Speaker 1: I'm a homegrowl that knows a little bit about everything.
Speaker 2: And everybody, you know, if you don't lie about that.
Speaker 3: Right, Hey, y'all, what's up. It's Laura de Rosa and
Speaker 3: this is the Latest with Laura de Rosa. This is
Speaker 3: your daily dig on all things pop culture, entertainment, news
Speaker 3: and all of the conversations that shake the room.
Speaker 4: Baby.
Speaker 3: Now we are getting into and I'm so happy we've
Speaker 3: been doing this so much lately on the podcast. We're
Speaker 3: getting into another conversation that is gonna shake the room. Uh,
Speaker 3: And it's about conversations that shook the room. So I was,
Speaker 3: you know, honored to be invited. Shout out to Jureka
Speaker 3: Duncan from CBS News. Uh, I was honored to be
Speaker 3: invited by her and her Association of Black Journalists New
Speaker 3: York team to speak on a panel about the experience
Speaker 3: of covering the Diddy trial. Now, you guys know, here
Speaker 3: the Latest with Laura Rosa, the podcast that the Diddy
Speaker 3: trial and that coverage was such a you know, a
Speaker 3: time for us, not only because I think you know
Speaker 3: a lot of people were able to really hear my
Speaker 3: voice separately of anywhere else you've ever heard.
Speaker 1: It, but also it was such a hustle.
Speaker 3: I mean every day from you know, early four am,
Speaker 3: five am mornings with the breakfast club, going right to court,
Speaker 3: finishing my day six seven pm, and getting back up
Speaker 3: and doing it again, to the point where I was
Speaker 3: like cleetwalking, and you guys will know, we were doubling
Speaker 3: up on content.
Speaker 1: And I was very honest about you guys.
Speaker 3: I was very honest with you guys about just how
Speaker 3: I was feeling, how I was handling it, and everything
Speaker 3: I was seeing in the courtroom.
Speaker 5: And it stuck.
Speaker 3: So I was joined by some amazing journalists, you know
Speaker 3: the outlets in the room. Shout out to Picks eleven,
Speaker 3: which is a local New York traditional news station. There
Speaker 3: was you know, ABC was in the room. You also
Speaker 3: had let me actually get their names so I can
Speaker 3: make sure giving these beautiful journal journalists their credit. So
Speaker 3: on the panel you had Armind Wiggins shout out to
Speaker 3: Arma Yaa. I love Armand who is a YouTube content creator.
Speaker 3: Celia Bussy who is a senior field producer with TMZ.
Speaker 1: I worked with her there for some time.
Speaker 3: Darla Miles who was a reporter for ABC seven, Jay
Speaker 3: Dow who is a reporter for Pixe eleven, and then
Speaker 3: Jureka Duncan, who was the moderator of the conversation who
Speaker 3: I mentioned in the beginning of this from CBS News,
Speaker 3: and I was there on behalf of the Breakfast Club
Speaker 3: and the Latest with Lona Rosa, and we got into
Speaker 3: some conversations. They weren't the easiest because covering the Diddy
Speaker 3: trial and all the things we learned weren't but we
Speaker 3: had it. Let's get into it.
Speaker 6: Hello, everybody, thank you so much for coming. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 6: you look so familiar. I know who you are. I
Speaker 6: really appreciate you all taking the time to come together
Speaker 6: to hear some of what we had to say and
Speaker 6: experience while covering the Diddy trial. Welcome officially to behind
Speaker 6: the scenes, behind the headlines covering the p Diddy trial
Speaker 6: from start to sentencing. So for many of us, coverage
Speaker 6: of Sean Diddy combe started two years ago, almost to
Speaker 6: the day when his ex longtime girlfriend, Cassie Ventura filed
Speaker 6: her civil lawsuit. More allegations were lodged. Colmes was later
Speaker 6: arrested in September of twenty twenty four. A federal criminal
Speaker 6: trial followed in May of this year and by now
Speaker 6: you know the rest. The now fifty six year old
Speaker 6: Grammy Award winning artists mogul and father of seven, was
Speaker 6: convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
Speaker 6: His release date is June of twenty twenty eight. Combs's
Speaker 6: conviction was a pivotal moment in the culture that has
Speaker 6: shaped many of us in this room. I grew up
Speaker 6: listening to Colms's music, and on the outside he represented
Speaker 6: someone who made it in spite of But when it
Speaker 6: was all over, I felt it was important to come
Speaker 6: back together with my colleagues sitting right here to reflect
Speaker 6: on a once in a lifetime memory trial that shaped
Speaker 6: all of us in different ways. So tonight you will
Speaker 6: get a chance to speak with a diverse group of reporters, producers,
Speaker 6: content creators for a revealing and respectful conversation about the
Speaker 6: trial of the year. Clap it up, We're gonna make
Speaker 6: some noise.
Speaker 7: Hi, it's Selia Simone.
Speaker 8: I'm here with Arma Legasp I'm j Dal This is
Speaker 8: the latest with Lona Rosa.
Speaker 4: Well that you have been in every single day.
Speaker 9: Frega, how wout you describe Passi's demeanor which you took
Speaker 9: the stands today.
Speaker 10: Welcome to the Dissecting Vinny podcast.
Speaker 2: Everybody's talking about jury.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that when you're telling you right now,
Speaker 3: it's true that I do believe one day, Willie, And
Speaker 3: if it is a.
Speaker 10: Thank you love, what do you make of the government
Speaker 10: strength in this case compared to when you represented him
Speaker 10: twenty six years ago.
Speaker 7: And just stepped out of the courtroom? And tensions were
Speaker 7: extremely high on day fourteen of the Ditty trial, prosecutors
Speaker 7: accusing Ditty's attorney Ryan Steele of yelling at and humiliating
Speaker 7: Ditty's formal assistant Niya, who's on the stands today.
Speaker 11: Mia had a heartbreaking testimony in which she spoke about
Speaker 11: being suchly assaulted by did He.
Speaker 7: She mentioned seeing tons of abuse.
Speaker 4: Could you imagine somebody telling you, do you know what
Speaker 4: your problem is? Could you went away for a view
Speaker 4: the video.
Speaker 12: Jurra Island for a hour.
Speaker 7: And I joked with you a couple of days ago
Speaker 7: about you know, footsopb the next.
Speaker 10: Generation of news gatherers who offer their own opinion.
Speaker 4: I'm not on either side. Let me just start there.
Speaker 4: I'm not on either side.
Speaker 9: Did He is facing life in prison and convicted. So
Speaker 9: let's break down what he's actually charged with. There are
Speaker 9: five counts total in the indictment, rocketeering conspiracy, rico, two
Speaker 9: counts of sex trafficking, and two counts of transportation to
Speaker 9: engage in prostitution. Okay, let's start with Rigo. It was
Speaker 9: a lot that was passed in nineteen seventy so that
Speaker 9: the gun making takedown the mob. So he was found
Speaker 9: not guilty of the racketeering charge. He was found not
Speaker 9: guilty of trafficking. Well, he was found guilty of was
Speaker 9: the prostitution.
Speaker 7: So the first verdict Todd racketearing conspiracy, not guilty. You
Speaker 7: saw him do this, pop and so top it all off.
Speaker 11: This week President Nowald Trump was teasing and alluding to possibly.
Speaker 4: Part of thing.
Speaker 11: Sean Combs, Sewan Buffy Combs, SHAWNA did it comes there's
Speaker 11: a prostitution for Casy Ventura guilty.
Speaker 4: He was shocked.
Speaker 7: He was visibly affected when that one came. You could
Speaker 7: tell he.
Speaker 8: Was not a brain for that to come like a kinetic,
Speaker 8: like a real serious shock because I think you know,
Speaker 8: once you start hearing the work, heinditive, not guilty.
Speaker 5: Bird, it's there.
Speaker 8: Maybe have been an assumption that there was going to
Speaker 8: continue to be a not guilty verdict.
