I don't know if it's train wreck watching or pity watching or thank God I'm not out in the elements watching or Jess Anderson in a wet t shirt washing. I don't know, but I know that it's successful.
It's successful.
Okay, Hi, I'm Alison Camarata and you may know me from CNN, but you're about to hear my deepest secrets.
Hi, everybody, thanks for joining me. Welcome to Off the Beat with Me your host Brian Baumgartner. We have a breaking news story today out of Westport, Connecticut. Renowned journalist and television personality, Allison Camarata is making waves once again, this time as a guest on this podcast. Yes, Alison is a stalwart figure in the world of broadcastournalism, a reporter who has seen pretty much everything. Her career has
spanned multiple decades and ideologies. She worked for many years at Fox News and is now an anchor with CNN, not to mention a stint at America's most wanted and local channels in Boston and Washington, d C. But no matter where she's reporting from or for whom, she's always fair and reasoned. She has a real journalistic integrity and ethics,
and that's exactly what we need in the world of news. Today, we're going to talk about how she bridged the gap, how she copes with the twenty four hour news cycle, and her early days in the downtown New York punk scene. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alison. You can catch her on the Whole Story with Anderson Cooper these days, and you can also learn all about her fascinating life in her new book, Combat Life of a Jersey Girls Search for Home. Now over to you, Allison.
Bubble and Squeak. I love it, Bubble and Squeakna Bubble and Squeak could get every mo lift over from the nub.
Hi Allison, Hey, Brian, what's up. How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
It's such an honor to be on with you. A national hero.
Oh oh please, I'm serious. No, I'm not a head of state. I'm not I'm not an ambassador or a congressman or a president or a senator.
Uh.
But it's very very I've been a fan of your work for a long time and it's so nice nice to talk to you. Well like yours. Where are you?
I'm in my home in Westport, Connecticut.
Oh, Connecticut, Fancy, Martin Fancy, that's where that's where the well, I'm on the other coast, so, but that's where the New York fancy people live. I want to launch into your career and your life. But it feels like I have to say that we have an official I guess raised for the president coming up this year. Biden and Trump? Are you so excited about this?
Beyond beyond?
I mean, do you know who's excited about this? Therapists, That's who's excited about this. The amount of money that they'll make over the next couple of years, So psychiatrists and psychologists very excited.
Oh my god, when you said the last next couple of years, that's a horrible, horrible thought. I mean, we have but we have six months until election day ish.
And it does feel as though there'll be some like act of God or like force majure as they say, that will keep it from happening.
I mean that's just election.
Yeah, oh God, feels like it, maybe like aliens will invade. It's just we don't have the imagination to actually I think imagine election day as is.
Yeah, well, it'll be interesting. I don't know if it'll be fun. I was I was listening to some sports radio yesterday who said, this is the place that you can come and not not hear about all of that, But then you would be out of a job. I guess, So, I mean, we gotta we gotta watch some.
Sort well, I mean, I guess I feel like, you know, one of the things that I really really bums me out is that there's a lot of news, and I think that we've gotten so heavy on political news and certainly partisan news, that there's all sorts of other human story worries to be told. And I'm grateful when I get assignments to tell those other stories, because it's only in the past, I don't know any more, fifteen years that you know, politics has become the sports of our era.
But there used to be a time when polite society didn't talk politics, and I want to get back to that, and I'd like to get back to just human interest, other important stories to tell.
Well, I know you've been doing a lot more of that recently, and I want to talk about that. But yes, that was the rule, right, no politics, religion at the dinner table, the rule. Yeah, I remember that. My grandmother taught me that you're now in lovely Connecticut. You grew up in the Jersey Shore there, Shrewsbury, New Jersey. What were you interested in as a youngster there in the Jersey Shore.
I was interested in the beach, of course, because it's the Jersey Shore. I was an only child raised by, you know, born to two intellectuals. So there were books and a lot of music around my house when I was growing up, and I would say that music is the theme that kind of bond did my parents and me together, as well as a lot of people in Monmouth County, New Jersey, which are the short towns. Music was a big motif through our young lives. There were
a lot. I don't exactly know what the special sauce was of Mommoth County and why music was so important. If it's because we were forty miles away from New York City and we would go in and hear live music. But there were just a lot of garage bands. My high school had a ton of bands. Bruce Springsteen is obviously from there, but I mean Bruce is just a product.
He wasn't the reason we were into music. He's just another example of how Monmouth County breeds musicians, right, and so that was a big theme through my life and continues to be like music was a very powerful influence.
Were your parents at interests in their in their musical choices or is this I mean you say intellectuals and so I think like they've got Beethoven rocking on the stereo.
Well, they knew a lot about most Art and Beethoven. But I don't mean they were avant garde intellectuals. I mean that they just under They too understood music. And my mother, in fact, was the drama teacher at a local high school, so she put on the musicals every year, so it truly was in my dna. She was the first one she ever directed was West Side Story, and she was pregnant with me. So from in utero I understood musicals and had memorized all the lyrics to musicals.
So that was on in my house a lot different. You know, Man of La Mancha and Cabaret and even now, I mean those are just they're spectacular, you know that kind. But anyway, my point is we weren't music snobs. We liked all different kinds of genres.
