Producer (10 page)

In the end, there is no randomness as to what topic or person I finally choose for the show. All decisions are based upon
strategic calculations among Larry, my staff, and me. Most evenings, before I go to bed, I know some of what will be on the
show tomorrow, which may have nothing to do with what we aired tonight. Or it may. I might wake up tomorrow, study my notes
and lists, and scrap all my previous ideas for the show. Or I might go forward with a theme, like when we covered the trials
of OJ Simpson and Scott Peterson, or the mysterious death of Michael Jackson. In cases like these, the same topic might go
on for days, weeks, or in a rare case like the OJ trial, months.

Besides that kind of ongoing event, the uncertainty is considerable each day. There are countless stories and guests who never
make it on the air because someone more important trumped them, no matter how much time we may have spent planning. But at
least I don’t have to suddenly get on a plane for Geneva, Moscow, or Reykjavik like I did when I was White House producer.
Back then, I had to schedule time to go to the bathroom, which requires a whole different set of organizational skills.

ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, AND THEN… ORGANIZE SOME MORE

The most successful people I know are usually the most organized. Case in point, Ross Perot happens to be one of the most
organized men I ever met. In my world, any success I can claim in this life is the result
of meticulous organization. I really would not be able to manage my life without it, and I was lucky because it came naturally
to me. I can only assume that when “they” were giving out the O gene, as in Organization, I was at the head of the line.

But don’t despair because organization can be learned. Start very simply with the following:

•  Make lists of tasks in a notebook and check each one off when it’s completed. You get a nice sense of accomplishment when
an item gets taken off the list.

•  Copy the list at the end of the day and add what was not accomplished to tomorrow’s list.

•  Keep pens and paper all over your house, beside each telephone or computer.

•  Keep a pad and pen by your bedside all the time, especially at night. If it’s late and you think you’re going to remember
something in the morning, believe me, you won’t. Take the effort to write it down and it won’t be lost the next day.

•  Update your schedule and color code it on your computer. For example, things to do with your kids can be red. Work appointments
can be blue. Personal things can be green, and so on. If you don’t keep your schedule clear, you can easily end up double
booking yourself, which is embarrassing for you and rude to the other person.

•  Take extensive notes—it’s hard to trust yourself in a meeting if you don’t take notes. How will you remember the details that
will make all the difference later?

Being organized will help you emotionally, as you feel more confident and in control of your schedule and your life. I have
come up with a great way to organize clutter in my home. This might work for you at home or in your workplace. So let me share
it with you.

My kitchen drawers are always organized, and I have no junk drawers in my house. But I do have four junk boxes, three in the
pantry (one for each kid and me) and one in my closet, where I store things that are temporarily out of place. That means
I don’t necessarily feel like filing them right then or putting them away. Maybe it’s a letter, a report card, a child’s toy,
a CD without a jacket, or an article of clothing, a receipt, or a photo. Into the box it goes until, once a week, I go through
it all, put everything in its place, and then I start all over again. Things are rarely lost in my house. They are usually
in one of the boxes instead.

My kids and I have a story that pretty much sums up the value I pace on organization and my obsession with it. We once received
a phone call in the middle of the night that we were being evacuated from our home due to fires that were raging close by,
in the San Diego area. As we rushed out of bed and grabbed the things we most treasured, Amaya and Walker stared at me wide-eyed
as I quickly made the beds, rinsed off the dishes, and put them in the dishwasher. Then I grabbed the kids, the animals, a
handful of photos, and we all took off. They love to tell that story because it says it all.

F
or a White House producer, organizing the coverage of a summit is a massive undertaking that is both political and historical.
The amount of effort required to pull one off is almost impossible to fathom. Imagine hundreds of people gathering in a foreign
country, often with questionable communication technology, and working under severe conditions for weeks on end, on an average
of three hours of sleep a night. Bumps in the road are more like boulders and there is never a guarantee of success.

When a summit was over, everyone involved would drag themselves to the press plane and collapse from exhaustion. It could
be called a thankless job if you happened to be looking for comfort, praise, or recognition. I wasn’t. I kept my eye on the
larger picture and I did my job, regardless of what it entailed. There were no assurances of anything and we were always alert
for sudden catastrophes, which cropped up all the time and had to be unraveled tactfully and swiftly. We did the best preparations
we knew how, but in the end, all we could
count on was losing sleep, having major communication crises, and flying by the seat of our pants.

We appreciated having time to plan these highly demanding undertakings, but we didn’t always get it. I recall a summit in
Helsinki, Finland, starting on September 9, 1990, for which we were given five days to prepare, start to finish. John Towriss,
CNN special events producer, a good friend of mine since we did so much traveling and producing together, was with me in Helsinki
for this summit. He recalls, “The local Helsinki newspaper did a story on CNN, the crazy American network that was trying
to set up in less than a week,” he says. “We were in the midst of the Gulf War, and I’d been in Saudi Arabia where the average
daily temperature was 155 degrees, when I was asked to fly to Helsinki, Finland, for this summit.

“In order to get to Helsinki from Saudi Arabia, I had a stopover in Frankfurt, Germany. I had all the wrong clothes after
being in the heat of the desert. It was so cold in Frankfurt, I bought a sweater at the airport, which turned out to be the
only cold-weather clothing I had the entire time I was in Finland. The local newspaper there took pictures of Wendy and me
in our CNN jackets,” he reminisces, “and when I look back today, we looked like a couple of college kids in our varsity jackets,
shivering from the cold. But we were carrying a lot more responsibility than a college kid does. We were doing our part in
setting up coverage of a summit that could literally change the world.”