Speaker 6: This was the most important day of this case. His
Speaker 6: sentence is fifty months of incarceration at NIFFOLO, which is
Speaker 6: the lead of turning for Combs asking for more time
Speaker 6: to list the recommendations, also supervised release five years. No
Speaker 6: reaction from Colnes. He is still sitting and there's a
Speaker 6: five hundred thousand dollars fine.
Speaker 8: Sean Combs dropped a different and just bowed his head
Speaker 8: and just pray.
Speaker 6: This is probably the first trial where I've seen so
Speaker 6: much social media presence, TikTok, Instagram, bloggers, people out here.
Speaker 6: So even though you're not supposed to look at your
Speaker 6: phone and you're not supposed to read messages from familin
Speaker 6: friends about this case, there's a lot of information out there.
Speaker 13: Man.
Speaker 6: Thank you and thank you to Ron Thompson who put
Speaker 6: that lovely video together. So before we get started on
Speaker 6: the questions that I have, and we're going to open
Speaker 6: it up to Q and A, I want everybody to
Speaker 6: just take thirty seconds to introduce themselves, who they are
Speaker 6: and why they're here. Thirty seconds, Lauren, you can start
Speaker 6: us off.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I'm Lauren le Rosa.
Speaker 3: I am the senior news producer at The Breakfast Club
Speaker 3: and I am the host and a creator of the
Speaker 3: Latest with Lona Roads, of the podcast on the Black
Speaker 3: Effect Network via iHeart.
Speaker 1: And I'm here because I was. I was there. We
Speaker 1: were in the courthouse and covering the trial.
Speaker 3: I was covering it for the radio show The Breakfast
Speaker 3: Club that I worked for, and then it spilled over
Speaker 3: into the podcast, and then it took its own life
Speaker 3: on social media, and it's just been such a conversation
Speaker 3: because it was such a big deal in pop culture
Speaker 3: and you know, in conversation.
Speaker 1: So thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: My name is Jay Dawe.
Speaker 10: I'm a correspondent with wpix pix eleven News and the
Speaker 10: host of Community Close Up with Jay dow And I
Speaker 10: was in the trenches with these amazing journalists. I'm not
Speaker 10: going to break it down and call them content creators
Speaker 10: because we were all there in the courtroom with pads
Speaker 10: in our laps, pens or pencils taking notes that are
Speaker 10: re court. You can't bring in cameras, And it was
Speaker 10: an amazing experience, an eye opening experience for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is my twenty sixty.
Speaker 10: Year reporting in New York City, and this is the
Speaker 10: first time that I saw our business come full circle,
Speaker 10: the evolution. I felt like this was the transition where
Speaker 10: you had, you know, one hundred years ago radio stars
Speaker 10: and silent movie stars looking to the future.
Speaker 2: And I saw folks.
Speaker 10: Like Lauren, like armand sitting there doing what they do,
Speaker 10: delivering the same material to their own audiences, and I
Speaker 10: was I was so impressed. So I'm honored to be
Speaker 10: here and it's great to be a part of this.
Speaker 8: Good evening everyone. I'm Darla Miles, a correspondent with ABC
Speaker 8: seven New York. I have been on the streets of
Speaker 8: New York City for sixteen years. I have been in
Speaker 8: this industry for thirty years. Benjamin Button, Yes, and you
Speaker 8: know I've I cover crime. I cover a lot of
Speaker 8: high profile crime. I produced a documentary set the record straight,
Speaker 8: the cold case murder of cham Master Jay. And I
Speaker 8: don't do celebrity news or sports news, but whenever they
Speaker 8: get arrested, you will see me in court. I just
Speaker 8: really can't even remember. Because there's always the thing about
Speaker 8: covering news in New York and crime and high profile crime.
Speaker 8: Everything is the big story until the next big story.
Speaker 8: So there was Trump, there was Jonathan Majors. I've covered
Speaker 8: Luigi Mangioni, Weinstein, the Guilgo murders. I was there on
Speaker 8: the first day when they found the first body. So
Speaker 8: I've just been in the trenches a long time and
Speaker 8: being a part of legacy media, I really feel it's
Speaker 8: a duty and a calling and a purpose in life
Speaker 8: to hold this seat at the table to make sure
Speaker 8: there is representation and context and everything that we cover
Speaker 8: when it comes to being empathetic as a human right,
Speaker 8: not just a person of color, not just a woman,
Speaker 8: but being the good Southern person that my family taught
Speaker 8: me to be, treat people the way you'd like to
Speaker 8: be treated. So I'm very humbled and honored every day
Speaker 8: that I get a chance to be one of the
Speaker 8: lead reporters at the number one news station in the city,
Speaker 8: the number one station in the country, a legacy station
Speaker 8: that really shaped local news. And like Jay said, we're
Speaker 8: now part of an evolution in our and our industry
Speaker 8: where the ecosystem is expanding and we're all better for it.
Speaker 12: Hello.
Speaker 11: I am Celia Simone. I am a senior fild producer
Speaker 11: at TMZ Hence Field so for the Diddy Child, I
Speaker 11: was almost exclusively in the field covering the case. I
Speaker 11: really was honored to cover the case because, like Jureka said,
Speaker 11: I grew up listening to Ditty's music and I was always,
Speaker 11: you know, to be honest, a fan. So this was
Speaker 11: a different way of seeing someone I looked up to
Speaker 11: my whole life, a different way to kind of view them.
Speaker 11: I will say that I'm also a YouTuber, so I
Speaker 11: was really anxious to talk to my YouTube family and
Speaker 11: to also do my field work. But I think what
Speaker 11: was really important was my voice. People always notice my voice.
Speaker 11: I have a really interesting voice. In this trial really
Speaker 11: helped to further the narrative. With my voice, you probably
Speaker 11: heard me saying, oh my god, Justin, I love that jacket,
Speaker 11: or ms COLEMs, I love your hair, you know was
Speaker 11: I kind of was carving out a lane for myself
Speaker 11: strictly behind the camera.
Speaker 12: No one could see my face, just in my voice,
Speaker 12: and it was great. Loved it.
Speaker 9: I do always recognize your voice, lie Hi. I'm Monico
Speaker 9: sar Abdi. I am a senior correspondent for Extra TV
Speaker 9: and weekend co host, and I was covering this obviously
Speaker 9: because I am an entertainment journalism, so a journalist, so
Speaker 9: I was looking through an entertainment lens. But I'm also
Speaker 9: a seasoned journalist who was at network news. I was
Speaker 9: at ABC before Extra came up through local news. So
Speaker 9: for me, hard news meets entertainment news is my bread
Speaker 9: and butter.
Speaker 14: This is where I excel to bring kind of just
Speaker 14: the background.
Speaker 9: Like Darla said, I covered wins Epstein, Luigi Mangioni so
Speaker 9: many cases, Jonathan Major's as well, and to look at
Speaker 9: entertainment news through a hard NewsLens.
Speaker 14: It's not very often that they mix, even though more
Speaker 14: so now.
Speaker 9: But taking that and also I have a large following
Speaker 9: online and bringing it to the audience was a very
Speaker 9: interesting experience because we've talked about in this case, this
Speaker 9: was the first time that we saw a lot of
Speaker 9: creators and a lot of conversation happening online. So there's
Speaker 9: no blueprint for covering it, both for legacy media channel
Speaker 9: and also for an online platform, and so it was
Speaker 9: interesting to see how audiences received it.
Speaker 14: It was interesting to see what people were interested in.
Speaker 9: I will say that this case, I believe a lot
Speaker 9: of legacy media outlets thought they were going to cover
Speaker 9: it for the first week and that was it. And
Speaker 9: then they saw the interest online and they saw the numbers,
Speaker 9: and they saw the young people were interested, old people
Speaker 9: were interested everyone because of the impact that did He
Speaker 9: had in entertainment and how he, you know, transhid in
Speaker 9: generations and so it was interesting to see them kind
Speaker 9: of course correct and really try to follow this case.