Has that carried forward for you in your time at Fox News and CNN just then like just a street battle. Now, every time I see you, I'm going to think that you're thinking that, by the way, Well, I.
Mean, isn't it true that even the CNN and Fox battle plays into the Sharks and the Jets.
I mean that's what I mean. That's yes, that's exactly right. I'm not sure who is who at this point. I'm going to stay away from that. But you talked about in your new book. You have a new book coming out, congratulations on that, Combat Love a Jersey Girls Search for Home. We're going to talk more about that a little bit later. But you talk about being free range or kind of unparented in your book. Does that mean you were given a lot of space as a child to explore and try things.
Yes.
And I think that this is a kind of universal feeling of gen xers. I think that a lot of us were semi parents or unparented. We were the free range generation. And it's strange, Brian, because there was never a generation before us, I think that was so unparented,
and there certainly hasn't been one since. I mean, now we've the pendulum has swung to helicopter parenting, which is overkill, may I add, So we were this very strange blip in like the evolution of humans, where we were just turned loose for some reason, as like marauding teenagers and adolescents on the streets. I don't really know where parents were in the eighties. I've tried to figure it out.
I don't know.
If they were all a giant cocktail party somewhere, I don't know, but they weren't around even like stay home mothers were never hovering. And so yeah, it was a very free range time, and I look back on it fondly because I think that it instilled a lot of grit and you know, self reliance that our kids now don't have because we're helicopter parents. But as you'll read the book, there were also many dangerous, dicey situations that could have been avoided with a little supervision.
I think, right, yeah, yeah, I certainly see that. But it's funny now, you know, I have younger kids. I started late, and we have to know where they are all the time now. And by the way, the phones don't help, not that they have phones yet. I'm going to hold off as long as I possibly can't do
that and the watches and all this stuff. And I was just talking to somebody recently about like we would get home from school or on a Saturday, like we just checked out, Like we were just gone running through you know, I'm from Georgia. There's woods. We were just like running through the woods. And now it would be like even if it was quote unquote safe from other predators of one kind or another, it's like ticks or
snakes or like all of those things. Now would be like, oh no, no, no, you need you need some tick repellent on and on this gauze mask or whatever like to protect you from I don't know, it's cract. I mean we killed a cotton head, yeah, that's what you call snake, like off our porch, and that the next day we were running through the woods like not paying any attention to anything. I just can't even imagine that these days.
I'm me too. Our kids are totally bubble wrapped, and I don't think that it's doing them any favors to be bubble wrapped. I mean, I do think that there is a happy There must be a happy medium. I know we haven't found it yet because I don't think that kids should have been in as many cars with drunk drivers as I was. I don't think that's a
good idea, but we've really overcorrected that said. You know my kids, I have two twins now who are in college, and they're like shot out of a cannon because they're having the experience in college for the first time, and they're like, oh my god, what is this you know that we had in high school. So I don't know, maybe postponing it four or five years is for the best. I don't know.
Yeah, it would be really hard now. I mean, I assume it still happens, but to get away with like hey, I'm going to Johnny's house to spend the night. I'll see you tomorrow. Because there's no cell phones to text, there's no there's not even any parents if the phone. If Johnny's parents are out of town and they just don't answer the phone, they could just be not answering the phone. Now it would be like text call alert totally.
And by the way, we did have sleepovers at people whose houses whose parents were out of town. My design that was the beauty parents were off and out of town. That was what we did.
Well, as you said, they were not present as a teenager. I find this so interesting. You got into punk rock, you talked about music is going to be a theme, You started going into New York City to go to a lot of the clubs there. Do you look back fondly on those days, or do you look back and go, oh, my god, I can't believe that I was doing this, And yeah, I could have gotten myself into trouble.
Well, I did routinely get myself into trouble.
But well, but you're still here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that is the dividing line. I agree. I did survive, you know is important. I mean, spoiler alert. I did survive, but I think back on it very fondly, and I wasn't really I want to be clear. I never was masquerading as a punk rocker. I didn't have a mohawk, I didn't have a safety pin through my cheek. Okay, I myself couldn't really pull
off the punk rock aesthetic. But what happened was my gateway drug into punk was a local punk band from Shrewsbury, New Jersey called Shrapnel, and I loved Shrapnel so much, and I loved those guys in it. They were so charismatic and so cool and charming that that's who I loved, and so that's why I would follow them around. And I ended up in this milieu of going to see the Ramones and the Dead Boys and the Dictators and
like all of these bands. But I was really just grinning and bearing it until I could get to Shrapnel like that. I was there for Shrapnel and so but yes, I'm I'm honored that I was at CBGB's in the heyday and that I was, you know, at all of those front row shows like that. I look back on it really fondly.
Oh that's really cool. I mean that that experience of I think a perfect balance between like having a I mean, it sounds like it wasn't so much of a bubble, but having that smaller community where you could grow up, you could explore safely certain things there, but having the city so close to be able to have that as a as an outlet. That must have been must have been really fun. So this is it during high schoo you're doing this?
