Next time you watch CNN's Headline News, look for former Lompocan Steve Walsh in the background of the set. Steve is a writer for CNN Headline News. In this interview he discusses the experience he gained while living in Lompoc, as well as what it's like in his current job at CNN. If you ever considered a career as a journalist, you'll enjoy his insights.

Lompoc Online: Steve, you left your home in Lompoc about two years ago to take a position at CNN in Atlanta. Can you tell us a little about what your typical workday is like?

Steve: Well, I'm a writer for CNN Headline News - CNN has several networks and that's one of them. Basically I go in from 8:00 until, it's supposed to be until 6:00, but I usually leave around 5:00. When I first get there I spend the day going over the Associated Press wires and international wire stories, just to see what's going on and what we're going to be doing for the day. Typically it takes anywhere from 1 1/2 to two hours before the producers start giving us stories.
We're all sitting there at our own computers, and in my file, all of a sudden, different stories will start to appear with my initials on them. It can be anything from local stuff, national stories, international stories, business, health or whatever. And when I look in the file it will say, here's the story, here's how I'd like you to write it and then information on the video or graphics that we're going to use with it. Then I look for that story in the wires.

The motto of Headline News is "Keep It Quick and Very Fast" so it's basically just headline, literally, like "There was a plane crash, here's how many people were injured and here's a little bit about what's happening now." It's just enough to give a little bit about what's going on in the news but not enough to give you the entire story. The anchor that I write for is on the air on the east coast from noon until six -- that's Chuck Roberts -- and we're writing scripts just for him. So throughout the day I'm waiting for new assignments. Most of them take, I'd say, thirty to forty minutes to complete. Then they're edited by a copy editor and they go through several sets of eyes before they make it to air. It comes in waves. They say at Headline News it's "feast or famine" because, if it's really busy, you're really hopping and things are moving pretty fast. But on a slow day you can do quite a bit of work in the morning and then you can have literally about two hours where nothing happens, so you're just waiting basically. Luckily we're able to pass the time by looking on the Internet, or we can take a walk or whatever, but we're pretty much supposed to stick around and wait. I would say it's kind of like a fireman: some days there might be a fire, and some days there might not be, but either way you have to sit and wait for it.

L.O.: Is it difficult to make the copy concise? What factors do you have to consider to get all the information down?

Steve: Well, actually, it's a funny thing. I graduated from Fresno state in '95 and from there I worked at a newspaper up in San Joaquin County. Then I got the job at the Santa Maria Times. So I had done print all that time, which is very long, very detailed and very in-depth. When I got to Headline News -- you take a writing test and they say, "OK, you know all the basic skills" -- and it's kind of like, throw all that stuff out the window that you learned because you need to tell a story in thirty seconds. Thirty seconds is three or four sentences -- it took me a long time to retrain myself. They would read my work and say, "you've got too much in here", or "you've got details here that you don't need" and there's no time for it. Instead of the copy editor taking whatever you give him and reworking it you've got to learn how to do it their way, and it was very difficult for a long time. I struggled with it because I wanted to do the newspaper style and put all these details in and tell a nice little story. You don't really even have time to put much style into the story. It's very clinical: here's what happened, here's the effect of it and here's what happening tomorrow, and that's it. You can't go into anything.

Sometimes we have the opportunity to tell a story. With the election, we did a lot of political stories obviously, and, instead of us telling the entire story, we'd do what they call a "toss". If there's a new law being passed, we'll say, "President Clinton says the law will help a million people a year," and then we go to a clip of President Clinton talking a little bit about it. So we let the person tell the story instead of us. Or, when you watch the news they have these packages, you know the guy out on the street will be telling a story about a new building that's being erected, or some new law or whatever. All I have to do is say one or two sentences like, "The flood that happened in Florida last week has caused a million dollars in damages, but officials there say everything should be back on track in two weeks." And then we say, "John Smith has the rest of the story". Then you'll see John Smith the reporter doing his thing.