Speaker 9: And I think we'll see this impact for many years
Speaker 9: to come.
Speaker 6: Turn it up. Turn you into a very large screen here, arman,
Speaker 6: we can all see you.
Speaker 4: Hey, yeah, it's my turn. Yeah.
Speaker 15: So hey guys, my name is Armand Wiggins. I am
Speaker 15: a YouTuber content creator.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 15: I had a great time covering the trial. I've covered
Speaker 15: cases before. I've covered the Megan and Tory case, so
Speaker 15: I like a lot of like hip hop culture news
Speaker 15: and cases. So the did He trial just fell right
Speaker 15: in line for me to cover it. I felt like
Speaker 15: it was important for me as a content creator to
Speaker 15: come get the story for my audience because while you know,
Speaker 15: we love legacy media, I think there's something that there's
Speaker 15: a trust that's built in when you when you're speaking
Speaker 15: to your audience every single day, and I felt like
Speaker 15: it was just my duty to be on the ground,
Speaker 15: sleeping outside getting the news firsthand for my supporters. You know,
Speaker 15: I would love to be there with you now, but
Speaker 15: you know, my people literally in one hour, less than
Speaker 15: an hour last night, came up with one thousand dollars
Speaker 15: to fly me out to Miami to cover the Megan
Speaker 15: thee Stallion versus Malagro Gram's case. So, I mean, people
Speaker 15: have a real interest in that, and so you know,
Speaker 15: I'm now my people They want to hear the news
Speaker 15: and from me covering these cases. So I think now
Speaker 15: like this is a new lane for me and I'm
Speaker 15: really enjoying it. And it's hard work, but I mean
Speaker 15: it pays off really well, and I'm excited to be
Speaker 15: a part of, you know, such a great conglomerate.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Thank you to all of you guys again
Speaker 6: for being here. My name is Jureka Duncan. I'm a
Speaker 6: CBS News national correspondent and I have to say this
Speaker 6: particular case for me was the first time that I
Speaker 6: really leaned into social media my following group by almost
Speaker 6: twenty thousand and followers, because I was posting every single
Speaker 6: day about the nuances of this case at a time
Speaker 6: when our network actually did not cover it the first day,
Speaker 6: we covered it, the last day on evening news. We
Speaker 6: did cover it in the morning. But when people ask me,
Speaker 6: how were you able to do that? I had the
Speaker 6: benefit of not having a deadline at five or six
Speaker 6: like Darla did or Jay did. And what's so fascinating
Speaker 6: with what they were able to do and why I'm
Speaker 6: just a study of what we do as a business,
Speaker 6: is they were literally doing their social media videos and
Speaker 6: then they were getting ready for five o'clock or six
Speaker 6: o'clock live shot. Sometimes I think I saw you doing
Speaker 6: some stuff at ten or eleven at night or a
Speaker 6: couple times. So, I mean, there's a lot that was
Speaker 6: asked of us, and we can delve into that, and
Speaker 6: of course you all will be able to ask questions.
Speaker 6: But the first question that I want to post to
Speaker 6: the panel, and you guys can feel free to jump in,
Speaker 6: is when you went into this trial, you went into
Speaker 6: it thinking what.
Speaker 5: Well for me?
Speaker 3: When I went into the trial, I went into it
Speaker 3: this is crazy, Like, of all the places in the
Speaker 3: ways that I've seen Diddy, to be with him in
Speaker 3: court is like I couldn't even fathom.
Speaker 5: What seeing him in court would be like.
Speaker 3: And you know, all of that because I've been working
Speaker 3: in entertainment for some time and I was living in
Speaker 3: LA for eight years. I was working at TMC with Salia,
Speaker 3: so like you know, I've been in interaction and things
Speaker 3: like that. I just remember the first day being at
Speaker 3: courtroom and seeing him walk out. I was like, oh wow,
Speaker 3: like he man, Nothing's ever going to be the same
Speaker 3: for him. So for me, it was kind of like
Speaker 3: that shock of like, this is really real. People's lives
Speaker 3: have been really impacted and nothing will ever be the
Speaker 3: same for him. After this first day of court that
Speaker 3: we're sitting in.
Speaker 10: I was fortunate enough, and that's what I'm gonna call
Speaker 10: it to be reporting. When Diddy was on trial the
Speaker 10: first time, I was working at New York one and
Speaker 10: I was what twenty five, I twenty six years old,
Speaker 10: and I remember that case, and at the start of
Speaker 10: this trial, I knew things were going to be different
Speaker 10: because that was a state case the first one. This
Speaker 10: time it was a Rico and anyone who's familiar with
Speaker 10: a Rico case knows that when the Feds come, they
Speaker 10: come hard, you know, And the whole framework of a
Speaker 10: Rico case is designed to take down the head of
Speaker 10: an organization. It was designed to take down the mob,
Speaker 10: and when they're successful, they not only put you in
Speaker 10: prison for the rest of your life, but they take
Speaker 10: all your assets. And so the stakes were extraordinarily high.
Speaker 10: So I knew and you saw it the first time
Speaker 10: that Colmbs came into the courtroom. He took it seriously
Speaker 10: because he knew how serious it was, and to have
Speaker 10: two rows of attorneys there. He was speaking with his wallet,
Speaker 10: knowing that he had to beat this, and he did.
Speaker 10: He beat the rico and not many people beat Arigo.
Speaker 10: So I knew that going into this case, it was
Speaker 10: going to be a huge deal. It was going to
Speaker 10: be mainstream. It wasn't going to be something that was
Speaker 10: just on, you know, in hip hop culture and just
Speaker 10: entertainment news. This was going to be a hard news adventure,
Speaker 10: and our station luckily made the commitment. I was grateful
Speaker 10: to hear that they were going to cover a gavel
Speaker 10: to gavel and I've covered several trials gavel to gavel,
Speaker 10: and this one was extraordinary, not just because of the
Speaker 10: national and international media that came, but because of all
Speaker 10: of the content creators that I was just sitting next to,
Speaker 10: and Drika, you talked about how, you know, we were
Speaker 10: trying to you know, get up our game and do
Speaker 10: our social stuff and then also have to do you know,
Speaker 10: Darla as to do the noon. We don't have a noon,
Speaker 10: but you know, we're doing the four, five, and six,
Speaker 10: we're doing the morning show, and I'm trying to figure
Speaker 10: out how am I supposed to do all of this
Speaker 10: and still put together a piece, you know, for the
Speaker 10: for the evening.
Speaker 2: But we had to figure it out.
Speaker 10: We have to figure it out because that is where
Speaker 10: everything is going. So yeah, going into this trial, I
Speaker 10: was ready for the.
Speaker 2: Unknown and we got it.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 8: So a couple of things. So I was I was
Speaker 8: not on the first trial. I think I was somewhere
Speaker 8: in the South reporting, but I was, well, yeah, where
Speaker 8: is that? But I was at his first arraignment, so
Speaker 8: I caught the assignment when it was when he was arrested.
Speaker 8: I think it was September seventeenth. He was arrested the
Speaker 8: night before. Darling, you're going to be covering the the
Speaker 8: US attorney's press conference, are going to be announcing the charges.
Speaker 8: So I was there for some of the earlier court
Speaker 8: appearances prior to the trial and the first when I
Speaker 8: first got there, it was still like old hat because
Speaker 8: it's just kind of a routine. The way I approached
Speaker 8: my craft is very much the way my father, the scientist,
Speaker 8: the coach taught me. It's kind of like as to
Speaker 8: make sure I check all the boxes and not to
Speaker 8: leave us stone unturned. But again, as my colleagues have stated,
Speaker 8: you could kind of feel the natives getting restless and
Speaker 8: the interests really simmering. And so I actually went knowing
Speaker 8: like this is going to sound crazy, but I was
Speaker 8: annoyed because I knew it was going to be crazy,
Speaker 8: and you know, and so I'm like, I cover, I cover,
Speaker 8: I'm in this courthouse all the time.
