Lynn Espinoza is a broadcast news veteran with more than a decade of media, presentation and executive coaching experience. She has developed personal coaching sessions for Fortune 100 C-level executives, corporate communicators of all kinds, doctors, lawyers and leaders in non-profit.
Lessons for Both Sides of the Camera: Sam Donaldson
Posted on February 27, 2009. Filed under: Latest News 1 Comment
Broadcast great Sam Donaldson is hanging it up. He’s been part of my life for 40 years: the cantankerous, determined and elegant reporter who beautifully morphed with the times, and often reinvented himself.
If you were to be interviewed by Sam, you’d better have your ducks in a row. Unprepared interview subjects were his red meat. As a trainer, I often use Sam’s reports to show my clients what happens if they go into an interview without preparation and practice. I do think that unprepared subjects have a better chance of success today, because few reporters are as prepared as Donaldson would be.
As a consumer of all types of news – internet news, blogs, and all main stream media – I will miss Sam. He was relentless in his search for truth, and never forgot that the result was about us; not about him. Today’s bloviating, self-congratulatory cable anchors would be well-served to take a lesson from Sam.
I thoroughly enjoyed this retrospective from ABC News. I hope you do as well.
One Response to “Lessons for Both Sides of the Camera: Sam Donaldson”
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HERO.
I actually met SD once on the tarmac at Tinker AFB in OKC.
It was during a Reagan visit in 1987. I was in awe.