C-SPAN — Washington, DC

January – May 1993

I spent five months as an intern for the C-SPAN television networks at its Washington, DC headquarters. It proved to be an incredible learning experience that greatly expanded my horizons and reinforced my desire to work in news. This was my first time to live outside of Arkansas and I loved the pace and excitement of being in a big city, which created a desire to work in large markets.

I was part of C-SPAN’s radio department, helping to produce a weekly program that aired on public radio stations nationwide. During my time, there I developed an immense respect for the network’s style of presenting politics and public policy in an unfiltered, unedited format. I also appreciated the effort to provide diverse viewpoints, including those of smaller political parties beyond Democrats and Republicans.

It was a chance encounter that brought me to C-SPAN. On May 23, 1992, I was at a parade and rally in downtown Little Rock for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s campaign for president. The momentum he was building in his campaign drew media from around the world to the state, and with me being interested in becoming a reporter, I sometimes went down to events to watch nationally known news personalities at work. While waiting for the parade to begin that day, I noticed a C-SPAN camera crew standing around. I had been watching the network for quite a while by that point and decided to say hello and ask when the parade would be broadcast. I approached the friendliest looking of the three who was carrying a boom mic and sound equipment.

I didn’t know it at the time, but he was Steve Scully, who was a political editor and host on C-SPAN. We talked a few minutes and at some point I mentioned that I was studying broadcasting in college. He asked what I was particularly interesting in doing and when I said news, he surprised me by saying that C-SPAN had a good internship program. I knew I eventually wanted to take part in some kind of internship, but hadn’t really given it much thought. I told Steve it sounded interesting, so he gave me a business card and told me to give him a call. I did a few days later and he put me in touch with the person who coordinated internships at C-SPAN.

I told the contact that I was interested in being part of the programming department because I wanted to learn more about television. I sent a letter and resume, but didn’t get a response for several months. I also called and left voicemail messages, but still didn’t hear back. It wasn’t until that November, after assuming C-SPAN wasn’t interested, that the person called and left a message on my answering machine asking if — because of my radio experience — I would be interested in an internship with their radio department. I didn’t know C-SPAN had a radio department and was disappointed that I wouldn’t be learning more about television, but was pleased to be offered the opportunity. I called back to confirm my interest and started the process of getting it approved by my university.

Most internships were set up much more in advance and with a lot more involvement from the faculty at Arkansas State University. But Dr. Greg Pitts, the broadcast professor in charge of internships, said he was impressed that I had set this up entirely on my own and went out of his way to get it approved. I would have done the internship even without the school’s approval, but one of C-SPAN’s requirements was that students had to get class credit.

One challenge was that it was an unpaid internship. Not paying student interns was a lot more common at the time and presented quite a challenge to stay in an expensive place like Washington. I, like most college students, had no savings, but my parents — realizing what an incredible opportunity this was — gave me a credit card to charge my expenses, which would be quite a chore to pay off later. I also saved as much as I could in my final months in Jonesboro.

I began my 18-hour drive to Washington on a late Monday afternoon in January 1993. It was then that I started to get nervous, realizing that I was traveling far from home for the first time to a place where I knew nobody. After driving all night, including a few brief naps beside tractor-trailers in rest areas, I pulled into Washington at about 11:30 the next morning and started looking for the place I would be staying.

C-SPAN had referred me to a company that finds apartments for interns. I was staying at an apartment building called The Woodner at 3636 16th Street NW, along Rock Creek Park. I had been set up with a roommate named Chris Carlson who was from Minnesota and spending a month interning for Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad. We had talked on the phone a month before and based on that conversation figured we would be able to get along together. He turned out to be a great guy and we had a blast that month as two people from different parts of the country experiencing Washington for the first time. He also had several friends from his college who were there, so I had an instant group of people to hang out with.

My first day at C-SPAN was Wednesday, January 13, the day after arriving. Just finding my way to the network’s building near the Capitol was an adventure. I rode a subway for the first time that morning, joining the crush of rush hour passengers on the Metro, transferring trains once to get to Union Station. Then I had to wander around a little bit to find my way to 400 North Capitol Street, where C-SPAN’s offices were located on the sixth floor.