Speaker 5: I cover this all the time.
Speaker 8: But there is going to be an element of chaos
Speaker 8: that I know is going to be untenable and that
Speaker 8: I know it's going to be exhaustive trying to tame it.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm so I wasn't annoyed.
Speaker 8: I just you know, you just know, it's almost like
Speaker 8: cleaning out your garage, right, You're annoyed that you got
Speaker 8: to clean it out, but you know you don't have
Speaker 8: to do it, and you're going to be happy with
Speaker 8: your sense of accomplishment after the fact, So that's a
Speaker 8: way to kind of frame it. So I know it
Speaker 8: was going to be crazy. What I did not know
Speaker 8: is how exhausted it was going to be for such
Speaker 8: a long period of time, for eight weeks, getting up
Speaker 8: at four o'clock in the morning, committing to standing outside
Speaker 8: in line to actually make it inside of the courtroom.
Speaker 8: You know, the whole dynamic with that. So you know,
Speaker 8: I was I didn't really have an issue with the content.
Speaker 8: I didn't have an issue with, you know, having to
Speaker 8: cover federal court because I've done it so many times.
Speaker 8: But I just knew that there was going to be
Speaker 8: an element of chaos that was going to be unexpected,
Speaker 8: that was going to make it difficult, and that rained very,
Speaker 8: very true.
Speaker 5: But I think we all.
Speaker 8: Grew for it, and I think we all I think
Speaker 8: we're here because we all gained a respect for each
Speaker 8: ingredient to this news ecosystem. So I think what we
Speaker 8: realize it's not legacy versus YouTube versus social I mean,
Speaker 8: it's like making, you know, a pie, and you have
Speaker 8: little ingredients that feed that pie. So you know, I'm
Speaker 8: never my colleague's enemy. We're all here for the greater
Speaker 8: good to inform everybody. And for me, the last thing
Speaker 8: I will say on this is that I'm really a
Speaker 8: stickler for facts and information because it is just it's
Speaker 8: like nails on the chalkboard when people don't understand the
Speaker 8: legal nuances, because I think that's how it snowballs into
Speaker 8: you know, individuals getting jammed up because they don't really
Speaker 8: understand how the legal system works. So for me, I
Speaker 8: wanted to make sure that you know, I was very
Speaker 8: very technical about covering the case, and I left all
Speaker 8: the social stuff to the social queens.
Speaker 4: Can I jump in there or somebody going.
Speaker 12: I'll be fast.
Speaker 11: What I will say is when they when the office
Speaker 11: reached out to me, I felt excited and I felt
Speaker 11: like we gonna gie me. You know, I really wanted
Speaker 11: to that. I really wanted to get it right. But
Speaker 11: it was something you know, I had done a little
Speaker 11: bit of Luigi, I'm trying to figure out the timeframe.
Speaker 11: I had did some stuff sometimes going to the court,
Speaker 11: but I was mainly like the girl who went to
Speaker 11: all the morning shows and found talent and got.
Speaker 12: A viral clip.
Speaker 11: So this was really very much structured for me, and
Speaker 11: I was just thinking to myself, how am I going
Speaker 11: to do this?
Speaker 12: Like how am I going to get up?
Speaker 11: And I went to half earlier do what I normally
Speaker 11: get up, and like, you know, I just wanted to
Speaker 11: figure out what was expected of me and how I
Speaker 11: was going to deliver. And I think the first day
Speaker 11: it really proved to me that my job was so important.
Speaker 11: There was an intern that I never met.
Speaker 12: She was there. I was like, what the heck.
Speaker 11: Then there's like this other person that they bought in
Speaker 11: from another state to help us. And there were so
Speaker 11: many people that I had to work with that I
Speaker 11: had never met, and we had to figure out who
Speaker 11: was going to what. And once we figured out, you know,
Speaker 11: everyone set job on that first day, it was it
Speaker 11: was like game.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 11: I just remember also getting to the court at about
Speaker 11: five am and there was no parking already and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 11: I'm gonna have to be here at four thirty to
Speaker 11: make sure I get a parking spot. Because the office,
Speaker 11: I realized with this case, especially the first day, they
Speaker 11: were expecting me to be superwoman, the one who.
Speaker 12: Always figures it out.
Speaker 11: And I was just thinking to myself, what if I
Speaker 11: dropped the ball this time? What if I because it
Speaker 11: was just so different, you know, and instead of me
Speaker 11: knowing who's going to come out that door at like
Speaker 11: say a Sherry Shepherd show, I didn't always know who
Speaker 11: was going to come out the car. And then then
Speaker 11: later on in the case, we had people like popping
Speaker 11: up special guests, and then you had witnesses who didn't
Speaker 11: look like witnesses. And it was just so many little
Speaker 11: components that I didn't know I was going to have
Speaker 11: to deal with.
Speaker 12: But overall, I was excited and it was mayhem.
Speaker 11: The first day when I tell you, everybody TikTok, everybody
Speaker 11: you too, I said, what the heck? It was like
Speaker 11: fifty something social media people screaming at themselves, screaming at
Speaker 11: each other, screaming.
Speaker 12: At you, talking to you.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: It was a lot.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 11: I was inundated with noises, and but I felt proud
Speaker 11: to be there, and I knew I wanted to really
Speaker 11: show up and show out, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: And died, yeah, okay, and you met me.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 15: So for me, I'm gonna be honest, it's a little selfish.
Speaker 15: But you know, for one, I did want to go
Speaker 15: because I had interest in the case, and I just
Speaker 15: felt like, Wow, this is huge. But then too, personally,
Speaker 15: i come from a place where I'm independent, and I've
Speaker 15: always looked for, you know, a bigger platform to back me.
Speaker 15: I've always wanted to be a part of a larger
Speaker 15: come GLND. I've always wanted to be a part of
Speaker 15: an iHeart or a major news station or a major
Speaker 15: network to push me.
Speaker 4: But it just seems like it never happened.
Speaker 15: And so I told myself, listen, I'm gonna stop waiting
Speaker 15: for people to give me opportunity and I'm just gonna
Speaker 15: create my own opportunity. So for me, I said, I'm
Speaker 15: not sitting around waiting for somebody to say, yeah, it's
Speaker 15: okay for you to be a journalist. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 15: okay for you to go get the story. I said,
Speaker 15: you know, once this case happens, I'm gonna be an icon.
Speaker 4: I'm going to be a legend.
Speaker 15: These people are gonna respect me, and I'm gonna get
Speaker 15: out there and I'm going to create my own table
Speaker 15: and I'm gonna do a damn good job at it.
Speaker 15: So when the thing came, when the Cassie lawsuit first hit,
Speaker 15: I told myself, Hey, I'm going to cover this case.
Speaker 15: I started saving my money. In January, I took out
Speaker 15: a loan for thirty thousand dollars, booked to Airbnb and
Speaker 15: soho Manhattan. I said, I don't care who's there, what's happening.
Speaker 15: We're covering this case as the armaud Wiggan Show, okay,
Speaker 15: and we're gonna go out there and do the best
Speaker 15: that we can. You know, And for me, I just
Speaker 15: knew that I had to go out there because I
Speaker 15: was up against so many different people. It is gonna
Speaker 15: be so many different personalities. I didn't know how I
Speaker 15: was gonna navigate. I didn't know about press passes, I
Speaker 15: didn't know about line sitters. I just knew that I
Speaker 15: had to had a duty to get the story from
Speaker 15: my audience. And then two, as an independent, I was
Speaker 15: going to create some space for me to put this
Speaker 15: story out and I was gonna make an impact there.
