Linda Corradina: The Godmother

For a generation of viewers, iconic shows like The Week In Rock, The Big Picture, and House of Style are part of the firmament: always there, always on, and always great.

But it wasn’t always so.

“There was no Internet,” Linda Corradina laughs of her early days at MTV News. “There was no Snapchat. We were speaking to young people in a way that no one else was speaking to them.”

This week, the woman one-time head honcho Doug Herzog calls “The Godmother of MTV News” dishes on becoming the channel’s first news producer, inventing the department’s universally-recognized newscube and graphics, and building the newsroom alongside her “three best hires” Dave Sirulnick, Lauren Lazin, and Kurt Loder.

“I hired the absolute greatest people to do their jobs,” she says. “And then I got out of the way.”

From the Rock & Wrestling and Hall & Oates, to R.E.M., The Replacements, and David Bowie, shots with Springsteen, and the Moscow Music & Peace Festival, this is origin story stuff from a true original. 

“Music can change your life,” she says. “And it can change the world.”

Listen to You Hear It First: An Unofficial & Uncensored History of MTV News on Apple or Spotify now.