So going back to your question, for me it was very difficult to learn to make it concise. You have to learn to be boring in a weird way - tell these sterile stories. I have it now - I've been writing for Headline News now just over a year. Now I do it so often that it's fairly automatic, but at first it was very difficult.

L.O.: It sounds like a really interesting job. You have your finger on the pulse of everything that's happening in the world.

Steve: Yeah, it is. It's kind of overwhelming working for a big company like that. You're sitting in front of this computer, which is your window to the world. These stories come over the wires from anywhere and everywhere. The wires are broken down even by state. So I can do a search and it will tell me any major stories that came out of Lompoc today or Santa Maria, or San Luis Obispo. So, yeah, I've been there over two years and I still have a heck of a lot to learn. It's still impressive to me even though I've been there for a while.

L.O.: Before you worked at CNN you were a reporter for the Santa Maria Times for more than two years. What types of stories did you typically cover there?

Steve: Well, I worked in the bureau for Lompoc, so my office was down in the Chamber of Commerce building on the first floor. I was kind of my own boss. I worked alone. The Santa Maria newspaper office is across the street from the airport in Santa Maria so I was down there by myself every day. It was basically me just sniffing around trying to find things to write about. The bulk of what I wrote about was city government things. I wrote a lot about the diatomaceous earth thing with Grefco and the pollution issues that were coming along there. I didn't cover the base, I was just Lompoc. So it was just root around and just see what you can find. I had to go to all the City Council meetings and things like that.

I went to Cabrillo High School -- I graduated from there in '91. I moved to Lompoc from San Jose in '88 so I knew the town very well by the time I got this job. It was kind of nice for me to go back there and work in that town. You're not going to a strange place. When I got there I already knew who I needed to talk to and I knew who ran the city and how things kind of work, so it was easier for me.

The bulk of my stuff was pretty much government related. I would go from one department to the next and say, " Oh, what's going on with you guys this week and see if I could flush a story out of it.

I also got to do a lot of features, too, which was my preference, interviewing some high school senior that did something unusual. I wrote stories about the Cabrillo Aquarium and things like that. On the other side, too, there were some sad stories -- if somebody died, or if there was an accident.

The two biggest and saddest stories I wrote - one was about the shooting at the credit union. I followed that thing from beginning to end. Actually, when the whole case finished I had quit (the SM Times) and I was leaving the next week for Atlanta. The whole legal side of that thing wrapped up about a week before I left to come to Atlanta. So I literally saw that from beginning to end.

I also covered a crash - there was a van load of twelve people who were killed in a crash on the highway going down to Santa Barbara. There was definitely a balance of good and bad.

L.O.: Was it before that that you did the morning news for KTME?

Steve: No, that was while I was at the Santa Maria Times. That didn't last too long; It was only about, I'd say, five or six months. Someone told me, "Oh, they're starting KTME in Lompoc", so I wrote a story about them. I had had previous experience in radio -- when I was in high school in Lompoc, there was a station on H Street called K-Rock, KRQK, and I got hired there when I was sixteen. I would go in on Friday and Saturday night for eight hours and be on the air - I was a DJ for them.

So I told the KTME guys, "Well if you guys ever need any help, I've done radio and that'd be fun." Several months went by and I got a phone call saying, "Are you still interested?" and "Why don't you make us a tape and let us hear it?" They liked it, and I'd go in every morning and just do, oh, I think it was like four news segments. I kind of had a benefit there because I was basically rewording my own stories that I wrote for the Santa Maria Times. I would read my own work, or check out what was going into the Lompoc Record. It was three minute news segments. I would just say, "This is Steve Walsh, KTME. Here's the morning news." I would read my four or five stories and that was it. That lasted for, I guess it was closer to five months. KTME was based in Santa Maria at the time, and they told me that they couldn't afford to keep the bureau going in Lompoc. So they let me go and then, probably a month or two later, they shut down the whole station in Lompoc.

L.O.: When you were living in Lompoc were you interested at that time in staying in the field of writing? Were you a journalism major?

