like that.
Yeah, we do if it's prettymajor Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It has to be quite.
Is that because everybody hasiPhones and there's so many
streaming services?
It's all kinds of differentthings.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
They've pared down our organization, our news
division.
We just don't have as manypeople and flying people out,
putting them in hotels andpaying them all the extra, all
the extra pay that goes with it.
They've been cutting back onthat because they find other
ways to do it.
For instance, in our case, wehave local affiliates that can
give us footage or they can.
(16:35):
We could use maybe theircameraman for a certain time,
but that becomes problematicbecause they have their own news
to cover, so it doesn't alwaysquite work out.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Where do you see AI and automation coming into news
editing?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Oh well, I've seen examples of it, but nothing
concrete where they could takeall this footage and put it
together that quickly.
I mean, I'm sure they can atsome point and will.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Oh, but not yet.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
But not yet.
But yeah, I can see that.
I can see someone just callingup AI and say you know, first of
all they could write the story.
It can eventually pull thefootage and it can edit it into
a sequence.
So it's coming.
How it's going to evolve?
It's always hard to say.
I think everybody thinks okay,that's it, but not really.
There'll be other things to do.
(17:27):
And AI still makes mistakes,somebody will have to supervise,
but it will cut a lot of jobs.
Yes, I think it will certainly,but I think the people that
will guide it are still going tobe like an editor, but
overseeing certain things, andit may be manually, themselves
going in and fixing something orsaying I don't like this and
I'm going to change it intosomething else Hard to tell.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
But you think network news is here to stay.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Hard to say.
I mean, it still has anaudience, albeit an older
audience, although you have tothink that whatever they do for
the evening news or for whateverprogram they're doing gets
clipped sent on the internet.
So I do think that technologyobviously is going to play a
role in how the news isdisseminated.
(18:07):
I do think that technologyobviously is going to play a
role in how the news isdisseminated, but you still have
to have some people decidingwhat they want to show.
The important part is thatthere's always going to be a
need for intelligent people,people who enjoy the creative
side telling stories.
There's always going to be aneed for those people, and a
computer cannot get into thehuman aspect of it as well.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well, we hope so.
Well.
They claim AI will be able todevelop sort of consciousness.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, but it's still all human programming.
Yeah, you know, and I alwaystell people if it gets out of
control, you pull the plug, andtherefore it can't work without
power, can it?
But guess what won't replace AI, a plumber who comes into this
home to fix your toilet?
Ai will not be able to fix it.
Not yet, maybe not for a while.
(18:53):
Maybe it has a robot.
You have a robot vacuum cleaner, sure, but that gets stuck.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right.
That's why a lot of Gen Z wantto be plumbers and electricians.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Well, I think the trades are a necessary thing.
Now, will AI help you withthose things?
Sure, it helps me.
When I need to know something.
I look it up, I go oh, okaythat's how you do that.
And you don't have to askanyone anymore.
You don't have to ask anyonehow to pronounce a word anymore.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You don't have to ask them a definition of a word.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You can give AI your tax return.
I just saw a picture of thePope in his hospital bed and it
was AI-generated.
Really, yes.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Wow, why would they do it?
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Because they don't Because somebody just put it out
there oh, here's the Pope.
He's in this hospital.
Nobody's taken a video of himor a picture of him.
But again, people, we have tobe very careful.
You know we even had a unit atCBS to try to detect fake stuff.
A lot of it's kind of easy todetect and a lot of it maybe not
so easy.
You know, and you can putpeople's voice, you know, if it
(19:59):
gets it goes viral somewhere.
It could be totally false, butit's out there.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
All right, Johnny.
Well, thank you so much foryour time.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Okay, thank you Very interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I hope you will still have your job, regardless of AI
or automation.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Well, you used to have this job, now I have.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
All right, thanks, no problem.
Okay, that's a wrap for today.
If you have a comment orquestion or would like us to
cover a certain job, please letus know.
Visit our website athowmuchcanimakeinfo.
We would love to hear from youand, on your way out, don't
forget to subscribe and sharethis episode with anyone who is
(20:42):
curious about their next job.
See you next time.
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