Yeah, this was during high school restudents And to your point, Shrewsbury, New Jersey is basically one square mile maybe two square miles, and it would have been Maybury had it not been forty miles away from the city. But somehow because of that link, that fathers got on the train there in the morning and went off to work in Manhattan and then came home. And I don't know what planted the seed with all of us kids that we thought we
could do that as well, but we did. And so Shrewsbury is this very strange little pocket or was in the eighties where we were tethered to the city in a way that small town suburbia isn't always And we did use the city, and we did go see live music in the city, and I did spend my prom night at the Limelight in the city. Like we just were. We did have that combination of small town Ocean Jersey Shore and then that escape to have adventures in the city.
And so it was you know, if you survived it, it was measurable, right.
I promise you you won't know that this is true. I don't relate every conversation, so I spend a lot of times not mentioning the office, but I do have to say, part of what you just talked about is something that our boss Greg Daniels talked about a lot which was interesting to me, which was in terms of
like why Scranton, Pennsylvania, Like why choosing that? And what he was looking for was an insular community but that was close to the big city, and so what kept those people there as opposed to being in the city or you know, and part of it is distance and so forth, But how often did they utilize the big
city or whatever and stayed where they were? So when he was coming up with where the office was going to take place, that was his requirements, Like he wanted it to be near something large, but still insular in its own way, with access to but not in that larger community. So I don't I always find that fascinating.
I like that, Brian. And first of all, you can relate everything back to the office. I'm here for it, totally here for it. And I mean we can get into how much my kids loved the office.
Oh that's nice.
Yeah, it's so great. But I think that for me, there was something really powerful about that combination because I did like to have adventures, but mostly I was a provincial, small town girl, and I liked being able to drive down the street or walk down the street and know who lived in every house. I didn't have to like them, they'd never be my friend, but I knew their story and that was very cool to me. So there it was to me kind of a little nest, and you know,
God knows, again, it wasn't Maybury. There was definitely bad behavior at times happening in Shrewsbury. But I liked that familiarity of that kind of provincial town.
You eventually you went on to because you're a smarty pants American university there in d C. Now, were you into the punk scene there?
No, But again because I was only into shratnel, no shrapnel, no punk. They're completely entwined, intertwined for me. So but I was always into music. I mean I did. I went to see the Remote, Like you know, I was definitely in the Ramones camp. I went to see the Ramones a few times and live in d C. But I always went to hear music always. But I did cross all genres when I got to d C. That's a kind of more Southern leaning city obviously than New York.
So there was all like NRBQ, and there was Dave Matthews and all these other kind of sounds and bands that I was going to see live.
Yeah, I don't know. Actually that's a lie. I do. I do know exactly how old you are, because I have papers right here that tell me, so we're roughly the same age. So yeah, that Dave Matthews band, you know, coming out of Virginia. You know, that was sort of you know, they were playing when I was in college. They were playing there at the University of Virginia. I had a friend there and that's how I got introduced to him, and that was a really really good time there.
What's always curious that I like to talk to people about who end up focusing on something and having success and excellence in it. You know, you're in an intellectual family. You're interested in music culture clearly as well. When for you did you start on the path of you know, I know communications and broadcast journalism ended up being your focus. Did you go to American for that or at what point did you decide this was the direction you wanted to go in.
So for me, there was an actual moment that there was an actual moment where the epiphany, like the light bulb went on. So it was I was fifteen years old, it was after school. I was sitting on the sofa and I was watching Phil Donahue. Okay, and Phil Donahue had this daily afternoon talk show that was the bomb. I mean I loved the Field Donahue show as a teenager, and I was watching it, and truly I had one of those aha moments where I was like, what's that
job called? What do you call that? Because it wasn't like TV star, it was something different. It wasn't an actor. It wasn't like, what is that that he's doing? And I thought, what is that job called? And they pay him to do that? And I found out that that was called broadcast journalists. And from the moment I figured out that broadcast journalism was a profession, I was like, Oh, I'm doing that. That's what I want to do. Like I saw him with his microphone like running around the studio,
you know, like asking people questions. Caller is the caller there? Like it was all so fantastic. And so I only applied to colleges that had TV stations, which now they're like ubiquitous, but at the time there were truly only
a handful of them. I mean I could take them off Syracuse, Ithaca, you know, American University, Northwestern and the day I got to American walked into the team, I was like, huh, I'd like to be a TV reporter and they were like, uh yeah, you and two hundred other freshmen you go back and get l so but that was my north star from that moment A fifteen that was it.
That is so interesting. I mean I remember watching Phil Donahue as well, like with I don't know why, like that's like a grandparent's memory. I don't know, like they loved Phil Donahue. Yes, but in a way I would argue that Phil Donahue, as great as he was and as entertaining as that was, and he was legit, he is a little bit of the gateway drug into where we sit today. I don't know if any of these people are your friends. But and then you start going
into like Heraldo or Maury Covid. Sure, yeah, word tu you I.
Actually agree with you. Phil Donahue, I would say, was still on the you know better Angels side of that of that continuum. And I do love her although and he is a great in real life. He is a great guy in of total mention, and I do love him dearly. But yeah, Phil donaghu was the beginning of that continuum that leads right to like a chair being broken over somebody's head, right, or a paternity test on the Mari Povid show.
Yeah, exactly, that's very interesting. I mean he was much more asking questions as opposed to telling you what the thing should be, which I think in a weird way that that's what we need more of.
