My first appearance in the media was my birth announcement, which appeared in (among others) the Sparta (Ga.) Ishmaelite. Could I make that up?
If a proper lady’s name appears in a newspaper only three times, I am most improper. My scrapbook includes a photo of me, hair wildly uncombed, with the principal of my nursery school; me posing as Sleeping Beauty in the Columbia Mall, part of some odd Halloween or April Fool’s edition of the Columbia Flyer; and, of course, the “It’s Academic” photo, which was used in local print ads. As a writer, I maintain I’ve received a disproportionate amount of media attention because I’m a former journalist. (Squint closely at a photo of Jesse Jackson in a 1988 edition of the San Antonio Light and you’ll see a very disgruntled young Lippman, out-of-focus in the background.)
But this, this — http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101862.html — this was new. I’m not mentioned by name, but a friend who knows that the writer is, in fact, my former colleague, e-mailed this to me.
Any media moments? Man (or woman) on the street, a chance photograph? Bylines don’t count. If they did, my ladyhood would be even more compromised.
I won’t ask, either
This is a terrific interview/discussion by/with Jeff Abbott which I had not seen before: http://www.jeffabbott.com/writer_lippman.html#top
I’ll squeal, sort of. If you are familiar with the tv shows Homicide or The Wire or The Corner, for instance, you may be able to figure it out on your own. He has also written several books, some of which have subsequently become these tv shows. Famous person, why are we skirting around this issue?
Does getting mentioned when a newspaper article is written about one’s husband count? Or what about being the one who’s face and name are used when going after publicity for Baltimore’s Flower Mart?
First off, girlfriend who wrote that article needs to take a couple of deep breaths and some Zoloft, and talk to some friends who should give her a big old reality check. Nothing is perfect as it seems, God knows. Is she over 16 – does she not know real people? Oy! I found it really annoying.
I have had what I think are fun media appearances for a “civilian” – twice in the New York Times (a letter about Springsteen, an article about a program the Bronte Society ran which I attended), NPRs “Whadda You Know”, a whole bunch of local TV stuff (I am usually good chick on the street fodder).
The weirdest one was my six seconds on Oprah. In the course of a show on Philadelphia (my hometown) being the fattest city on America, I am on camera saying “You can have a cheesesteak in one hand and an orange in the other, and in the end, it’s your choice.” I heard my voice before I saw my face, and the whole thing just freaked me out. It shocked me how many people saw it, and how I heard from folks I had no idea would see it. All honor the media power of O.
I have to share this one about my husband. As a kid, he was an actor on a live Christian radio drama that was recorded in the U.S. and broadcast in many countries. (His mother was the organist, so he got a lot of the kid speaking parts.) The shows he recorded were mostly in the 1960s.
A few years ago, we were flipping through the dial on the shortwave radio and heard a familiar voice. It was my husband, at about age 8, acting in some schmaltzy skit from one of these radio drama episodes that was currently being broadcast somewhere in South Africa!
It’s very eerie hearing yourself as you were decades ago, knowing the tape you’re hearing is being played somewhere halfway around the world.
I know this isn’t a print media moment, per se, but it was a one-of-a-kind moment for us all the same.
From 11- 15 I did a few local commercials. One REALLY embarrassing one was for a “research center” in DC. Naive me thought it had something to do with books, but no, I should be so lucky. It was actually an acne research commercial. I was picked out of all the other girls because I had a great complexion. This benefitted the makeup artist when he was applying my fake pimples. NIce, right? Well it gets better. My best friend was in VA Beach watching tv with some friends and a guy says, “wow that girl would be hot if she didn’t have those zits!” My friend looked up to see me standing in front of the studio being made fun of by a bunch of kids. She tried to explain that my skin was, infact, perfectly clear and she knew because she was my best friend. I don’t know if they ended up really believing her or not.
I’ve also been quoted in many trade magazines for work. And yes, I’m the dork that googles her own name to see what they’ve got on me!
When I was in sixth grade, I appeared on National Television – wooga, wooga, as a panelist on “Do You Know?” – a kiddy version of “College Bowl” filmed in New York. We had a book to read and answered questions about it – even though the book was about Japan, one of my favorite subjects int eh world, my team lost. I still have, in a scrapbook, that my mom kept, the letter, and possibly the check stub for the $5 release we were paid.
Let’s see – the photo in the paper when I was in high school; for some reason I was filing something at the West Hartford public library (where I worked) and they took a shot of me from above; you can clearly see my peace symbol ring. Cool.
The funniest is a shot of my in a publicity brochure for a hotel in Massachusetts; I’m not exactly svelte but I sat on the diving board of the hotel’s pool and my picture appeared for god knows how long. I think I still have that too.
finally there’s the quote from me that appeared – wooga wooga – in the New York Times. not my best line but it was in a report on Worldcon – the World Science Fiction Convention – in Boston in ’89. And I had the luck? to be on an early panel; the reporter was, we were told, the college roommate of an sf writer so he atleast went to a panel or two, rather than just doing the annual “hah, hah, look at the weirdos in Spock ears” story that normally shows up about s.f. conventions.
I completely forgot that I was on Phil Donahue, talking about coed dorms. There were almost 20 of us from Northwestern tapped to be on the show. This was back when Donahue was very cutting edge. (That is, pre-Oprah.)
Oh, I so got the article! And Laura, even though you’re a total stranger I also idolspize you (but don’t worry, I’m not a stalker and there’s a list). But you do have my dream life–successfully self-employed as a mystery writer in Baltimore. I didn’t even know about the lightened hair, etc. etc. It’s the getting to live and write in Baltimore part that I idolspize. I can’t write (at all) and am actually happily living in the Colorado mountains but it’s still fun to idolspize!
