Blog Posts

When my alma mater, Conestoga Senior High School, asked me to speak with students and parents about service and leadership, I figured the small gathering would be a great space to road-test some new ideas. And I decided to go for broke. I would focus my message on parents, lead with the hardest stuff (ie:…

In Friends & Neighbors, my father narrates my Iowa origin story thusly: “You were born Saturday morning, September the 4th, and Sunday at two o’clock I left for Maryland.” Mom, Chris, and I followed three weeks later. So when I say I’m from Iowa, it’s factually true. But I was raised in Maryland, Indianapolis, Illinois, Pennsylvania,…

For a couple of years now, as I’ve been shooting and editing Friends & Neighbors, I imagined the day when the entire cast of helpers would come together to watch the film, and discuss it. That day came last week when we screened Friends & Neighbors for our friends and neighbors at Theater N in…

It’s a career begun in the front seat of a Buick Riviera. As a kid growing up on the edge of Orange County, future MTV News producer, Liane Su, commandeered the stereo in her mom’s car, endlessly toggling between: pop, rock, and hip-hop, Wham, Jane’s Addiction and Wu-Tang Clan, on KISS, KROQ, and POWER 106.…

“I will never forget this one day where Nirvana was in the office…” That’s Jim Fraenkel, current EVP of Documentaries and Current at World of Wonder, one-time VP & EP of MTV News, and all-time King of VO, recalling the first days of his career. Where did it go from there? This week, Jim, takes…

Early MTV was a corporate exercise launched by Big Radio guys with Big Banking money. Still, its hallways were teeming with young artists, writers, rebels, and punks like Music and Fashion Writer and Editor turned RuPaul’s Drag Race co-star, Merle Ginsberg. “My parents were very, very normal, good, hard-working people who watched sitcoms at night,”…