Well totally. I mean that's what journalism at its best is, which is you're a conduit. You know, you're a conduit and a platform for other people's stories, and so you have the microphone and I've never not realized what a powerful platform and position that is. But you're supposed to just be a conduit. But then you know, a cable news comes along, and then we it turns out in
twenty four hours. When you have twenty four hour news, you can squeeze in some opinions, and you can squeeze in some of your own analysis and everything, and so you know, it does bleed into those other things.
I agree.
Was it tough for you? I mean, you know, you keep talking about shrapnel. You didn't have the mohawk, but you know, so you're moving from at least being a fan of that into sort of what is perceived as sort of an ultra clean cut kind of identity in broadcast journalism. Was that a difficult change for you or no, did you just jump right into that.
Well, I think there's something out wearing the mask of an anchor person. You know, anchor people are so kind of well cooffed, and there's so much makeup that there's a veneer, you know, by again by design, because we're just supposed to be the messengers, you know, the conduits.
And so I think that for a long time, there was something comforting for me about being able to get behind the mask, the anchor mask, and not have to reveal too much vulnerability, you know, you like cake on that makeup, and then I'm ready for the day, Like I can ask anybody that's my armor, you know, and then I can go to battle and ask anybody tough questions because I'm kind of behind that mask, the anchor mask.
And then what started to happen for me personally was I started to feel that the mask was a little off putting and a bit of a distance from the people that I was interviewing. And because I had a childhood, well a teenagehood filled with some struggle and challenges, and there were times I was broken, there were times I had nowhere to live, and there were times that I struggled with mental health. I started being tempted to say to people, I feel you, I've been there, you know,
but I can't say that. That's not what news people are supposed to be doing. I mean, part of my uh, I guess impulse for writing the book was peeling off that mask and showing that even your you know well quaft Anchor has a story of survival and of challenges and obstacles and everything. Because I think that we often people can project onto us all the time. You know, we are tabula rasa that people project onto And what they project onto me often is I've never had a
hard day in my life. You know, I've never had a struggle, and you know that's just not the truth I have.
Do you feel like that should be different or do you feel like that if people knew more about you, or if you projected yourself more through that mask, that makes you part of the story. I'm trying to figure out like the danger of that for you or why you don't do that.
I think people have always been able to smell something on me, and I think it's CBGB's no. I think I think that people get a whiff of something, that there is an untold story or that I am relatable, but they can't put their finger on it. I mean, people do think that I am relatable in a way, so I hope that it's coming through the mask. But you know, yeah, we're taught, we are taught in journalism school don't make yourself the story. You know, that's just
not what you're there for. You're there for other people's stories, in the service of other people's voices. So we're really taught not to do that. That's part of the discomfort. But for everybody, it's individual. Not everybody is comfortable opening the pages of their diaries and letting the world read it, of course. But for me, I just believe it's time
to build bridges. I mean, because of where we are right now, because I've seen so much discord in the cable news world and in news and everybody in their silos. You know, I'm just doing my own little part to build a bridge and show that we're all, you know, more similar than we are different.
Yeah, tell me about some of your earliest jobs either your first how you got that or what kind of stories were you covering?
Oh, my early you mean my earliest TV jobs. I was about to tell you about Friendlies. I was about to tell you about making Jim dandies at Friendlies. Okay, okay. So so I was a waitress before I was a reporter, and that restaurant work. Did you ever do restaurant work?
Run?
Yeah, but they didn't trust me with much. I was a host. I think when I signed up for it, I didn't realize how much less money you make than everybody else.
Because you don't get tipps.
Yeah, but I I was a host. I was a host of a very popular busy place. I wasn't doing nothing. Yeah, I don't think I had the patience for be a waiter.
But anyway, I see, all right, Well, maybe from your even brief stint in restaurant work, you know that it's just such a character building experience, you know. And so at Friendli's was my childhood haunt as a child in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, and then as a teenager if we had the munchies or something, and then I ended up working there. As my mother called it, might come up and and so you know, like scooping ice cream and everything. I think very fondly back to that and how it was
character building. But if you're talking about my first reporter jobs, those are also character building.
Oh my god.
I mean I made so many mistakes and they were so mortifying. I started at American University.
On that on the TV station that was there, so you did.
Eventually I elbowed my way, and yes, I elbowed eventually my way. And after they'd given up on everybody else, like I had to audition along with like two hundred other more talented kids, and then like those kids, you know what happens. There's like this weeding out process, and some kids realized like ooh, I don't want to stand in a snowstorm or like outside of the rain or cover some crappy story. But I'm like, I do you know? So I sucked. That's here's the upshot. I sucked. This
was not a natural fit for me. I did you know. I had to learn how to do a stand up where you talk into the microphone and don't look petrified. And I was like white knuckling it. I would be somebody like there are one take wonders. I was like a forty eight take one, like to the point where my cameraman would be like, they all suck, but we're gonna have to stick with one of them, you know,
like I can't take another second of this. So it was really through just repetition that I ended up getting better. And then and then one of my first jobs was for the crime show America's Most Wanted, and I loved every second of that. I loved I love crime reporting. I love the criminal mind, you know, trying to crack it. I loved finding fugitives. I loved jailhouse interviews with mass murderers. They would send me in to interview them, and I just it was a great training ground.