When I was in college I appeared briefly on the Steve Allen Show, the forerunner of the Tonight Show
In 1968 I married. My husband was the unit publicist for a film that was shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a slow week, so he sent press releases to all the trade papers and our wedding announcement appeared in Variety, Daily Variety, Film Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, and goodness knows where else. Our wedding pictures were taken by Gordon Parks Jr and we awaiting publication in LIFE magazine when that folded. Gordon was later killed in an airplane accident I believe.
Also, a photo I once took was printed in the NYTimes WITH A CREDIT!!!
I was on tv a number of times as a kid. First on a show called Big Brother (no relation to the current version), then Romper Room, followed by Rex Trailer’s Boomtown, Bozo the Clown, and one other whose name I can’t remember. The last three were because my mother was a bit ahead of her time. Nowadays its very common to have kids birthdays at Chucky Cheese, McDonalds, etc. But that wasn’t the case back in the late 60s/early 70s. My mother got the bright idea to get tickets to local tv shows as my birthday party. So we had all the neighborhood kids on each of those shows as my party. We probably stopped for ice cream or something on the way home. She figured she really made out on the deal. No prep work other than getting the tickets and no clean up.
Yep. The first was in early Sept. of 1985, in my local paper, for getting pulled up on stage by Bruce Springsteen during the second leg of the Born in the USA tour–it was an embarrassing article, making me sound like a total geek, but there I was. Actually, come to think of it, I was in the paper several weeks prior to that, for being one of the people who stood in line overnight to get my Springsteen tickets.
More recently, I’ve been in the local papers, the Romeo Observer & the Source
. It’s fun, though, and I get a good laugh out of it–how often are librarians famous for brief periods of time?
http://www.sourcenewspapers.com/stories/12606/loc_story3001.shtml
(northern Macomb County, MI) for the library programs I’ve been coordinating. Front page for both Mystery Comes to Michigan last September, and Romance Comes to Romeo this Feb.–both programs featured authors. I doubt my picture helped the attendance for the programs, but I’ll do anything to get people to the library for the good programs I put together
Laura, congrats on being “idolspized”, way cool. It’s another achievement!
It’s funny that you brought this topic up, I’m doing a photo/scrap book for my children, of my life before they were born, with photos and explanations of who the relatives are that they never met and different events in my life. Something I never had on my parents /grandparents. Anyway..I came across an old photo from “The Avenue” in Baltimore showing me as the first Miss Eastwood Little League, back in 1958.My other couple of mentions were because I was somebody’s sister or wife. I was mentioned once in the Sports section because my brother was soccer star in college and they were talking about how my boyfriend taught him to play. I got mentioned when my ex and I were moving out of town and he was leaving the band he was in.
I finally made the paper as me again in an article about parents having Granddogs instead of grandchildren. (made the front page of the section with a photo of me and my grandpuppy). When I worked for the IRS I on was TV and radio several times in tax help shows. The only time I really wanted to be on TV was to go to the “Buddy Dean” show and when I finally turned 14 (youngest age they would allow) they took it off the air>
I was the Wash Post metro quote of the week (or was it the day)- because the reporter took my statement out of context so I sounded like a complete idiot. Many friends repeated it to me- and no one wanted to hear the whole story.
I will not ask- maybe everyone else knows- who the famous person’s famous boyfriend is.
There is a disadvantage of living in a small town with a daily newspaper, plus a twice-a-week “good news” paper. One’s picture is often in the paper…especially when the City Council isn’t fighting with the mayor.
It wasn’t a big deal, as director of the library, to have my picture in our paper. And it ran next to my movie review column I wrote for over twenty years.
But last night’s picture..large on the front page was a low blow as I appeared in living (well really bad) color on the front page arranging books as a volunteer (the only one) for the library book sale.
But my favorite was in the Bowling Green paper a number of years ago. Margaret Maron and me when she spoke at that library.
But in none of them do I look glamorous or with well toned arms as the beautiful Laura. However, my hair did “lighten” with age.
Syd’s picture has been in The Sun at least three times, one accompanied an article written about him by our famous person. There was also an article in the Jewish Times, with accompanying picture.
Twice his name appeared in New York Times. To this day, if his name is googled, the one quote from him that still appears is one in which he was misquoted.
I spent my first two years of school at a community college and my last year there I was editor of the campus newspaper. My last semester there I was trying to find money to transfer to 4-year school and was getting shot down left and right. In a fit, I shot off a raging editorial about how hard it was for a middle-class white male to get financial aid.
Now, I should also mention this was an inner-city community college with a mostly African-American population who had worked very hard to get where they were. I was a smart-mouthed 19-year-old white kid from the suburbs with no check on my authority on the paper.
Several rallies to throw me off the paper, out of student government, and into jail resulted and I accidentally stumbled into the middle of the biggest one when I was trying to get into the cafeteria for lunch. I was immediately surround by four large men the size of small trucks who looked like they wanted to turn me inside out. At that moment, a photographer from the city paper snapped a shot of me about to be sacrificed. It appeared in four-color on most of the front page of the next day’s paper.
I had the photo framed.
My first TV appearance was on the Lorenzo Show, a local Baltimore production which aired live on Saturday mornings. I was about 5, and don’t remember much about the show, other than pulling away from Lorenzo the sad-faced clown when he tried to get me to join his dance line.
Next was as a contestant on “It’s Academic.” Coincidentally, I appeared the same season as a perky dark-haired student from Howard County who later made a name for herself as an author and hostess (mistress?) of a popular website.
I’ve been interviewed several times over the years by both TV and print reporters, usually because the folks with whom I work have done something controversial or stupid. I’ve learned two lessons the hard way: never look directly into the camera, and never joke with a print reporter. Your off-hand joke will be his third paragraph.
Thanks, June- I got it. Thank goodness for google.