Speaker 15: And I felt like I did that, and I feel
Speaker 15: like the story was interesting. And watching Diddy and seeing
Speaker 15: his kids and seeing the fact that that man had
Speaker 15: to be humbled, it really taught me a personal lesson
Speaker 15: about you know, don't ever get to besides yourself, don't
Speaker 15: ever get to arrogant don't ever get to cocky because
Speaker 15: the universe, God has a way of humbling you in
Speaker 15: front of everybody. And that was a big takeaway for me.
Speaker 15: So I just thought it was a learning lesson. It
Speaker 15: taught me people skills, because child.
Speaker 4: Let me tell you something. I had got into it
Speaker 4: with a lot of people that first first. That that
Speaker 4: first okay, but you know, I was navigating a lot.
Speaker 15: But I felt like I came out of that so
Speaker 15: much better, so much stronger. And then I've gotten some
Speaker 15: of the oppisodes, one of the greatest opportunities I've been
Speaker 15: on television shows, radio. I finally got my chest shot
Speaker 15: at radio, I got my shot on the news, and yeah,
Speaker 15: a lot of great things have came from it, and
Speaker 15: I've learned a lot and I met some great people.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was dope for me.
Speaker 14: For me, I would say. So I covered the arraignment
Speaker 14: before that.
Speaker 9: Once the lawsuit dropped, I usually break things down on
Speaker 9: my TikTok anyway, So I broke that down and I
Speaker 9: could see the interests and also the need to break
Speaker 9: down these complex legal procedures and terms and what's happening
Speaker 9: and do it in layman's terms, right, So I did that,
Speaker 9: and then I covered the arraignment, and.
Speaker 14: What was shocking to me.
Speaker 9: Was the transformation that did he made from the arraignment
Speaker 9: where he was in a black T shirt. He was
Speaker 9: kind of a little, you know, a little buff. He
Speaker 9: was the person that we saw full head of black hair.
Speaker 9: And then the first day when we saw him come
Speaker 9: out in a crew next sweater with a collared shirt,
Speaker 9: full head of gray hair. This was the first time
Speaker 9: I saw him in a really long time in my mind,
Speaker 9: and I'm like, this was the guy who was the
Speaker 9: king of New York right like you grew up seeing
Speaker 9: him on TV.
Speaker 14: He was celebrated for being a shrewd business.
Speaker 9: Man and everything, the bad behavior, the making people walk
Speaker 9: for cheesecake, all the things that he was doing and
Speaker 9: was celebrated for in the two thousands with reality show.
Speaker 9: On Reality show, I want to work for Diddy, making
Speaker 9: the band, mistreating people. He is now in this courtroom
Speaker 9: in the middle of Manhattan, and I for a while
Speaker 9: was just trying to process all of that.
Speaker 14: And then I will say that day, I.
Speaker 9: Think it was two days later, maybe when Cassie first testified.
Speaker 9: I again broke it down on my TikTok I think
Speaker 9: what was really difficult to try to figure out as
Speaker 9: well was the fact that you have no cell phone,
Speaker 9: no electronic devices, you have a pen and paper, but
Speaker 9: you still have to communicate with your producers. You still
Speaker 9: have to communicate with the people who are back at
Speaker 9: the office and who do not understand sometimes how all
Speaker 9: of this works, and they think like, Okay, just go
Speaker 9: come back and make your hit and it'll be fine,
Speaker 9: and trying to, you know, deal with what they were
Speaker 9: looking for and try to meet those expectations. And then
Speaker 9: at the end of Cassie's first day testifying, I went
Speaker 9: back and kind of like armand you kind of just
Speaker 9: have to do things that you're not being asked to do, right,
Speaker 9: you carve out your own lane. So I was like,
Speaker 9: you know what, I'm sure people will find this interesting.
Speaker 9: So I went through my notes and I broke it down,
Speaker 9: and I think that video did twenty million views. That's
Speaker 9: how many people from around the world were just trying
Speaker 9: to and I think, if you're shit, and then I
Speaker 9: like shut my phone off and it was like, girl,
Speaker 9: I don't know why you went to sleep, like I
Speaker 9: need part two. And so then I realized the demand
Speaker 9: and at one point, I was making three to four
Speaker 9: videos a day.
Speaker 14: I would go in.
Speaker 9: Cover, sit through the trial the entire day, do my
Speaker 9: hits between lunchtime, come out, do any updates. Then I
Speaker 9: would go home and do three to four videos a day.
Speaker 9: And it went on for like eight weeks.
Speaker 14: It was a lot. I was burned down by the
Speaker 14: end of it, but I did see the need.
Speaker 9: To meet the audience where they're at. People are interested
Speaker 9: in this, and they're not going to always look for
Speaker 9: your report.
Speaker 14: They're not going to always come to you.
Speaker 9: And I think this is a valuable discussion as the
Speaker 9: industry evolves, as media changes, how can we bring people information?
Speaker 14: How can we also adapt so that we don't go
Speaker 14: extinct because things are looking good sometimes.
Speaker 6: So I want to ask you, guys Rapid Fire, if
Speaker 6: you could answer in like twenty seconds, and I'll ask
Speaker 6: each of you a different question. Lauren, I'll start with you,
Speaker 6: as you're reporting and telling the story, what's the number
Speaker 6: one thing you're taking into consideration.
Speaker 3: As I was reporting and telling the story, the number
Speaker 3: one thing I was taking into consideration is that any
Speaker 3: other outlet is focused on one thing and it's always
Speaker 3: like the big thing, like they want to go for like,
Speaker 3: what is sensational? What is like you know, because there's
Speaker 3: a lot to cover. So I was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you everything. If he's sweating, if he coughs, if
Speaker 3: he like I just wanted to be that Like, so
Speaker 3: you have the tmzs and the Rolling Stones, and you
Speaker 3: know everybody's sitting here that had their dot coms. I
Speaker 3: don't have a dot com. I just had my Instagram
Speaker 3: at the breakfast club. So on my Instagram, my main
Speaker 3: focus was let me tell you guys every single detail.
Speaker 3: So you felt like you were literally like I was
Speaker 3: vlogging the case basically, but that was my focus. And
Speaker 3: I felt like the more I did that because I
Speaker 3: did it the first day in the video ent viral
Speaker 3: and I never experienced that. So I was like, if
Speaker 3: I do this a lot, people will come here after
Speaker 3: they talk to everybody because I'll have things that people
Speaker 3: may not get a chance to talk about.
Speaker 6: Jay, so much was seen and heard in that trial,
Speaker 6: how were you able to process that? And I know personally,
Speaker 6: when the jurors were looking at those sex videos, there
Speaker 6: was a moment in the beginning where we could hear
Speaker 6: certain sounds, but there were graphic details of combsists and
Speaker 6: Cassie and people's sex lives, pictures of escorts. How do
Speaker 6: you process something like that, even though again, I know
Speaker 6: you've been covering colms for a while and covering the
Speaker 6: streets to New York City, but it was a lot.
Speaker 2: It was a lot. And you know, unlike unlike Lauren,
Speaker 2: unlike Armand, you know, where they can say what they want.
Speaker 10: I mean, I was cracking up watching some of Armand's episodes, right,
Speaker 10: I mean, hilarious, man.
Speaker 2: But you know, we have the FCC to worry about.
Speaker 10: So yeah, I mean, there was so much graphic material
Speaker 10: and we had to figure out a way to kind
Speaker 10: of filter it in a way that it did not
Speaker 10: lose its impact. But at the same time, we stayed
Speaker 10: within the guardrails of traditional broadcast news. We work for
Speaker 10: a network, and content creators have evolved to become their
Speaker 10: own network, and so yeah, there were some considerations that
Speaker 10: we had to make.
Speaker 6: Carla, what did you learn most from covering this trial?
Speaker 8: You know, one of the biggest lessons came from Salaia Me. Yes,
Speaker 8: and I will tell this story over and over again
Speaker 8: because you.
