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From 1988 to 2003, Nina Justman was the MTV News’ first line of defense and offense.  As Assignment Editor, she pitched reps for artist access, and took the heat when they didn’t like the story. She talked artists onto the red carpet, and begged them off. “Nobody did a red carpet like we did,” she…

Interviewing Doug Herzog about MTV News is a little like talking with The Pope about the Pieta; it’s just a tiny sliver of his massive scope. At one point in his four decades of broadcasting innovation, Doug oversaw MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, TVLand, Spike and Logo – in addition to previous stints at Fox and…

Longtime MTV News Editorial Director Michael Shore’s penned his first scripts for original VJs JJ Jackson and Martha Quinn in the early eighties, his last for correspondents Sway Calloway and SuChin Pak in the early aughts. This week on “You Hear It First,” Michael regales with stories about the days Kurt Cobain died and Courtney Love crashed…

If you caught a ten-to-the-hour-every-hour MTV News brief with Kurt Loder or John Norris sometime around the turn of Millennium, chances are it was written by Elon Johnson. These days, Elon leads development for Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta. But in 1999, Elon was one of a handful of MTV News Writers tasked with scripting…

“What’s it feel like to crack open your sternum,” Neighborhood Archivist, Friend and Q&A Moderator, Tim Lybarger asked. “And share the intimate details of your life on a movie screen?” Just a few years years ago, I didn’t know that 70% of Americans experience trauma in their lifetime, or that it has a major impact on one’s physiology…

For a particular brand of New Jersey teenager who loved The Backstreet Boys and dreamt of catching a fleeting glimpse of the quartet waving from MTV’s Times Square Studios, there may be no greater Cinderella Story than Christina Garibaldi’s. “I was a boy bander,” she says. “My dream was to be in Times Square with…