Richard D. Yoakam
Indiana University
1997 Interview, Tape 2
(full interview was apparently on five separate tapes. We haven’t found Tape 1.)
00:08 starts w/ Yoakam laughing with someone off camera
00:30 great Yoakam laugh
Q summers in New York/Washington
00:54 introducing President John F. Kennedy on NBC radio network
01:30 JFK was on crutches and Yoakam had been on crutches since childhood polio
-At White House interview, they bonded over how much they hated crutches
2:10 Yoakam introducing JFK on radio from the White House
Sander Vanocur helped Yoakam with possibility of having to fill time after speech
-JFK had just met w/ Khruschev
03:50 RY getting his pencil sharpened at White House
04:30 JFK was first TV president. Did a great job
Q
05:20 re-tells JFK-Yoakam dialogue about how much they hated crutches
Q Talk about some of your more successful graduates from IU
06:30 Dick Enberg -tells story of IU Sports Network
07:36 worked with IU officials on taking over broadcasts. They were worried about quality
08:08 ****Wanna be announcers all showed up…including Dick Enberg & Phil Jones
-RY got IU to have football players wear numbers at a Saturday practice so students could do play by play. 10th St. Stadium dilapidated press conference
09:45 Who wants to go first?? Enberg went first and five guys immediately left
-Enberg had experience from Central Michigan U.
-Phil Jones did a great job as well. 2 man front
` -Made RY look really smart
11:10 Gordon Stevens -long career in Miami, FL
Sam Taylor from Linton, IN -WCCO Minneapolis reporter
11:56 Jane Pauley …her only Journalism class was photography with Will Counts
-RY didn’t work with Jane Pauley until she was at WISH-TV in Indy
-she bounced ideas off him and they talked about her career
-Pauley was a natural reporter, how to ask good questions
12:52 -JPauley in middle of corn field during a rainy season.. asking just the right questions
13:50 John Gutowsky -voice of Minnesota Twins
Ernie Nims from Gary
14:30 Enberg said he learned to have a lot of info ready if the live event got boring…. At his first Little 500, Enberg ran out of material very quickly
15:30 Why I like e-mail. Can stay in touch now with grads
-Just got a long email from Mike Conway, News Director in Erie. He’s a funny writer
15:50 The importance of writing
-just teach writing classes all four year
16:24 *****great bite about communicating.. words, pictures, sounds
17:00 ***How hard it is to be an anchor, communicating serious information clearly
17:30 ***TV news is unique in that manner
17:55 knowing how ot put it all together is most important part of TV
18:16 new technology on the way.. Internet
19:10 Current students will be the ones to figure it out
19:45 I see a decline in quality of writing…pictures have become so important that we sometimes overlook the writing and it can be a mess
21:20 on the fence about if it was better in the past
21:50 Walter Cronkite says the writing has gone downhill since his generation. DY isn’t sure about that. Go back and read/listen to some of those correspondents
22:57 you don’t want audience asking “What was that story about?”
Q- opinion of news at local and national level
23:36 Just so much more of it. Look at NBC News. News Prez runs network news div, runs MSNBC, runs CNBC, and runs a website, and runs a newscast on the internet
-most of that wasn’t there in 1972 when RY was there
24:40 What’s on the air these days? We don’t know because of so many options
No idea how audience is using all this information
25:30 great for our students because all of these outlets need smart people, good writers
-best opportunities in broadcast journalism ever
26:02 ***Too much “live” content these days. We can back off all the live shots
-a lot of inappropriate use of live technology
27:55 ***some local stations are better than the networks
-innovation has come from local stations
-networks were too cautious and didn’t experiment
29:00 end of tape