Speaker 5: Know, like you said, it was exhausting.
Speaker 8: Getting up early, having to log all of this information
Speaker 8: by hand.
Speaker 5: And for me, I don't have a.
Speaker 8: Producer, so I have multiple hits a day and I'm
Speaker 8: creating graphics and I'm like, oh, there's a BlackBerry, so
Speaker 8: let me make sure I have a graphic that has
Speaker 8: a BlackBerry, and let me make sure I can make
Speaker 8: this case that has no pictures and no video as
Speaker 8: you know, as demonstrative as I possibly can. And so
Speaker 8: I'm I really got into the details. And so the
Speaker 8: next week Seleia was like, Celia, sorry, I always get
Speaker 8: there wrong. She was like, did you go did you
Speaker 8: do a social media I was like, I'm tired, I
Speaker 8: cannot do.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I just can't. I'm old, I'm tired.
Speaker 8: She goes, no, this is what you have to do.
Speaker 8: So she literally walk me through how to do a
Speaker 8: TikTok in like seven minutes on the steps of the courthouse,
Speaker 8: and you know, she was like, no, this is how
Speaker 8: you record click click, and you can do the double
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh, you know, and go to cap cut
Speaker 8: and use this. And so I tell that story all
Speaker 8: the time that I literally learned how to social media
Speaker 8: from the queen next to me in this trial because
Speaker 8: and just such a healthy respect.
Speaker 12: So yeah, that was your girl, you got it. So
Speaker 12: Celia described trial day, Oh my god, well.
Speaker 11: Intense and intense and also just like getting a lot
Speaker 11: of demands from the office because one thing, I kind
Speaker 11: of I didn't start it. I definitely didn't start it,
Speaker 11: but I think I've done it a lot. I realized
Speaker 11: that they didn't say it, but they wanted viral.
Speaker 12: But that makes sense.
Speaker 11: They didn't say that, but they wanted that, and they
Speaker 11: didn't say go get something viral.
Speaker 12: It was like, get what you can get. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 12: you know.
Speaker 11: So it was really intense, but I think, like Lauren said,
Speaker 11: it was really important for us to get content that
Speaker 11: other people weren't going to get. And every day it
Speaker 11: was struggle to kind of be super creative and not
Speaker 11: be redundant. So specifically on trial day, one of the
Speaker 11: images that I got normally I would cover the front
Speaker 11: of the courthouse, and that one day, one of the
Speaker 11: head producers said, Celia, go to the pack. I need
Speaker 11: you to get the prosecutors and whoever else.
Speaker 12: You can get.
Speaker 11: And I don't know, I was just standing there and
Speaker 11: someone just walks by and he had a backpack on
Speaker 11: I'm like, he looks like the judge filmed him, and
Speaker 11: then they were like, Celia, that was the judge and
Speaker 11: that went viral and they were like.
Speaker 12: Hey, we need more of this every day.
Speaker 11: So it kind of I feel like I felt that
Speaker 11: pressure to repeat that every single day and to create
Speaker 11: fireroom moments every day, and I think we started to
Speaker 11: become the lead of all the people that were outside
Speaker 11: getting outside content on what was important. And it was
Speaker 11: nerve wracking because every day it was like trying to
Speaker 11: beat and top what you got that first day. And
Speaker 11: we got that like seven am in the morning, so
Speaker 11: then it was like, okay, at noon, make sure you
Speaker 11: guys get this. So it was constant struggle to top
Speaker 11: each clip to go viral.
Speaker 6: To Darlas point, I remember watching where you were going
Speaker 6: when there were the rumors about Kanye. I said, I'm
Speaker 6: following Celia, Selia gonna know where Kanye is at.
Speaker 11: Oh wait, really quickly, I just did a video on that. Yeah,
Speaker 11: I just did a video on that on my Instagram
Speaker 11: and ten seconds vet every tip.
Speaker 12: If you are a journalist, some random.
Speaker 11: Kid that's like twenty years old, he's out there covering
Speaker 11: the case he kept me saying Kanye was gonna come.
Speaker 11: Everybody's like he's crazy. And I made a phone call
Speaker 11: and confirmed that Kanye was in New York City and
Speaker 11: the rest is history. And the next day and no
Speaker 11: one believed me, and the next day he came to
Speaker 11: the court.
Speaker 6: I believe you, Mona. In terms of the sentencing day,
Speaker 6: if you can describe the mood, because I feel like
Speaker 6: it's tense and for me, everything that we learned was
Speaker 6: coming to ahead. In terms of people also asking predict
Speaker 6: what do you think how much time do you think
Speaker 6: is going to get? It's like, we're not attorneys, but
Speaker 6: it was the moment where you knew he could get
Speaker 6: as much as twenty or he could get you know,
Speaker 6: something a lot lower, which he obviously did. But just
Speaker 6: describe the atmosphere inside and sort of outside the courtroom.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I'll start with verdict day.
Speaker 9: I mean, it was something that inside the courtroom for
Speaker 9: Team Diddy was celebratory.
Speaker 14: They beat the Feds, and then that messaging kind.
Speaker 9: Of permeated through to the public where everyone was like,
Speaker 9: oh my god, he beat the Feds, he beat the cave.
Speaker 9: But that wasn't the case. Obviously, he was still found
Speaker 9: guilty on two counts. But I feel like there was
Speaker 9: this idea of you know, this was a hit for
Speaker 9: the me too movement, and you know, he's not going
Speaker 9: to be held accountable. But then as different motions were
Speaker 9: happening for there was like about two three month gap,
Speaker 9: right it, guys can for two months right between the yeah,
Speaker 9: between the verdict and the sentencing, and there are different
Speaker 9: motions and you realize that the judge, particularly when he
Speaker 9: did not let him walk out on veil after the verdict,
Speaker 9: you could tell that the judge was going to hold
Speaker 9: him accountable. But what that looked like he could get
Speaker 9: anywhere up to twenty years, But he also was never
Speaker 9: he wasn't a previously convicted of a felony, right, he
Speaker 9: had no record. The day of the verdict, again there
Speaker 9: was that okay, is the judge going to throw the
Speaker 9: book at him? Is he going to make an example
Speaker 9: out of him? And then the judge went on this
Speaker 9: long speech after I mean, I would explain this as
Speaker 9: you know, both sides described a completely different didty. You
Speaker 9: had the prosecutor saying that this man still needs to
Speaker 9: be held accountable even though he wasn't found guilty for
Speaker 9: what he did to Cassie, what he did to Jane.
Speaker 9: He still exhibited violent behavior, he still used all of
Speaker 9: his resources to control these women. And then the defense
Speaker 9: was making it seem like, oh, no, he was a john,
Speaker 9: he was just engaging in prostitution services. He wasn't even
Speaker 9: running the prostitution services, right, And then came in the
Speaker 9: judge who basically said that Cassie and Jane were so
Speaker 9: brave for sharing their story, and this is a man
Speaker 9: who's gotten away with a lot for a very long
Speaker 9: time and is a violent person, has a history.
Speaker 14: Of being violent.
Speaker 9: And then when he read his sentence of fifty months,
Speaker 9: I feel like you could see the air.
Speaker 14: Being sucked out of ditty.
Speaker 9: Before that, his kids we heard from them for the
Speaker 9: first time where his girls gave this powerful plea to
Speaker 9: the judge where they were saying that this is their father.
Speaker 9: They already lost their mother. And I will say I
Speaker 9: started getting emotional. These are two young three young girls
Speaker 9: who are eighteen and nineteen years old, and for the
Speaker 9: comes twins, we know that they lost their mother a kimporter,
Speaker 9: and to say that again they were going to lose
Speaker 9: their father. They already he already missed graduation and prom
Speaker 9: So I will say for me, I kind of didn't
Speaker 9: know exactly which way it was going to go because
Speaker 9: it all rest on if the judge was going to
Speaker 9: make an example out of him or if what his
Speaker 9: children said really did affect the judge.
