Memories from the Dakota

My first direct contact with John Lennon’s domestic world happened five years after his death.

It was October 9, 1985, and his Central Park memorial, Strawberry Fields, was being dedicated on what would have been his 45th birthday. I was a producer for MTV News, and like every other news crew, VJ Martha Quinn and I were standing just inside the park, at 72nd Street and Central Park West, video cameras at the ready, with very little to shoot. Yoko Ono had made it abundantly clear that this was to be a private, family day for her and Sean. We could all film the mosaic in the park if we wanted to, but she wasn’t giving interviews.

As we stood there, a plan started to formulate itself in my head. For some reason that I’ve never quite been able to figure out, Yoko Ono had a particular fondness for Martha Quinn. And I knew that Martha had her phone number. I said casually, “Martha….there’s a phone booth right over on the corner” (this was pre-cell phone days). “Why don’t you give her a call, see if she’ll let us come up?”

Next thing I knew, we were in the elevator, on our way upstairs.

My first reaction was that the apartment was amazing – the entire top floor, front of the building, overlooking Central Park. My second thought was to worry about how we would ever get out of there without breaking or ruining something. There were expensive art and ceramics everywhere, and the entire apartment was white. I looked dubiously at my crew, who were rushing to quickly get set up before we wore out our welcome, hoping that they had wiped their feet very well when we emerged from the park.

The only people whom I saw in the apartment were Yoko, Sean Ono Lennon, and a bodyguard, wearing a gun in a shoulder holster. I remember thinking how unspeakably sad (to say nothing of incredibly ironic) it was that Yoko Ono and this beautiful boy lived with a loaded gun as a constant presence.

Yoko suggested that we interview Sean, who was then ten years old. We sat in the kitchen, where there were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full of cookbooks, art books and record albums (this was also pre-CD days). Martha asked Sean questions about his memories of his father, what kind of music he liked, what he was studying in school, whether he played music himself….and about what it was like to be friends with Michael Jackson. I remember that Sean replied, giggling, that it was really fun, and that Michael called him “Rubber.” Then she asked what they were doing to celebrate his father’s birthday, and he described pulling out the albums and listening to music – both his father’s music and the music that his father loved. It helped him try to remember his father. I glanced over at Yoko Ono, who was watching silently, her face impassive.

When the interview was over, Yoko took me aside and said that one question was a problem, and would need to be erased. “You understand,” she said, “that he is only 10 years old, and he doesn’t know exactly what he should share and what he shouldn’t.” I thought to myself, “Oh, NO. There goes that incredibly intimate story about listening to the music and remembering his father.” But I was wrong. She told me that if he were older he would understand that if you are going to be friends with Michael Jackson, you can’t talk about Michael Jackson.

And with that, the man with the gun escorted me into a room that had been converted into a professional video studio. We pulled our master tape out of the recorder, put it on the deck, cued it up to the answer about Michael Jackson, and erased it. He played it back, checked to be sure the video was deleted, and handed it back to me without a word.

Today, like everyone else, I find it hard to believe that John Lennon would have been seventy years old. We are all 30 years older than we were back when John Lennon died. Now I’m a parent myself, and understand much better what he was feeling when he sang the song “Beautiful Boy.” I’ll never forget the day that Yoko and Sean were generous enough to share a little bit of John’s world with us.

Meet Richmond Moses

This 16-year-old approached me and asked if he could interview me. I said, “You can interview me if I can interview you.” His response: “Of course, you can write about me. I am an interesting person!” Richmond is from North West Mafikeng, and journalism is his passion. “Not my talent – my talent is music – but my passion is to be a journalist.” He sings rap and hip hop music, and was delighted to meet someone “from another continent,” especially from New York. Richmond’s computer is currently broken, but we have exchanged email addresses so that he can eventually share his writing. He is, indeed, an interesting person.

(Dateline: Johannesburg. Posting from the World Summit on Media for Children)

The Vanguard of Citizen Journalism

In a week when it is being reported here in the U.S. that an item on a blog (The Drudge Report) had enough impact to trigger a sell-off and resulting 400-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, it is interesting to see this story coming out of the U.K.

Citizen journalists are gaining broader exposure every day. It remains to be seen how that will affect the depth and quality of the information we are receiving, but it certainly is an exciting time for information junkies like myself!

Opie unveils user-generated vision for Five News
By Jules Grant
7 Mar 2007
© C21 Media 2007

The new content chief at UK terrestrial Five has outlined her future strategy for the channel, including a major overhaul of Five News, saying she wants it to be in "the vanguard of citizen journalism." Speaking at a Royal Television Society event last night, the RTL-owned channel's new MD of content Lisa Opie said that its news service would be "radically relaunched," putting user-generated service Your News at its heart. The service, which already allows viewers to send in their own filmed reports and suggestions for stories, will now "sit at the heart of what we do," she said.

Referring to news anchor Kirsty Young perching on the edge of her desk – a gimmick that prompted a raft of copycats in the 1990s – Opie said: "In the same way Five News redefined news when it launched 10 years ago I want it now to be in the vanguard of citizen journalism with more direct input from viewers. "We will integrate our news and talk programming across the day and we will be passionate and campaigning on viewers' behalf."

Other new highlights included the creation of MySpace pages for all of the commissioning team, where viewers will be able to pitch ideas and engage in a "direct dialogue" with the channel. "These pages will be promoted on air and on our website, giving viewers, for the first time, a direct line of communication with the people who make the decisions about the programmes they see," she said.