Wow, that's cool.
It was really cool.
I like that. Yeah, I did something you said before though I had a conversation. I've become friends with Dylan Dreyer and the whole standing outside in the middle of a hurricane thing is the dumbest thing.
Awful.
It's awful.
I don't like it. I mean, when I was eighteen and nineteen twenty, I would have done anything, and I would have been like, put me in coach. But now when there's a hurricane, I like, hide under my desk so they think I'm gone.
Well, it's even just like your pal Anderson Cooper does it all the time. I mean, obviously they don't want me producing these shows, but I want them to know that the consumer at home who are watching and Anderson's like, hey, the entire area has been evacuated. No one is here. We're here on the beach in North Carolina, and you're like, get out of what are you doing? Why are you there?
It's so frustrating, stressful. It is stressful. But I mean, I must tell you viewership does go up.
It probably doesn't, but is that like watching a reality television show that's terrible that you're watching to make fun of it, Like that's the thing. Is the viewership high or it doesn't matter.
I don't know if it's train wrap watching or pity watching or thank God I'm not out in the elements watching, or just Anderson in a wet T shirt washing. I don't know, but I know that it's successful.
It's successful. Okay. You in nineteen ninety eight, you started Fox News in Boston. How did you get that job?
So? Interestingly, my co anchor from American University I worked my way up from reporter outside in the freezing range to anchoring at American University. And my co anchor, who was a really talented guy. He had all of the natural skill that I did not possess. He did. He was a correspondent at Fox and Fox had just started. Fox was going to be this new national cable news network.
He was telling me about it and the great perks, and he had his own designated producer, and he had his own cameraman and they would, you know, travel the country and tell these stories. And he was like, you need to send a tape there, and I said, that does sound good, you know the show and his last words. And so the show that I had been on in Boston and National NBC Morning Show had just been canceled. So I was freelancing at all sorts of different crazy
shows and looking for a steady gig. And the way my friend Rick described it sounded fantastic. I sent a resume tape to the vice president in charge of programming, and I was hired, not sight unseen because they'd seen my tape, but voice unspoken to I mean, there was never an interview, no interview, no interview, no phone call. My agent called and said, like, they want to hire you,
and I said, fantastic. And it was a great salary and there were great perks, and I was going to live in Boston, which is a town that I love and always felt was home. And so it was all great, and it was just as my friend promised. It was great for a couple of years, and I was traveling around New England and doing all sorts of cool stories on Harvard medical breakthroughs or fall foliage or whatever. And
then slowly it started morphing into something different. And I mean, I think what happened is that Roger Els sort of realized that there was this large chunk of the viewing population that felt that their voice wasn't being echoed or heard on other networks, and that there was like this beachhead that he could kind of corner. And slowly, after about two years, all of my stories started. I started being assigned stories with a conservative slant, and some of
my scripts started being changed. They wanted me to change some wording, They wanted the guests that I interviewed to be different. And it became, you know, it morphed into something like what it is today.
That's so interesting. I mean, this is such a long time ago. Now obviously in your mind doesn't remember things as they were or whatever. So Fox News you believe changed, which I trust you, by the way, that's not a challenge. But around two thousand or so it became different than what it was before, like that specific voice that is
now that's famous for whatever. That actually changed. While you were there, you palpably felt that the people you were talking to and the stories that you were telling had a different slant. Sure before interesting.
Sure, and maybe that was always Roger's grand plan, I'm not sure. Or maybe he started to see where their bread was buttered and that it really the times that we did stories with a more conservative angle started really resonating in the ratings you can see. As executives, you get minute by minute ratings, so you can see exactly what stories are resonating and where viewership falls off. But at some point I know that Roger, and I know
this because he told me this explicitly. Roger started playing to the crowd, you know, I mean, all of Fox started playing to the crowd. And once they figured it out that it was winning and that they were resonating with this conservative, more right wing audience. They just gunned
it for that viewership. And then that's those were the stories that we started doing to the point where, you know, there were times that I was, let's say, hosting the morning show, and every single story was from a conservative angle. There was no other Like it would be just how many different ways can you slice and dice Barack Obama in one hour? And I fought it to the best that I could. It's hard to fight city Hall. I would say to Roger Els, don't you think that gets
a little redundant. Don't you think it's a little monotonous to have the same angle every hour? Like maybe I could try to be a voice for a different angle or a monarch. He was like, you know, he thundered at me, you will, I will not have you lose the audience. You are not to do that. And so that just told me that they were all in for
the audience. And as we now know, I mean, if you fast forward ten years or fifteen years from that, and you know from the dominion lawsuit, they ended up saying, did you hear Tucker Carlson and you hear people in the paper, I mean, in the documents of that lawsuit, say, got to think about the viewers. You got to give the viewers what they want. We're here for the audience, don't. You can't say that the audience won't like it. You can't say that that's what they do.
That's so interesting. I mean you truly, truly, you have enlightened me because I think that I don't know where it's been put in my consciousness or who taught me this or whatever, but that it was Murdoch was conservative, so Fox is conservative, and maybe that's true as well, but they were able to keep more of a you know, not be not as biased for a while. But that's so interesting.