Speaker 14: But I think he kind of fell somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 6: I would say for me, Armand there are times I think, yes,
Speaker 6: I'm ready. There are times as journalists, as producers I
Speaker 6: would imagine as a content creator where you feel like
Speaker 6: you grew up because we don't cover these types of
Speaker 6: stories every day. Do you think this trial did that
Speaker 6: for you? And how are you a different person as
Speaker 6: a result of covering this case?
Speaker 15: Yeah, I definitely feel like I grew up, and I
Speaker 15: feel like I have the stamina to do a lot
Speaker 15: more and I feel like, you know, the stretch that
Speaker 15: I was looking for I got.
Speaker 4: I got.
Speaker 15: I felt more inspired, and I realized where my superpower
Speaker 15: lies within this space and I and it makes me
Speaker 15: appreciate everybody in media because.
Speaker 4: For me, specifically our storytelling.
Speaker 15: You know, I think for me, like the way that
Speaker 15: I did this case, like you would see everybody going
Speaker 15: out going live in front of the courthouse or outside
Speaker 15: the courthouse during every break. I didn't do that or
Speaker 15: people would you know, you guys had your hits and
Speaker 15: stuff like that. For me, I would wait till the
Speaker 15: end of the night because I know that, you know,
Speaker 15: once traditional media gets the story out, everybody time everyone
Speaker 15: gets to me, everybody knows what happened. I'm not there
Speaker 15: to report to you play by play, like what happened
Speaker 15: and have it all buttoned up. I'm here now here's
Speaker 15: we all know what happened. Sit and let's talk about
Speaker 15: it from a more raw, unfiltered lens and like I'm
Speaker 15: going to give you the nuances kind of like Laura
Speaker 15: la Rossa was saying, like what did he look like?
Speaker 4: What was the hair? What did the outfit give?
Speaker 16: Like?
Speaker 4: What was the posture?
Speaker 15: You know, And let's really have the conversations that once
Speaker 15: we read the article, once we see what they say
Speaker 15: on the news, what are we sitting around the table
Speaker 15: and how are we discussing what we've actually consumed or
Speaker 15: what we watched or what we read. And I felt
Speaker 15: like for me, I found my spot where I was
Speaker 15: like I don't have to be this buttoned up version
Speaker 15: of like what a reporter supposed to be, because there's
Speaker 15: a space for that person to sit back and be like,
Speaker 15: all right, now this is now, we know what's going on.
Speaker 4: Now let's really get into it.
Speaker 15: And you know, this case, for me, a lot of
Speaker 15: people kind of they had mixed feelings about how I
Speaker 15: was reporting it, but I felt like it was such
Speaker 15: a dark and kind of like sexual case that at
Speaker 15: some point like we had to kind of make light
Speaker 15: of it just a little bit because all of the stuff,
Speaker 15: even though it was kind of creepy, it was funny,
Speaker 15: you know what I mean, in an interesting way.
Speaker 4: And so I thought that, you know, for the people back.
Speaker 15: At home, you know, sitting in court every day, it's
Speaker 15: not the funnest thing, you know, and reading a bunch
Speaker 15: of paperwork, a bunch of words on the paper on
Speaker 15: your screen, that's boring. So my thing was I didn't
Speaker 15: want people to feel like they were sitting in court
Speaker 15: again with me.
Speaker 4: So the idea was, all right, I'm gonna sit.
Speaker 15: In court, y'all read the news or y'all read your articles,
Speaker 15: and then when we come back, we're gonna have fun
Speaker 15: with this story, and I'm gonna tell you the little
Speaker 15: things that I noticed that I seen or you know,
Speaker 15: things that may I feel like other people may have
Speaker 15: left out. And so I think that I think that
Speaker 15: I grew a lot, and I think that I gained
Speaker 15: a lot of confidence to where, you know now, I'm
Speaker 15: not intimidated to say, yeah, I cover trials in the past.
Speaker 15: I will be well, I'm not a reporter. I don't
Speaker 15: have a journalism degree. I don't think i'm no. I
Speaker 15: think I'm good enough and I think I can do it,
Speaker 15: and I think I know my lane and I feel
Speaker 15: like I've grown, and you know, the the biggest thing
Speaker 15: for me was the fact that my parents were proud
Speaker 15: of me, you know, and people were inspired by me,
Speaker 15: and you know, not to toot my own horn, but
Speaker 15: I feel like, you know, once they saw me up there,
Speaker 15: and a lot of people saw me there, we were
Speaker 15: getting those numbers and we were going viral everybody, and
Speaker 15: they mama flew out with an iPhone and started doing
Speaker 15: YouTube videos and tiktoks like it's no shade. So I
Speaker 15: feel like we've inspired a community of creators, and you know,
Speaker 15: I think that was great.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 6: I want to open it up now to Q and
Speaker 6: A if you guys had any questions and I'll come
Speaker 6: out to you.
Speaker 12: And tell us who you are.
Speaker 16: Okay, Hi everyone, my name is Asia Alexander.
Speaker 1: This is really inspiring.
Speaker 16: Great panel, by the way, But I was wondering if
Speaker 16: you guys ever had any like death threats or like
Speaker 16: anything come to you guys while covering this case, because
Speaker 16: I know that could be a real big thing when
Speaker 16: you're talking about like mafia's.
Speaker 6: And all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: Oh, well, I can jump in there.
Speaker 15: I'll just say for me, I don't know if it's
Speaker 15: necessarily well, I did get some death threats. Well, there
Speaker 15: was a woman who attacked me outside the courthouse.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 15: She came and started attacking me out of nowhere for Diddy.
Speaker 15: She was harassing me, following me. Everybody was telling me
Speaker 15: to go inside. It was just really really weird. And
Speaker 15: this is the thing about the cases too, because it
Speaker 15: made me feel a little bit uncomfortable about going to
Speaker 15: cases because it's such a public place. You do have
Speaker 15: to watch when you have visibility, people will try to
Speaker 15: get cloud off of you.
Speaker 4: It's really really weird.
Speaker 15: So they have people that are looking for moments, and
Speaker 15: then they have people that are just kind of crazed fans,
Speaker 15: So you always have to protect yourself out there because
Speaker 15: people really will get over stimulated and try to attack you.
Speaker 15: I mean I've been I was harassed, Lauren was harassed.
Speaker 15: It was crazy out there.
Speaker 12: Yes, I go, are you gonna tell?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 12: I was gonna just I mean really quickly.
Speaker 11: People actually came down to the court to see people. Yeah,
Speaker 11: Like people came to visit Lauren.
Speaker 12: People came to visit on my and I was surprised.
Speaker 11: People would say, hey, you're that girl from TMZ right,
Speaker 11: and I'm like, and I couldn't say no because my
Speaker 11: phone had a big TMZ on the back of it.
Speaker 11: But people, and honestly, even people who I didn't have
Speaker 11: communication with in years, came to visit me at the court,
Speaker 11: and I don't really know how I felt about that.
Speaker 11: So that's the one thing I didn't love about the
Speaker 11: court was having people show up just to like see
Speaker 11: what's going on.
Speaker 12: And what the hype was about.
Speaker 11: Even though the police were there, I didn't feel like
Speaker 11: they were going to help them help people jump or
Speaker 11: get off me if if somebody did jump on me,
Speaker 11: so whatever.
Speaker 8: But yeah, I will say I did speak to a
Speaker 8: content creator who had been threatened. They threatened sexual violence
Speaker 8: against her and physical violence. And one thing I told her,
Speaker 8: I said, this is New York City. You go report
Speaker 8: that to the NYPD. You keep track of that. So
Speaker 8: I was happy to be that voice. And I would
Speaker 8: tell anyone in this room listening, if you are threatened,
Speaker 8: don't brush it off, report it immediately. Just don't play
Speaker 8: like that. And that was the advice I gave this
Speaker 8: particular content creator who thought, well, I don't want to
Speaker 8: be extra, I don't want to be too much. And
Speaker 8: I was like, absolutely not. That is nothing to play
Speaker 8: around with. So that did happen?
