Kathy Slobogin: The Gatekeeper
Kathy Slobogin has worked in TV news and documentary for more than three decades, including stints as a producer at ABC and CBS, 10 years as a CNN correspondent and 10 years as the managing editor of CNN’s investigative and documentary unit. In that time, she has won four Emmy Awards, a Dupont and two Peabody Awards, among many others, and watched the industry transform. Now she's America Tonight's senior commissioning producer, which means no long-form piece goes to air without her magic touch. Here she talks about changing minds through television, and never making a mistake.
What do you do at America Tonight?
My title is not so informative. I guess I’m like a managing editor with particular responsibility for long-form pieces. A sounding board for producers when they go to the field, script approvals, reviewing edits. Basically soup-to-nuts on the long-form pieces.
You’ve worked for long stretches at ABC News, CBS News and CNN. What were the different styles of the networks?
The networks have all had different environments, as have the eras of television. At ABC, documentaries weren’t meant to be ratings hits; they were meant to bring the network prestige. That was the golden era. There was a lot of money, and we were just supposed to do great journalism and earn awards… And we’d have six to nine months to do a single documentary. Now, it’s: "Can you get it done in a month?"
But the technology has made a lot of things more flexible, more democratic. And there’s an intimacy to being able to shoot things with a smaller camera. Before… It was like a small city arriving when ABC came to town.
Has the style, the content, of TV news changed?
When I started there was a "Voice of God" approach, particularly for documentaries. Long-form television journalism now is so much more character-based -- "take me to a world I haven’t been to before, take me inside someone’s world,” where the correspondent gets out of the way of the story. And I think the backpack journalism thing is a great development, if not taken to extremes. I don’t like it when correspondents feel they need to be in every frame. But this more casual, “Come along with me as I tell you a story" is a great development.
From CNN's three-part 2007 documentary "God's Warriors" about the rise of religious fundamentalism. Slobogin was the managing editor of the controversial film, which involved reporting on three continents, and won a Dupont-Columbia Award.
Why did you stop working as a correspondent?
It was partly situational. My last stint as a correspondent happened on 9/11, and CNN was moving to be all about terrorism and the war in Iraq. And I was more domestic, and there just wasn’t going to be as much money for that. Then, a job opened up to the be the managing editor of their documentary unit, and I thought, "That’s going home. That's what I love.”
Why did you come Al Jazeera America?
CNN shut down its documentary unit, so that was the end of that. For a year, I freelanced, and I did a couple PBS documentaries during that year. Then, [Al Jazeera America] came looking for me, and it just sounded so great. The mission -- to do serious, thoughtful, long-form journalism on a regular basis with a great group of people -- that’s a rarity. I thought that opportunity would never happen again.
What kind of stories would you like to see more of at America Tonight?
I’d love us to do more investigative stuff, hopefully we can get to a point where we have more of a staff… and the time to make investigative stories come alive as films, with narratives and fleshed out stories. [Investigative journalism] is very time-consuming, and you can have a lot of "dry holes" to work through. A daily news show like ours doesn’t have time for a lot of dry holes. I hope that’s something that we can grow into.
You were a woman in this industry when it was very male-dominated. What was that experience like?
[As a clerk] at The New York Times, I felt it was definitely tougher being a woman. All the people who could mentor you were men, and those relationships can be fraught. I found it much easier in TV. I never felt held back being a woman. Maybe I was just blind to what was going on. I felt as if the things that I would bring to storytelling, particularly my experience being a mother, gave me a leg up on some of the competition.
Has the shifting gender ratio made a difference?
I think the workplace has become more hospitable for women. We’re at least 50 percent of the staff here, if not more. When I started out at The New York Times, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. There was like this secret code that the men seemed to have, that we didn’t have. I don’t feel like there’s a secret code anymore.
What’s a big mistake you’ve made on a story?
I’ve never had to do a correction. I was sued once though. But I was in the right and the suit against me was dropped... The lawyer on the case said he’d never seen such a well-reported story in his life. But you don’t want to get sued, it’s very time-consuming...
That’s one of the advantages of being long-form; I’ve always had rigorous fact-checking processes… Once I had a story I supervised as managing editor where we made a mistake, and unfortunately it had to do with Israel, so the pro-Israel media watchdog groups were all over us... We got pilloried by CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
Why do you prefer long-form to daily news?
For two years, when I became the education and family reporter for CNN, I had to do so-called daily news, and they asked me to do a five-minute cover story once a week. For me, I approached it like a mini-documentary of original reporting once a week, and I was running all the time. I was absolutely frantic. I went out to cover the Oklahoma City bombing, and filed a story a day, and nearly killed myself. I guess I just look at things in a complicated way. I’m looking for the perfect character, not just any character.
I remember [covering the Oklahoma City bombing] staying up all night to find the perfect sound bite, and my colleagues were slapping stuff together in a couple hours… There is an adrenaline rush to doing the daily stuff, but because I can’t relax my standards, it’s hard for me.
Do you have any TV news pet peeves?
I hate sound bites that are there for heat, not light. Just two people arguing together. I always thought it would be terrific on shows like "Crossfire" or any show in a debate format, if only one of them would turn to the other and say, “Wow, that’s a great point. I never thought about it that way before.” Something that really moves the conversation forward.
Do you think TV news really has the power to progress a conversation, and change people’s minds?
I do. I did a series of stories on poverty in the inner-city, and I focused on programs that had really made a difference in solving intractable problems. You have no idea how many colleagues came up to me afterwards, saying they wanted to do something. You can touch people. Frankly it has to do with our craft, with casting stories well, with finding that telling detail, that moving detail that sticks with you. It has to do with making memorable journalism.
And then there are investigative pieces, which can cause paradigm shifts in how people see the world... I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think we made a difference. I probably sound naive.
What advice would you give to a young person entering the industry now?
Know how to do everything. There are no more silos in this business. Just, you know, go for the truth, not the conventional wisdom. And never forget your audience. Always take the audience by the hand and tell them the story. And have a life, always have a life. Because I’ve seen people who sacrifice their personal life for this business.
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