Yeah, I mean in my in my experience, like ratings were their religion, and so you know, I really think that if Roger it did dovetail with their ideology. Okay, so it all works out because Roger and Rubert Murdock are conservative, so it ends up dovetailing, so they it works for them. However, I mean, Roger also really liked the whatever that whatever that dog show is, you know that like that fancy dog show every year where poodle's trot around.
Like the Westminster Dog Show.
Like if the ratings had shown that every single segment could have been a trotting around poodle. That's what Fox would be today. But the ratings just happened to show that the viewers really liked conservative talking points.
Fascinating? Is that in part why you moved on?
Yeah?
Absolutely, yes, I felt like I mean, I got in trouble all the time. It's not fun at work to be constantly called to the woodshed and in trouble. So Roger for.
Saying things on the air, you mad, yeah.
Oh yes, ye're saying things on the air. But sometimes Roger would call me to his office and be very disgruntled about the way I was sitting. He told me he could tell I was uncomfortable with whatever conservative talking point that we happened to be doing that day because of the way I was sitting. He told me that it looked like my body had been botoxed. And I was like, you know, Roger, I said, it's very cold in that studio. I'm freezing. He was like, nope, nope, nope,
that wasn't it. It's because you were uncomfortable. And I was like, hm, I guess he can read minds because I was uncomfortable and so it's not good to be uncomfortable with what you're having to report on. And I stopped. I started realizing it wasn't really news. I started not thinking that it was serving the viewers to be fed
this all the time. I mean, I think it is interesting to hear conservative viewpoints, for sure, and I think that smart conservative voices are really important for the democracy. But we weren't always doing smart conservative voices. We were doing just fear mongering, you know, fear mongering about a new mosque that was going to be built somewhere. And I didn't think that that was helpful for anybody. So I was uncomfortable. Roger could see that I was uncomfortable.
We fought a lot about it, or basically I listened to him yelling that's not sustainable.
Yeah, when you moved to CNN in twenty fourteen, did you feel like you saw opportunities there that you were not able to do at Fox News.
Definitely? Definitely. I mean when I got to CNN, it was just a garden of opportunity. To this day, I don't know how to explain it. Jeff Zucker was our president at that time, and I have asked him about this, and he can't explain. I mean, he's never taken a time to explain it to me, but a lot of us have talked to each other about this. Somehow, there was enough of the pie to go around for everyone. There were a lot of us, but I got to sit down with Hillary Clinton and do a big one
on one. Somehow, Dana Bash got a very cool interview with whoever she was going after, Anderson Cooper got to go stand in a hurricane, you know, John Berman was going to cover you know, a terrorist attack in Paris. Like there was so much news happening, and all of
us got to have these special moments. And when I got there, it was just like my career opened up and I got to do all of these super cool things, including you know, a host of the morning show there for seven years on it's you know, kind of a very very successful run of it. So I was I was really delighted because I did feel like, you know, a bit of a put on the shelf at Fox, Like Roger stopped giving me opportunities and everything because he didn't, as he said, trust me.
Interesting. You know where Jeff Zucker was before he was CNN, NBC. He was he was in charge when the Office came on the air, he was.
So it was did he decide that like that would give it the green light or was there somebody else?
You know, you know, I should have done some research on this, because I'm not sure to what degree. I mean, I've told the story. He was not a fan of the show. He was not a fan of the show. He didn't get it.
He didn't get it, but yet he green lit it or something.
Well, he had someone that was under him who really championed for it, but he did. He did it. He had a few people that he trusted outside that were big fans of it, and a lot of the younger people at the network, like interns and assistants, were big fans of it. But it's always interesting to me.
I think that that's I mean, to me, that's the mark of a great executive, which is like I don't necessarily get it, but all these guys in the demo do, Let's try it that.
Yeah, that's right.
So this is sort of the lead up kind of the now time for the twenty sixteen presidential campaigns. Did you feel like, because of your time at Fox you had sort of a unique perspective on coverage that you had done previously, or what kind of coverage they were going to have, and what CNN was doing, Like how did you fit in there to that very specific time.
Yeah, I definitely felt that I had a bigger, a wider lens than other people because I had been at Fox. And I still feel that way. I still feel that my years at Fox were really valuable and really helped inform a worldview that I now try to carry into all of my stories because I think that I can pretty easily channel you know, that Roger Ayles worldview and the viewers of Fox who were always you know, really kind to me and I got to talk to and you know, interview a lot, and so I still feel
that way. I tap into that all the time, and when I got to CNN, I think it was super helpful because you know, we are all in our bubbles,
not by design. I mean, it's not like everybody tries to be myopic or in their own bubble, but you are a product of your surroundings and your geography, and so you know, by that time, there wasn't a lot of crossover between CNN and Fox, and there weren't a lot of people going back and forth who had worked in different places, so I was very glad that I could bring I think, like a kind of a bit of a wider aperture to my reporting at CNN.
Yeah, that's very cool. You mentioned it before the twenty four hour news cycle, which is intense, and I think, Look, I think that a lot of us consumers of news get fatigued because the news is NonStop and it's not always great. And I know for myself I will put the phone on silent or to turn the notifications off. This is something in your job you can't really do.