Among numerous summit challenges we faced was the fact that each of the four networks vied for the prime anchor locations.
There were huge differences in the relevance of the locations, and the costs varied according to which sites offered the best
view of the main event. Of course, each network wanted the advantage, which meant acquiring and paying for the prime positions
for their reporters. But there really was no way
to make these important allotments in a fair way so we used a draw.

We would put numbers in a hat from 1 to 4, and someone from each network would pull one out. Whoever got number 1 had the
right to choose the best location, and it went backward from there. I always considered Towriss to be lucky since he had drawn
much better numbers than I had over the years, so he was the one who inevitably drew the straw for CNN. And he often pulled
the best numbers. He had pulled a prime location for this Helsinki summit and I was relieved because it promised to be monumental.

The thing is, while all the networks were like family and we smiled and supported one another overtly, we also were trying
to outmaneuver and outfox one another all the time. In fact, we watched each other and our own backs like hawks, which added
to the ongoing stress and battles against time we all waged. That’s known as good old American competition, which is pretty
foreign in a communist country. I remember being in Moscow when we needed setups for the four networks. The Russians had a
controlled press corps and it was difficult for them to grasp the concept of a free press. Why did we need setups for four
cameras instead of one? Couldn’t we all share? We had to educate them about how we did things in America, and they had to
educate us about what they could provide and what they couldn’t.

But the considerable discomfort, confusion, and pressure of these events on so many levels was always offset by the fact that
those of us who were there saw history being made right in front our eyes. What an opportunity for a group of youngsters (only
someone young could keep up with such insane scheduling and loss of sleep!) who knew we were changing the way the world communicated.

So much of producing summit coverage, wherever they were, was getting accustomed to the local timing and logistics. For example,
at a 1988 summit in Moscow, I met with the CNN Moscow bureau chief as soon as we arrived there. It was early in the morning,
I was ready to hit the ground running, when he said, “First things first. We need to make reservations for lunch. When would
you like to eat?”

Exasperated, I said, “There’s so much to do, I really don’t care about lunch right now. Don’t bother with reservations. When
we get hungry, we can go pick something up.”

“You don’t get it, Wendy,” he said. “You’re in Moscow. Food runs out here. We have to make reservations so you and your people
have something to eat. Unless you want to work on empty stomachs all day.”

I was shocked but I acquiesced. We made it to our lunch reservation and I have to say that the food was horrible, fatty brown
meat and wilted lettuce, but at least we got to eat.

I recall being in Beijing, China, when one of my close friends and colleagues, CNN reporter Charles Bierbauer, and I butted
heads. I had the occasional disagreement with my colleagues because we worked too closely under strained circumstances for
us to always see eye to eye. The flare-ups were petty and they amounted to nothing in the end, but I have to say, this disagreement
with Charles taught me a good lesson.

We were walking down the street in Beijing, short on sleep, when we got into a heated (and ridiculous) argument about who
needed to be more focused, a reporter or a producer, a topic that would be compelling only when you’re exhausted, running
on empty, and you need to do something to let off steam.

Charles was busy telling me that his job was to observe, ask, synthesize, and then give his report. He described my job as
“simple logistics,” which angered me.

“Well, whatever you call it,” I argued, “you owe me a lot. I do all this work on the setup and production so you’ll look good.”

“No, you don’t,” he replied. “You do your work because it’s your job. We both do this because it’s our job. I don’t do it
for you and you don’t do it for me. Nobody gets any personal praise or recognition. I just happen to be in front of the camera
and you’re behind it. If I fail or stumble or if you do, that affects us both. We owe everything to our jobs and the people
who pay us. Beyond that, we don’t owe each other anything.”

He was right, I knew that, but I was too annoyed to admit it right then. I rolled my eyes, a habit I had that drove him crazy.
He wagged his finger at me (a habit
he
had that drove
me
crazy), and he said, “Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me.”

“Don’t you wag your finger at me, then,” I responded curtly.

And so I rolled, he wagged, and eventually we got to our location and stopped arguing. I guess we were so attuned to each
other, we were like an old married couple. We knew each other well enough to have a good fight, but when the chips were down,
we were there for each other 100 percent, and we never decided who owed what to whom.

Charles was also with me in 1992, when we landed in Tokyo where President George H. W. Bush was scheduled to attend a state
dinner for 135 diplomats. Right after we landed in Japan, a reporter from each network was given a short interview, a five-minute
sit-down, with the president, and when it was Charles’s turn, he informally asked the president how he was doing.

“It was a long trip,” Bush said. “I feel a little tired and achy, to tell you the truth.”

“We’re all worn out,” Charles told him reassuringly.

About two hours later, President and Barbara Bush arrived at
the home of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa where they were greeted warmly. The dinner was covered by a pool camera, and CNN
was pool that night so I had to monitor the dinner. As the president and the prime minister sat down to eat, the producers
and reporters sat in our work space where we could see the action inside the banquet room on a monitor from that one small
camera feed. We all relaxed a little bit as we chatted, had a bite to eat, and got ready to shut down for the night.