“…I just report it.”

Lexicon. Oft-quoted by myself, originally picked up by me from Gordon Robison.

I’m racking my brain for an example of how I use it. Usually goes like this:

“This is really terrible.”
”Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
”I don’t make the news, I just report it.”

He was the news director at KSPC FM, the college radio station at Pomona College while we were both there. This is a good interview of him, from 2005. He’s been with Fox, he’s been with ABC. Lived in Cairo, Amman, Baghdad. Been a Professor. Linked-In tells me he’s an Executive Producer for Al Jazeera Media Network these days.

Back in 1997, I was in Atlanta for COMDEX, working for Toshiba, and staying at the Omni Hotel. I called up Gordon, asking if we could get together, and catch up. He was working for CNN International at the time (the flavor of CNN that the world outside the US sees), and offered to take me around the CNN facility.

My little journalist wannabe heart went pitter-pat. “I guess I could do that. If it’s easier for you,” I said, in my best poker voice.

He shows me around the place. Shows me the giant poster of CNN’s ratings, with the huge spike during Gulf War I. Walks me through a set with a wraparound desk and two empty chairs, clearly a broadcast set. Points to a glassed-in passageway, one story up from where we are:
“See that?”
”Yeah.”
”That’s where the regular tour goes.”

We make our way to what’s obviously a live production control room. All the video feeds queued up. A wall of monitors, each with something different.

“Hey, Gordon! New hire?”

I wish.

We wind things down. In retrospect, I realize we didn’t say much to each other about ourselves, and he was showing off a little to someone who knew him when… But I didn’t mind, at all.

I walked back to my hotel. Which was just across an atrium.

But it might have been across a world.

(EDITED TO ADD: Wikipedia ascribes the phrase to Mark Russell. But A) They quote him as saying it’s an “old newsman’s adage,” and B) they include the least encyclopedic phrase in the world, the dreaded, “citation needed.”)