In the personality-driven streaming universe, performance and delivery have never mattered more. One Great Thing is a blogging series dedicated to celebrating great delivery and, more important, learning from it. Because the stakes have never been higher, and professionals who care about reporting the truth have to be smarter and better communicators than the people who don’t.
The pieces featured this week were showcased at the NAHJ, NABJ and AAJA conventions, in training sessions led by Ramón Escobar, Senior Vice President of Talent Recruitment and Development for CNN Worldwide.
Side-by-side-by-Ed
I live in Texas, and no one understands what matters most in my neck of the woods — or reports on it better — than CNN’s Ed Lavandera. This piece on the immigration controversy includes his interview with a woman whose mother has been detained by ICE.
One Great Thing about Ed’s delivery:
He puts himself on her level and sits next to her instead of sitting or standing across from her.
For her, I’m sure it helps the experience feel more like a conversation with someone who truly cares and less like an interrogation. For him, it makes it easier to ask the hard question in a way that earns an honest, emotional answer.
Like a lot of things related to delivery, it’s a relatively simple choice that has a potentially profound impact. And you don’t necessarily need a photographer to pull it off.
In research, viewers tell us they most value talent who truly seem to care about the people and issues they are covering. When we ask how they can tell when talent are honest and trustworthy, they talk about being willing and able to ask the tough questions, wherever they lead.
Ed's work here is inspirational – and instructive – because it is all of those things.
Related to this (because, really, there’s always more than One Great Thing):
There’s no stick mic. This, of course, allows Ed to literally stay physically open — an attribute that contributes to the sense that he is interested in real conversation and not interrogation.
Another reporter who excels at this and uses it to full advantage is CNN Español’s Gustavo Valdés. In the clip below, note how he simply gets close enough to pick up the interviewee’s voice on his own lav. The practice actually enhances the conversational quality of the interview, because it necessarily requires him to be close to his subject. To pull it off, he has to be present in a way that keeps the closeness comfortable for him and the person he’s talking to.
There are other similarities to note, including the way Valdés starts and finishes by putting himself on the same level with the kids — not unlike the way that Ed puts himself on the same level with the woman he’s interviewing. From the very top, you can see how comfortable they are relating to him.
The bottom line on all of this
Authenticity on-air is a lot more than the way a reporter or anchor talks to the camera. It’s not a delivery style. It’s a way of being, and it’s key to what makes these reporters and their work so compelling and instructive.