Steve: Yeah, actually, the first job I ever got, I was a cameraman for Comcast in Lompoc when I was in High school and I'd go and I'd shoot the football games or the basketball games, or a graduation. I knew a long time ago that that was what I wanted to do.

I was born in San Jose and lived there until I moved to Lompoc. And my freshman year of high school, that high school had a radio station and I thought, "well that's kind of fun". I have two older sisters who are 10 and 13 years older that I am and when I was growing up, they were really into music. They'd listen to everything -- any kind of Eddie Money, Ted Nugent, Kiss, the BeeGees or whatever. Music was a big part of our life. And so, I thought - "man, being on the radio - that'd be kind of fun!" So I got the job at Comcast, which led to the job at K-Rock, and so I always knew media was going to be where it's at. When I started I thought, "I'm going to be a DJ, that's the job for me." And then when I had done K-Rock for about a year or so I thought, just sitting in a room and playing music, I liked it as a hobby, but I thought I needed to do something a little more challenging. So I went to Fresno State and got a bachelor's degree in journalism. When I was at Fresno State, though, I had considered going into TV news, where I'm at now. So I thought I'm going to be a cameraman, or an editor or something like that.

I think it was my senior year I needed to get a job. I just wanted to get a little extra money. So I went into the campus paper. They needed writers and they hired me and I did that for a couple years and I think my senior year I was the news editor for the paper and then I thought the broadcast side really wasn't for me and that print was where it was at. I was good at it, and every time I took a job I thought, "I still have a lot to learn", but I basically had a skill and I thought I was pretty good at it and I thought, newspaper's where it's at. It's kind of strange because when I was at Fresno State my friends who were in print, I mean that was their emphasis, they really looked down on the TV view. They said, "they just want to be on TV, and they're just pretty faces", and they didn't have a lot of regard for them. So that might have played a little bit into my decision to switch, but overall I just liked writing.

And so I made the switch to print and got my emphasis in print journalism. My first job was a little paper called the Kingsburg Recorder which is in San Joachim County, which is up near Fresno. That was a little weekly paper in this little Swedish town - the town had 1500 people -- it was incredibly small. I did that, and I went to the Santa Maria Times and did that for a time. I still knew that writing was good for me, but there was still a part of me that liked the performance side, or the, not necessarily being in front of the camera, but the technical side - doing editing or just the electronics or things like that. So I thought, if I'm going to try TV news, the best place for me to go would be CNN because they're considered to be one of the best in the business.

I actually went to a job fair down in Los Angeles looking for another print job. And there was a lady there from CNN. When you go to one of these job fairs, it's kind of like a shotgun interview. You've got all these people from any paper you can imagine. You sit down, you give them your resume and your press clippings and you kind of do this fast interview: "Well I've always enjoyed your paper and blah blah, blah" and you've got about five minutes to sell yourself. So I went to all these papers and I went to the CNN booth. And the lady at CNN, I told her my story, and she said if I ever wanted to work there I wouldn't be hired as a reporter, obviously because I didn't have the experience, but I could be hired at one of the entry level jobs. Strangely enough, CNN was the only company that got back to me from that conference. They sent me a writing test. I took the test, sent it in, and they said everything's great and I did two phone interviews with different people and I was actually hired in the satellite department.

My first job at CNN was, when these satellite feeds would come in on the different routers - that's kind of like a channel on a TV. My job was to record them onto a digital system and then it would go into the CNN library. So I did that for about five months. My boss at the time, I told her, you know, "I'm a reporter and I want to get back into that." I went in there with the attitude that I want to get back into the writing, so she actually let me out of my contract early knowing that I wanted to get back into the writing. And I interviewed for the job at Headline News and I got it. I'm trying to move up the ladder as fast as I can. But going back to your question, writing and journalism are definitely where I think I belong.

L.O.: I've heard that CNN is composed of a lot of younger people, under thirty. Is that accurate?