I was one of about a dozen interns at the network that spring, although I rarely saw the others because we were in different departments. Shortly after starting, we all met for an orientation with Brian Lamb, the CEO, chairman and founder of C-SPAN. He was a familiar face to me because he was one of the most frequent program hosts. I developed great respect for him, not only because of his intelligence and ability to run the place, but also because of the effort he took in making sure all of us understood the mission of C-SPAN, how it operated and how it was funded. He was always happy to answer any questions and would often wander down the halls, talking to everyone along the way. He seemed to have a hand in everything that happened at the network. Brian Lamb started C-SPAN in 1979, airing live coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives. As a nonprofit organization, it was funded by the cable industry as a public service. C-SPAN 2 was launched in 1986 when the Senate began allowing live coverage of its proceedings.

The department I interned with was responsible for producing a weekly, hour-long public radio program called C-SPAN’s Weekly Radio Journal. Fed to stations on late Friday afternoons, it was meant to run on weekends as a look back at the past week in national politics. The show also tried to follow the C-SPAN format of long-form programming by using long segments of audio for each topic, with the hosts only giving enough information to set up the audio without offering any kind of analysis or opinion.

I was part of a small department comprised of two people: Audio Networks Manger Beth Talisman and Producer Tom Patton. Beth had been with the network several years by that time, working in a number of different positions. Tom had most recently worked for Voice Of America and had been with C-SPAN a year or two by that point. Most days, I worked beside Tom as we selected cuts for each story and did the technical work of getting the show ready for production, which typically meant recording and chopping reel-to-reel tape. We also had technical assistance on Thursdays and Fridays from engineer Chris Montgomery.

On most Mondays, Tom, Beth and I would meet with company Vice-President Susan Swain to look at what events C-SPAN was planning to cover that week and the guests who were scheduled for network programs. We would then determine which of these would be of interest for the radio program and make a rough layout of the issues and stories to be addressed.

The first few days of each week would then be spent gathering audio. We often recorded hearings and events as they were being aired live, or would get the videotapes after the broadcasts. We would make notes of interesting sections and eventually determine what was the strongest segment for the program.

By each Wednesday, Tom would begin writing the script for the show, which would be revised after being read by Beth and Susan. On Thursday afternoons, with the assistance of Chris, Beth and Tom would begin recording their host segments and the hour-long program would slowly come together.

Final production, mixing the narration with the segments of the program, was usually started on late Friday mornings. When the program was complete, dubs were made, with one reel set out for a bicycle courier to pick up and bring to the public radio uplink facility on M Street where it would be fed to stations via satellite at 5 p.m. Some stations carried that feed live, but most taped it for later broadcast over the weekend. Even though the program was uplinked by NPR’s distribution system , it was not an NPR program. C-SPAN paid to use the uplink services since most stations that carried the show were public stations. However there were a handful of commercial stations that also aired it.

This was the routine I went through every week for five months. It always started off kind of slow and picked up, sometimes moving to a frantic pace toward the end of the week as we worked to get everything together. In particular, if something we wanted to include was happening on a Friday, it would push production to the last minute.

Formatically, the program was typical of an hour-long public radio show, with a one minute billboard at the beginning. There was then a five minute cutaway for network news, which most stations took. However, for those that didn’t, that space was filled on the program with a montage of people giving opinions about a major issue of the week, with the material coming from callers to the network’s call-in shows. It was often my duty to put the montage together each week, which had to be whittled down to exactly five minutes. After a brief pause at the end of the segment, the main part of the program began. There would be a couple of breaks in the program, one of which included a plug for C-SPAN and the programming the television channels offered. At the end of the program were production credits, which included me for each episode I worked on.

It was a fascinating and exciting time to be in Washington as President Bill Clinton took office a week after I arrived. I walked over to the inauguration, but couldn’t get anywhere close enough to see the ceremony. I didn’t think beforehand about trying to use any Arkansas connections to get me in to see the inauguration.

AUDIO: C-SPAN’s Weekly Radio Journal on Jan. 22, 1993, the end of my first full week with the network. I get a “production assistance” credit at the end of the show.

