Diary of a Chase Producer

Kim Taylor-Galway (right) and colleagues in the CBC Toronto headquarters.

By Kim Taylor-Galway
Associate Producer, CBC News Network

I was recently at a get-together. People started talking about what they thought the biggest stories of the past year were: the Fords, Amanda Todd, the High River floods, the Lac Mgantic train disaster. The list was as diverse as people's opinions.

When the host turned to me and asked me to chime in, I realized I had no quick response. Rather embarrassingly, my mind had wandered. It struck me that for every story they named, I had booked at least one guest. I was recalling these people one by one: mothers, fathers, witnesses, community members, political leaders, police officers.

They call what I do "chase producing". When a story breaks, it's my job to get a guest to air to talk about it. Chasing people on the fly is an adrenaline rush that can be demanding and often times, frustrating. You never start off knowing as much as you wish you did, and so much can go wrong despite your best efforts. But when it works, nothing is better. An eloquent guest can bring light to an important but technical story. A guest who speaks from the heart becomes an unforgettable face to a story of victory - or all too often, tragedy.

The challenges begin as soon as I'm assigned, before even asking a guest to join the program, because first I've got to find them. And in some cases, like breaking news disaster stories, I don't even know who I'm looking for. Witnesses? Business owners? Is there a time zone difference? Are there language barriers? Has power been knocked out to the affected area? Are phone lines down (if so forget looking up phone numbers online or through 411)? Are the people I track down reliable? Agenda-driven? Authentic? Credible?

Much to assess, and usually in very little time.

Like every chaser I know, I've created my own approach that saves time and makes me as efficient as possible. The best way to hunt down leads is often on social media. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are a chaser's best friend.

Within every story lies an undercurrent, and social media is an excellent place to find that too. I try to find common themes, groups of people with different opinions, links to other coverage. All of these pieces help create an overall landscape or road map for how I book guests for interviews.

Some of the toughest stories to work on are the ones where guests are likely to be emotional. The aim is to draw out a guest's most heartfelt thoughts without exploiting them. Then there are what we call "accountability interviews" that ask tough questions of decision makers, often politicians. Many people ask me who'd want to agree to live national television for either kind of interview.

But you'd be surprised.

One of the most important parts of my job involves finding reasons people WOULD want to agree to be guests on national television. While every person is different, there is usually at least one viable argument for why agreeing to an interview can be a very good idea. And so long as I've approached people with genuine respect, an understanding of the story and sensitivity to whatever difficult position they're in, many, many times people have said "yes".

Part of interview negotiating is also helping guest-candidates understand I'm not merely asking them to join the network as a kind of favour, but that the invitation to appear on television is also a valuable opportunity for them to share their part of the story, adding something that's currently missing from the coverage. People often don't realize at first how powerful their perspective may be.

In my opinion, and I may be against the grain on this, the most important element to chase producing, aside from tireless, relentless determination, is to truly imagine the guest's point of view and work from there. If I can mentally walk a moment in their shoes, the rest often falls into place for me.

That isn't to say booking always happens on the first call. There is just no predicting how long it will take to get a guest to agree. It can take seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and even years. I've had cases of it taking all of these. It can take one call or many; I may send dozens of emails with no response or encouraging answer for what seems like eternity. Until one day a guest-candidate may change his or her mind...

As chasers, we do our best to control the parameters and ensure a smooth interview for all concerned. But every once in a while, as if to keep us humble and on our toes, surprises do come up:

Waiting: More than three hours after a scheduled interview I booked for Peter Mansbridge, our Rob and Doug Ford interview finally happened. Mansbridge, the crew and I waited patiently in Mayor Ford's office, watching Council chambers on the mayor's TV. Council proceeded to vote on a seemingly endless string of items and sub-items that would eventually lead to many of the Mayor's duties being allocated to Councillor Norm Kelly. Mansbridge, knowing how badly I started to feel about this dragging on so long, offered me this comforting perspective, "This isn't the longest I've waited. I waited four days for Hugo Chavez. And he never did show up."

The no-notice cancellation: Usually, I do my chasing on the phone or by email. There was one instance where after arranging for an interview I was asked to fly out to B.C. to meet two guests in person. There I was on the tarmac, moments prior to take off, when one of the guests called to say they had cold feet and the interview was off. When I landed in B.C., I tried everything to persuade them to follow through with the booking, including a personal visit to one of their houses. While this was a meaningful and genuine step in the process of trust and relationship building, that particular trip saw me return home with little more than pretzels and jet lag. Or so I thought. The interview happened a month later.

The guest 180: Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, guests end up quite different on TV than they sounded on the phone.Sometimes the shy ones end up saying all the right things at the right times with the right emotion. And other times, we get the guest into the studio chair under the lights with their microphone on and it's like all the fantastic stories and opinion they shared on the telephone never happened. Don't even ask me about one guest who admitted mid-interview she had taken crack before coming on the air.

Most awkward location I've booked a guest from: In the middle of an ultrasound. I had chased this particular person for days. He finally phoned back. I took the call and hoped he wouldn't notice - and he didn't.

Most worried I ever felt for a guest: I booked a taxi for an 80-something woman we were interviewing at a studio in Detroit. For reasons I still don't understand the driver stranded her in a pretty tough neighbourhood. It took several angry calls to the cab company before she was retrieved and taken home safely.

Despite the challenges that present themselves, the end-result of chase producing is, for me, rewarding in a way that is unparalleled. It's difficult to describe the profound privilege that comes from calling complete strangers who, instead of hanging up on me, so generously offer their time and consideration of our invitations. And it's nothing less than humbling to have people central to a news story open their heart to me, sharing raw and at, at times, very personal emotion more as though I were a long lost friend than a member of the media. Their agreement to speak is testament to an almost inexplicable level of goodwill among humankind, especially when these people feel their most vulnerable.

On a professional level, I share with other chase producers a sense of pride that comes from booking interviews that offer greater insight into the stories the network is covering. Not everyone I call or email is willing to communicate with me, but each person has been a window to my greater insight into news, and even more significantly, humanity. I am grateful to them all.

The job of a chaser is neither easy nor predictable, but it's always interesting, ultimately rewarding and a distinct honour to experience. Even if the job is difficult to explain at parties!