Steve: That's definitely true, yeah. It's funny because I'm at the point now where I've been at Headline news for about one year and I'm charting my next move. You know -- promotion and that kind of thing. What I'd like to do eventually is get out of the field and be a producer or something. And I'm really anxious and I want to get that job. And I kind of do a reality check -- wait a minute -- look at the people who have those jobs. Most of the people who have those higher level jobs are in their upper middle thirties. But everybody else, the young crowd, like you said in their twenties or so, they do everything at my level. There's definitely a split, it's kind of like, most of the building is young, but there are no or few young people in the higher level jobs. It's the kind of company where you have to pay your dues and you have to be patient. You've got to be willing to do your time in these different jobs. I've been there almost two years and I've seen a half a dozen people who got there right out of college quit. They say, "It's taking too long. I want to be a reporter right now", or "I want to be an editor right now." And it doesn't work that way so you have to be patient. It's the kind of company where, if you are patient and do your job well, you'll be rewarded. And if you're persistent also. You'll get where you want to go but you've got to just relax. You can't put unreasonable expectations on yourself because there's a very slim chance that it's going to happen.

L.O.: Do you notice any way in which your Lompoc experience affects your writing today?

Steve: Well let's see - affects my writing today... I would say more so it affects my attitude towards journalism. When I got hired in Headline News the woman who hired me would compare me to the people who came to CNN right out of college, who have no field experience and have never really done any real interviews with people for stories. You learn what it's like out there in the world of journalism, the good and the bad and when you come to CNN...

There are a lot of young people at CNN who complain about either salary or that they're not moving up fast enough. I say to them, and my boss has said to me, they don't know how good they have it. Because it's hard to get this far, if you're young especially. They should appreciate that fact that they're working for one of the major media companies in the world. So, working at Lompoc has got me to appreciate where I'm at now. And I'm still at the lower levels, in the big picture I've got a long way to go.

I really appreciate the people who you see on T.V. who are out there in the field interviewing people. It definitely takes a talent to, not only ask the right questions, but to be personable. There is some kind of strategic thing, you need to know the finesse, how to get people to be comfortable around you, because you're a stranger coming into their house. A lot of times I think, hey, if I was on the other end of this would I want to talk to this Steve Walsh, reporter? I don't know who this guy is. How do I know if he's going to tell my story accurately? It's tough, so you need to learn those skills. Being in Lompoc and then working at the Times taught me those things, kind of the finer points of journalism.

At CNN, doing what I do, I'm kind of disconnected from that because my job is basically rewriting somebody else's work. I'm looking at a story by associated press and condensing it into a thirty second sound byte. So in a lot of respects it's not really original work. You can't really put a lot of nuance in your story or be incredibly creative. They don't even want you to use very difficult vocabulary words, where in the newspaper you can do that and you can be clever and you can paint a picture. My job now, it's just black and white. You just tell them what happened and move on. So I learned a lot being in Lompoc, that's for sure.

L.O.: You mentioned that you'd like to see Lompoc Online interview some of the interesting people in Lompoc and I wondered if you know of anyone in particular who stuck in your mind?

Steve: I could give you a really long list. If you get to know a town as well as I got to know Lompoc, in my opinion everybody has a good story to tell. Overall, working there and living there was a great experience and I definitely miss it.

When I found your website, that same day I was looking at other websites that had pictures of the town and I got nostalgic and I thought, that was really a nice place to live! I moved there when I was a sophomore in high school with my family. My parents actually just moved from there -- they moved to Fulsom which is near Sacramento. What I consider the important part of my life happened in that town. Nowadays my parents say, "Do you think that was a good move?" and I say, "Oh, 100%!". Living in a small town is the way to go for kids. I always joke about Lompoc, it's one of those places where you can't wait to get out of, but when you get older you can't wait to get back to, even just to visit. It's a nice place to come back to and remember where you grew up. A lot of people say about the South -- people are friendly, which is very true. But I found the same thing to be true in Lompoc. That was a good place to grow up.