I was naive about politics at that moment and thought a younger president from a different generation would bring a new era to our nation. Before my internship, my minor in college had been political science, but spending five months in Washington and being surrounded by politics left me rather disillusioned. A good part of it was the partisan tone things took in Washington immediately after Clinton was elected. Each week while working at my internship I was hearing the nasty tone of confirmation hearings for Clinton’s cabinet appointments. His opponents worked hard to make him as divisive and controversial as possible, with one of the first issues he had to confront being homosexuals serving in the military. But I also saw a degree of arrogance from the Clinton administration.

The internship for my roommate Chris was only a month long, so in February I moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where the same roommate matching service had set me up with three people who were interning in Washington’s Public Defender Service. Alexandria was much different than living in the district because I could get around easier by car. There were actually parking lots in front of places. But I still took the Metro to and from C-SPAN most days and really grew to appreciate having a good mass transit system. The train ride from Alexandria was a bit longer, about 45 minutes on most days, but I would buy a copy of the Washington Post outside the Metro station and devour that as I’d ride in. Also, because I would board at what was then the starting place for the Blue Line, I could secure a seat to sit in. Most times when I was boarding in the middle of the district during rush hours, all the seats would be taken and I’d have to stand.

I really enjoyed the high caliber of news I was reading in daily and weekly newspapers there, hearing on commercial news and public radio stations, and seeing on TV. Also, it was my first time to be in a top 10 radio market and, having been reading industry trade papers for a few years by then, was constantly scanning the dial to hear what the different stations were doing. In particular, I immediately became a huge fan of WHFS-FM 99.1, a legendary progressive and alternative rock station that served both Washington and Baltimore. Having hosted an alternative rock show on community radio station KABF in Little Rock, I was excited to hear a 24 hour commercial station playing that same kind of music. I also recorded some of WHFS. Below is audio from an old cassette that I recorded which includes a shift-change between two DJs which were often fun because of the interaction they would have.

AUDIO: An aircheck (scoped) of WHFS-FM 99.1 from Feb. 9, 1993, beginning about 10 p.m.

I even attended WHFS’s 25th birthday bash concert on April 29, 1993 in Baltimore, featuring the Ramones and Bob Geldof. That’s the program from the show, which I saved all these years. I was sad to read that 12 years later in 2005, its owner changed the format, killing the station.

I also listened a lot to WJFK-FM 106.7 and for the first time heard the much-talked about Howard Stern who by this time had been syndicated. I didn’t become much of a fan, but still listened quite a bit just because he was so much more brash than what I had always heard on the radio. I enjoyed hearing his interviews, but didn’t really care for all his stuff with strippers or when he was just bitching about stuff. Doug “The Greaseman” Tracht’s show was on in the early evenings and I really liked his long, rambling stories and bits.

A month or so into my internship at C-SPAN I sent a letter to my buddy Doug Clifford who had given me my first radio position when he was program director at KABF in Little Rock. By this time, to be near his young daughter, he had moved to the central Florida town of Ocala and was hosting the morning show on WOCA-AM 1370, a news and talk station. He was intrigued that I was in Washington and asked if I wanted to join him on the air once a week to discuss what was happening in national politics.

For the next few months I would join Doug, usually on Friday mornings as WOCA’s Washington correspondent, talking for a few minutes about the top political story of the day. I would also join him on the mornings after important events or speeches. I tried to localize national stories, sometimes by including details like how Senators and Representatives from Doug’s area in Florida had voted on specific legislation. The reports certainly weren’t incredibly exciting, but helped me begin getting used to ad-libbing on the air about news stories, as I would eventually do regularly as a reporter.

AUDIO: Talking with Doug Clifford on WOCA, April 23, 1993, about the fallout from the fiery end to a standoff with a cult group in Waco, Texas and President Clinton’s economic battles with Congress.

I wasn’t being paid anything for my reports on WOCA, but was happy to help Doug and figured it would give me a little more real news experience to put on my resume or include in a demo tape. Indeed the news director at my next employer, which was at a news station in Little Rock, took note that I had done this while in Washington. Years later I would again join Doug on the air periodically while covering big stories in the Miami, Florida area while he was working on another station, WSKY-FM 97.3 in Gainesville, Florida. I also always tried to stop off and see Doug whenever I’d be driving through Gainesville. He was a good friend and I was glad to see he was still working in radio.

