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Photo by Thomas Miller

Former Nightline producer Jon Ebinger coached students on some of the challenges they may face as producers. He spoke to several classes during his visit this week.

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Eight-time Emmy winner Jon Ebinger visited campus this week, making stops in several classrooms and spending time with students to share his insight on the challenges that await the newest entrants into the broadcast news world.

Ebinger, who has spent the last five years teaching media related courses at George Washington University, spoke about the future of the broadcast industry and his time as a producer at the ABC news program Nightline during a Wednesday morning visit to associate professor Jim Kelly’s J210 Visual Communications class.

Ebinger told the class to keep an open mind about the stories they work on.

“Don’t ever presume you know what the story is,” Ebinger said, “even if you’re interviewing your mother.”

Ebinger showed two of his stories from his time at Nightline, one about the murder of a Baltimore woman and her family, and the other about Hilary Clinton’s interest in campaigning to be New York’s senator.

The two pieces were very different in their presentation and subject matter, but Ebinger said that no matter what your subject matter is, you’ve got to have a plan and you’ve got to be willing to change that plan on the fly, especially during an interview where one question could totally change the way you present your story.

“You’ve got to know how to frame a question,” Ebinger said. “You’ve got to be able to recognize when you’re getting an answer that contradicts what you already know, and sometimes you’ve got to decide if that changes how you present your story.”

Ebinger spoke from experience. In addition to Nightline and other ABC News programs, Ebinger worked with ESPN, CNBC, the BBC, National Geographic and the Radio Television Digital News Foundation. He has launched shows and has been involved with many aspects of production for both live and packaged news.

Sophomore Barb Anguiano was inspired by Ebinger’s talk.

“I like the fact that he was encouraging,” Anguiano said. “I'm glad we were able to see the things we’re doing now applied. You realize that I could do that someday.”

During the end of his talk, Ebinger said students should be prepared for jobs that require “five-tool players,” journalists who do everything on a story from shooting it to editing it to presenting it, something Ebinger didn’t have to do during his time at Nightline.

“There’s a lot of weight on your shoulders these days,” Ebinger said.

Photo by Thomas Miller

Ebinger said students should be prepared for jobs that require “five-tool players,” journalists who do everything on a story from shooting it to editing it to presenting it.

After Ebinger finished his lecture, Kelly told students that Ebinger had been impressed by the amount of work they put into their projects, which required students to shoot their own photos, capture their own audio and write the story as well.

“The goal of my course is to get students to see the relationships between theory and practice,” Kelly said after class. He used Ebinger’s talk as an example of that.

“What he talked about is that you don’t write stories for video or print,” Kelly said. “That’s a key similarity between journalists of any era and the future. It’s about producing stories.”

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