So how do you deal with that, that sort of constant barrage of information and news that's coming to you, which oftentimes is not good or at least positive, uplifting. We don't have a lot of those stories. How do you deal with that day in and day out.
Well, first of all, I commend you for turning off the notifications and the phone sometimes, and everybody has to do that, because I do think that we are in such a deluge of information and there's so many different delivery systems that it is affecting people's mental health for sure. I mean, obviously the research shows that. So you used to be able to just turn on the TV and
turn it off at your when you'd had enough. And now I just think that the drinking from a fire hose is way too much for a lot of our nervous systems. So I'm very good at compartmentalizing. I always have been good at compartmentalizing. I'm able to kind of see a story for a story and recognize that I'm here as the again conduit to tell that story or the platform, and I don't really take it home with me.
I mean, there have been times that I've had to tell very tragic, awful stories and they sick with me a little bit longer. But I really try not to internalize those because then I would be useless at my job.
So I'm very good at being present, you know, for however many hours the red light is on being there telling the story, trying to get the facts, and then after that it is very easy for me to come home and turn on the office or some I mean, seriously, TV has always been like a real companion of mine, right and I have often used it as an escape, you know, and I can do that.
You're now reporting on the whole story with Anderson Cooper. These stories are relevant and important, but a little bit of a different kind of journalism than sort of that daily news cycle. Are you enjoying that?
Yeah?
I enjoyed a lot. That's how that was my first I first started with long form, as we call it, which is not the kind of breaking news or the minute and a half news package that you see on local news. So America's Most Wanted, for instance, would tell these long yarns about these crime stories. So that was how I first was true. Well, actually my first job was for Ted Copple. He had a production company and he did these documentaries, so those were hour long deep
doves into a particular topic. So this is a return for me to that, which is an hour long and we dive into one topic. And I really like that kind of storytelling because obviously you can't tell everything in a minute and a half, and breaking news is just a different skill set. I like breaking news also, but it's a different muscle. This what I'm doing now requires more research and writing, and I do really like love the aspect of script writing and book writing or any
kind of writing. So it's very nice to step off the gerbil wheel of that kind of grind, you know, particularly when you talk about gearing up for the next presidential election. I'm very happy right now to have stepped off that breathless merry go round, you know, and anybody who has the energy to do it, I applaud you. But I'm getting a little respite right now.
Yeah, it's interesting. I watch that show. I also like on ESPN Outside the Lines, which does the same thing. And I don't know, for how many years I have been a DVR do you would still say that of sixty minutes? It is that longer form stories that it's
often not telling you exactly what's happening right now. But when people like you and your producers and all of these shows are choosing these stories, they do shine a light and illuminate in greater detail, a story that does resonate with what's happening in the world today.
And I like that me too. I'm a DVR. Also, you've just coined that phrase for all eternity.
Well, let's just say I tvoed it. I know that's wrong. I know TVO is done stream Maybe it's just streaming now. I don't know. I can watch it on streaming.
But I do DVR it, I do TV are it? So I just don't know how to turn that into a verb. But I guess we are turning that. Yeah, So sixteen minutes CBS Sunday Morning, same thing. Like I love that storytelling. It's so pleasant, you know, CBS Sunday Morning. And I think that I feel smarter after those shows and I've learned something and breaking news serves its purpose.
But you know, I often feel like my brain has been fried after breaking news or you know, it's just it does something different to your cells than just sitting back and like learning about something new.
You talked about doing research and doing writing. We talked about a little earlier, your new memoir that is breaking as we speak, Combat Love a Jersey Girls, Search for Home. How deep did you have to go into your own remembrances or recollections for these stories or was this the kind of book that you have been gradually writing sections in your brain as you thought of things for a long time.
Both, I mean, Brian, both these are stories that were rattling around in my brain since they happened. I tend to write episodes. First. I write just a story, an episode, and then I later try to glue it together and figure out what the theme is. That's presenting itself. But a friend of mine who's a great literary agent, told me years ago, you know, if you're going to write a memoir, you kind of have to go there. You kind of have to leave it all on the table.
And you know you should if you really want to do that, you should just be prepared to do that. And so that was a longer process. I can write a story about a funny night where I snuck backstage at the Ramones concert and the hilarity that ensued back there. I can write that, But what were the feelings underneath, and what was the motivation underneath doing that? And what is the kind of if there's a darker shadow of all of these what seemingly might be fun stories, what
is that? So that took more years to on earth and excavate you know what it really like. There is a part of this book it's like gen X Misadventures of Music and as we said, you know, free range time. And then there's the story of searching for home, you know, and searching for stability and feeling lonely and feeling deep depression at times. And it took me many years to weave those two stories together.
You talked earlier about wanting to give people an idea of some of your struggles because of how you at least perceive that you are viewed as a conduit and as a blank canvas. I guess for delivering the news, is that why you wanted to write this story, to give people an idea of really who you are and different things that you have gone through.
Well, there's a difference between writing your memoir and publishing your memoir.
Oh so you wrote it for you and now you're publishing it for other people.
