Posts by Benjamin

As a writer, reporter and producer for “The Week in Rock” and a wide range of documentaries including “Gangsta Rap: An MTV News Special Report,” Abbie Kearse sat down with some of rock and hip-hop’s biggest legends and tackled some of the most important social issues of the day. In addition to covering monster rock acts…

Few MTV News staffers had a run like Michael Alex. For sixteen years of MTV News’ heyday, Michael did it all, from producing The Week in Rock and Choose or Loose, to spearheading the launch of MTV News Dot Com, and interviewing all of the greats from The Ramones to The Replacements, Mick Jagger to…

America is suffering a mental health crisis. In 2021, reports of anxiety rose 3x. 53% of US adults and 68% of African Americans said that the pandemic had negatively affected their mental health. Gun violence and hate crimes are up. Adolescent suicide rates have quadrupled. 60% of Americans experience at least one adverse childhood experience.…

In two decades at MTV News, Correspondent John Norris interviewed everyone from Tupac to Britney Spears, Janet to Elton, Senator John McCain to Vice President Al Gore. He began as an intern, seized the anchor desk in 1992, and went on to quarterback MTV’s “Choose or Lose” election coverage and lead pro-social programming on drug…

When Luke Russert lost his father, legendary journalist, Tim Russert, in 2008, the then 22-year-old girded himself against grief, eulogized him in front of presidents and politicos, and received condolences and handshakes with a rigid jaw. Months later, he took a once-in-a-lifetime offer to join NBC News. Eight years into his tenure on Capitol Hill,…

In sharing her story, Headlines Network Founder Hannah Storm empowers us all to share ours. “If I go into a therapy session, and they’re like, ‘Let’s talk about x,’” she says, “I’m like, ‘And let’s talk about all the other letters in the alphabet.’” The host of the Behind The Headlines podcast, and outspoken mental health…

“The most challenging parts of the music and entertainment industries aren’t the music and the entertainment,” CoMuse CEO LJ Malberg says. “The most challenging parts are the relationships that we have with each other and ourselves.” LJ knows. In her two decades of industry experience straddling creativity and capitalism, she earned her stripes onstage as…

“Every interaction is going to leave a mark,” she said. “What do I want it to be?” Delaware’s First Lady, Tracey Quillen Carney, squinted at me across the stage. I clung to a mic in my left hand, my well-worn clipboard in my right, juggling them alongside my list of questions for a pair of well-rehearsed experts, a…

John Faye is emotionally hungover. The release party for his new memoir, “The Yin & Yang of Everything,” wrapped only a few hours earlier, and he’s still making sense of the half-reading, half-rock show featuring a cast of bandmates, songs and stories spanning three decades. “I have this tendency to lean into these ideas and…

This week, the Surgeon General outlined steps to counter the “epidemic of loneliness and isolation has fueled other problems that are killing us and threaten to rip our country apart.” This follows last fall’s urgent message re: wellness in the workplace, and last spring’s urgent message re: mental health in adolescents. It isn’t hyperbole to…