C-SPAN really went out of its way to make the internships rewarding for us. Toward the end of each semester Brian Lamb would invite interns to appear with him live on the morning call-in show he hosted. I was fortunate that one of the two guests that day was someone I was familiar with from Arkansas. Senator David Pryor had served as Arkansas Governor during the 1970’s and was at that time the state’s junior U.S. Senator. You can see about three minutes from that show on the video.

The first question I asked was about his health. He had undergone triple by-pass surgery the year before and I was curious how he was doing and whether the health problems had affected his plans for the future. I was stunned to learn from my parents the next day that his response generated a story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. With the headline, “Heart may not be in it for the next race,” the report detailed how Senator Pryor, appearing on C-SPAN, said this might be his final term. It was apparently his first public comments about that and indeed at the end of that term he would retire, as his son Mark Pryor began his political career.

As a final project for my internship, I was to produce an undated “evergreen” edition of C-SPAN’s Weekly Radio Journal. It would serve as a backup episode for radio stations to have if they missed recording the satellite feed of the program or if for some reason, our program didn’t make it over to the uplink facility in time.

As I mentioned earlier, the reel with the final version of the program was picked up by a bicycle courier, which was thought to be an efficient way to get the program quickly the few miles across town at that hour. But there were a handful of times that it took longer than expected and nervous jokes would begin about what if the courier got struck by a car. It never happened, but obviously it was possible. Eventually, at least during my five months there, the tape was always delivered in time, but there were a few instances that it was closer than it should have been. Young people today have a hard time even fathoming a time when you had to get a physical tape to a place with a satellite uplink to get a program on the air. You couldn’t just upload a digital file from a computer. That was years away from being possible at that time.

Producing an undated edition of a week in review show was a challenge, but we decided to focus largely on profiles that C-SPAN had done on interesting figures in Washington. I pulled segments of interviews, including Shirley Chisholm, who was the first African-American woman elected to Congress in 1968 and four years later made a bid for president. An interview with then-Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist offered an interesting perspective on the nation’s high court. The newscast cutaway segment also featured a look at how a bill becomes a law.

I’m not sure if the program ever made it on the air anywhere, but it was standard practice that every radio program have a backup that stations could have ready to air if needed. If you listen to the show below, note that in the credits at the end I get top production credit since it was largely my project.

With my five-month internship winding down, the last thing I did with C-SPAN was to help represent the radio program at the annual Public Radio Conference being held in Washington that May. We had a booth, alongside other program producers, handing out brochures and demo tapes of C-SPAN’s Weekly Radio Journal to people from radio stations across the country. It was interesting seeing the process of trying to pick up as many affiliates as possible. I had already helped a little by, shortly after starting at C-SPAN, getting the program added to KASU, my school station at Arkansas State University. I also sat in on several discussion sessions at the conference and met a lot of interesting people, including Ben Fry who I later worked for twice at KUAR in Little Rock.

I was sad when the internship finally came to an end. I had gotten to know so many people at C-SPAN and had especially come to love big city life in the northeast. I vowed that I would soon return. In fact, in my final months I had gotten a part-time job working as a waiter at a Bennigan’s restaurant near my apartment in Alexandria. I was thinking of not even returning home, but staying, doing whatever I had to do to be near Washington. I had sent tapes and resumes to some of the radio stations I was listening to and even talked with a few of the program directors, but they didn’t express any interest. I was just happy the ones who would at least take my calls.

So at the end of the internship, I decided to go back to Arkansas and finish my degree, with the plan of eventually returning to Washington. There was one change however. After getting a grade of A for the internship, I transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for the fall semester. I had grown restless in Jonesboro, a town of about 50,000 people where ASU was located. After living in Washington, I just couldn’t take going back to northeast Arkansas.

My experience with C-SPAN was very productive and helped to impress the news director of KARN in Little Rock, leading to my first real news job. C-SPAN proved to be an invaluable learning experience and I am very grateful to the network and particularly to Beth Talisman and Tom Patton for their patience and all they taught me. I also have utmost respect for Brian Lamb and legions of people who have been there for so long and helped build C-SPAN into one of the most respected entities when it comes to the coverage of U.S. politics.

NEXT: KARN – Little Rock, AR