Well, I mean, I wrote it for me, and let's be honest, I'm publishing it for me. But you can write a memo. I mean I wrote it truly to put the pieces back together. There were there was a lot of unfinished business from my teenage years. I moved a lot against my will. I lived in lots of different towns and houses during a two year period. I didn't want to do any of that, and so sometimes all of it was happening so fast that I never I never adequately wrapped up one chapter, so to speak,
before moving on to the next. So there were all of these stories rattling around in my head, and it was very helpful and cathartic for me to write them down, put them in a real order, go back and interview the main players in these different episodes and check my memory and make sure that it was all as intense and technicolor as I thought it was. And so that
was a healing exercise for me. Now in terms of publishing it, once I have Once I had the whole story down in the book, then I had to make a decision of do I really want to publish this thing? And I feel like I don't know. I kind of waited long enough that we are in a moment of time with social media and with gen Z that you know,
they really peel back the curtain all the time. You know, they're always sharing their feelings and everything, and so it was kind of like I thought, why keep it a secret at this point, you know, why keep it behind the mask? Well, maybe it will help if I if I let people know that there were some rock bottom moments in my life too that I crawled through to get to achieving my dream.
I think that's awesome. I mean, it's not even a humble brag. It's a brag coming you know, I've written a book myself so I know that there's an answer, so you can't say you don't know because I had it. You go back and you do these interviews, what moment for you? And it may be your favorite because it's the most painful. It might be your favorite because it made you laugh. It might be your favorite because it
made you look really good. What moment for you is your favorite in terms of having something illuminated based on talking to other people that sort of went against your own memory. But feel like, hmm, you know what, that's something I hadn't thought about before. But it's probably really true.
That's a good question. And Brian, you could only have asked it because you went back, and I mean, I know enough about your book and I have read and I listened to one of your interviews where you talked about trying to solve the mystery, you know, and that really resonates with me. You were trying to solve the mystery of what was the magic pixie dust? Yeah, it was the office and why has it had this renaissance? What was the magic? Because like, how can we bottle it?
You know?
I mean, like what how did lightning strike at that moment? And mine was also a mystery quest, you know, trying to solve the mystery of why these teenage years were so incandescent for me and why they were so vivid and stuck around, stuck with me so much. And I mean it was it was really fun for me to go back and interview the main players. It got. It gave me a chance to relive some of these moments and, as you say, to test my memory. And what I found is that my memory is fantastic.
Yeah, I know.
I have a really good memory, because when I went back and I would be like, tell me, sometimes memories get diluted from telling the story too much or writing the story. It morphs. However, some of these memories were pristine because I had never spoken to the other person in this intense moment. Let's say, you know, there was a night I got stranded on a corner in Queens at like two in the morning, on some shitty, burned out corner, and the guy who stranded me we had
never spoken of it again. Okay, so it had been you know, thirty five years, and I called him and said, can I take you to lunch and ask you a few questions? And I said, do you remember what happened on that night that we went d see shrapnel in Queens And he goes and like, again, we've never sun. He looks up and he goes, Oh, something fed up happened that that night, didn't it. I was like, Oh, yes,
yeah it did. Like he remembered, ooh that was a bad, intense night, but he couldn't quite put his finger on exactly what had happened. Then I clued him in and then we took it from there and like we're able to piece it together. And so I guess the most surprising thing that happened is that I had a best friend during that time. In the book, she's called Vivian.
She was wild, she was dangerous. She was an incredibly magnetic person, and I loved her and I loved going back and thinking about all the adventures that we had. And she said to me at some point, so she was she was an addicts when we were teenager. She was an alcoholic and then became a hard drug addict. And I was like, ohhe remember that time that we
did this, and I'd be like writing it down. She said, you know, Allison, it's not as fun for me to remember these times as it is for you, and I was like, oh right, and she said I really wasn't well, and like she had to just kind of take me by the shoulders and be like this is all nostalgic and fun and games for you, but like I lived it, you know, and that was really that allowed a different layer of the book again, just the deeper layer. You know.
There's the stories and then there's the what was really happening.
Yeah, fascinating. Everybody. Check it out. Combat Love a Jersey Girls, Search for Home. Alison, You're awesome.
You're awesome.
I'm so happy to have one met you and two gotten a chance for you to be so candid and open about your life and career. I can't wait to read the book.
Thank you, Ron. I can't wait for you to read the book. I look forward to hearing what you think of it, and I really look forward to our paths crossing. Maybe I'll find you on my l a book tour and come find the little the little fancy town that you live in.
Out the Connecticut of southern California. By the way, that is now going to be my answer, Like I have, I have finally figured it out where I live in the Connecticut of Southern California. Allison, thank you so much, and good luck with the book, and listen, take care of yourself this year. You know it's going to be a struggle. Take care of yourself. And yes, our paths will cross soon for sure, I hope. So thanks for everything, Allison, thank you so much. That was fascinating. I really enjoyed
our conversation. It was great getting know you. I learned so much today about you and also how the news industry works. But most of all, I learned about apparently the greatest band of all time. And I'm going to go right now listen to Shrapnel to see what all the fuss is about. Listeners, you stay tuned as we will continue to bring you breaking news, but for now, have a great week. Off The Beat is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer
Lang Lee. Our senior producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris, and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary, and our intern is Ali Amir Sahi. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by the one and Only Creed Bratton,