Speaker 5: Did Hi?
Speaker 6: You guys?
Speaker 5: My name is Chelsea.
Speaker 17: I am and while you graduate student, this is my
Speaker 17: professor right here. I am also a freelance production coordinator
Speaker 17: and social video manager for one of the public affair
Speaker 17: sials at ABC seven. And the question that I have
Speaker 17: is what did this teach you about the algorithm or
Speaker 17: how people engage with your content. I hear a lot
Speaker 17: the way you report things on TikTok is different than Instagram.
Speaker 5: So there's one thing that it taught you.
Speaker 12: What would it be?
Speaker 3: I think it taught me that that whole it's saturated
Speaker 3: conversation doesn't matter when you get at what you do
Speaker 3: because the first day, from like the jewelry selection to
Speaker 3: the first day of trial to the last day, the
Speaker 3: number of content creators and people they're covering it grew.
Speaker 3: Some days it was like kind of chill when certain
Speaker 3: things weren't going on. But we literally in real time
Speaker 3: watch the world realize, oh, we're not gonna get this
Speaker 3: from just our regular outlets. We need to be everywhere,
Speaker 3: so we need to be on the legacy media, on
Speaker 3: social all these things. So it's very saturate. Like it
Speaker 3: got to a point where outside of the courtroom you
Speaker 3: wouldn't even kind of want to record anything because people
Speaker 3: are recording you recorded. There's just so much going on.
Speaker 3: But my numbers never stopped growing, like at all. People
Speaker 3: still found me and still found what they wanted to
Speaker 3: get from me. Like my numbers grew insanely, and yes,
Speaker 3: saw all. So, I mean, I'd already kind of knew
Speaker 3: that different platforms are for different things, but I think
Speaker 3: that the Diddy.
Speaker 1: Trial really.
Speaker 3: It just really taught me just I guess, like the
Speaker 3: importance of social media. Like I knew that when I
Speaker 3: left TMZ, I told myself that there was no one
Speaker 3: on social media who was actually vetting certain things but
Speaker 3: also able to kind of like be out get with
Speaker 3: certain things, understand what's happening culturally, really be outside right
Speaker 3: and know what's happening, like not be disconnected from the
Speaker 3: world and people and things. So I was like, that's it,
Speaker 3: Like that's me naturally, I'm going to lean into that.
Speaker 3: But during the Diddy trial, I think that was the
Speaker 3: first time ever in my life and in my career
Speaker 3: where it was and it wasn't about an outlet, Like
Speaker 3: people were listening to me because they wanted to hear
Speaker 3: me and hear certain things. And I think the same
Speaker 3: thing happened for everybody, even if you were with the outlet.
Speaker 14: People were looking for certain people.
Speaker 3: So it just made me realize, like I mean, people say, oh,
Speaker 3: social media is so saturated and this and that, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, you can go at what you do and
Speaker 3: you cutting through that's what you doing, Like none of
Speaker 3: that matters.
Speaker 1: People will come and find what they need.
Speaker 5: To chime in on that.
Speaker 8: I think it taught that the algorithms really don't matter really,
Speaker 8: just like Lauren and everyone else has said. For example,
Speaker 8: I had no idea what I was doing when Seleia
Speaker 8: taught me. But I know that some of the shorts
Speaker 8: that I did based on your tutelage, they were like
Speaker 8: part of the YouTube top five shorts globally based on whatever.
Speaker 8: So it just taught me it doesn't really matter. Good
Speaker 8: content is good content, and people when they can't get
Speaker 8: enough of something, they're going to The algorithm just doesn't
Speaker 8: really make that much of a difference.
Speaker 5: To add.
Speaker 4: It's it's about giving value. That's it.
Speaker 15: Like I'd never worried about the algorithm one time. I
Speaker 15: never chased it. Like I was saying before, everybody was
Speaker 15: going live and getting hundreds of thousands of views during
Speaker 15: the day. I literally went live once a day at
Speaker 15: six sometimes nine clock at night, and I didn't I
Speaker 15: gained hundreds of thousands of followers, and my numbers were
Speaker 15: always up, like we had twenty thousand and thirty thousand people,
Speaker 15: like every single day. It didn't matter what happened throughout
Speaker 15: the day. So I would wait everybody. I would meet
Speaker 15: me and Lauren and Silly. We would go to eat
Speaker 15: chicken and we would go baste. I was not running
Speaker 15: out of the court like there were some people.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 15: There were people that were running out of the courtroom
Speaker 15: trying to be as soon as something would be said,
Speaker 15: they would run out of the corporroom to try to
Speaker 15: be first.
Speaker 4: I never got flustered with that because I.
Speaker 15: Knew what I knew and knew where my power landed,
Speaker 15: and I knew that I was gonna be able to deliver.
Speaker 15: I don't chase the algorithms because that's when you don't
Speaker 15: get that double meaning of that algorithm, or you don't
Speaker 15: get that initial hit that you've maybe gotten it once before.
Speaker 15: If you don't get it again, you don't feel like
Speaker 15: you're good enough. And so for me, I just get
Speaker 15: on camera. I'm gonna do my thing.
Speaker 12: Can I say one thing too.
Speaker 3: I come from TMZ and I was there for eight
Speaker 3: years when I started, as I was on the tour bus.
Speaker 1: When I left, I was seeing news producer.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So when you have been in a newsroom like that,
Speaker 3: you are literally trained to go like you are a sniper.
Speaker 3: I swear like I don't know nothing but to be
Speaker 3: first and to live brief, starve or you don't eat period.
Speaker 3: Literally they will fire you. That has been my life
Speaker 3: for eight years. And then I come to breakfast club
Speaker 3: and things still are there, but it changes because your
Speaker 3: person now and also everybody hangs on your word. I
Speaker 3: had a hard lesson just trying to learn you don't
Speaker 3: have to be first backing off of what our mama
Speaker 3: was saying. Right with the Diddy trial in the beginning,
Speaker 3: I was always so worried about that. Toward the middle
Speaker 3: of it, when I started realizing, like, no people are
Speaker 3: really paying attention, I was like, I actually want to
Speaker 3: have something to say, Like I don't want to just
Speaker 3: tell you guys what's happening.
Speaker 12: I'm going to do.
Speaker 3: That, but like, I also think you're here too, because
Speaker 3: it's like culturally, you want to kind of understand where
Speaker 3: my mind is like as a person, and I really
Speaker 3: want to process what I just heard, so there'd be
Speaker 3: some nice where Like my podcast is supposed to be
Speaker 3: live at six, I might not even do a pot
Speaker 3: guest episode that day. I would wait and literally tell
Speaker 3: my audience show. I didn't really know how I felt
Speaker 3: when I left court today, and that was such a
Speaker 3: eye changing moment for me as a journalist, because I
Speaker 3: think because things move so fast, and especially in a
Speaker 3: lot of newsrooms, I mean, you do have to be
Speaker 3: first and finance on a lot of things. But man,
Speaker 3: it's so important today to have something to say for
Speaker 3: real outside of just being factual, because there's so much
Speaker 3: stuff that is just like what are you talking about.
Speaker 3: I didn't really understand the power of that until this
Speaker 3: trial also and being.
Speaker 14: Right, yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 9: So from my experience, I would say that I use
Speaker 9: the skills that I acquired from legacy media, like my
Speaker 9: twelve year career, about using a hook, framing the story
Speaker 9: so that people can digest it, giving the details that matter,
Speaker 9: not giving every single detail, but like what is this
Speaker 9: adding to the story? And so I kind of framed
Speaker 9: all my tiktoks like that. But then I've been on
Speaker 9: TikTok for a few years now and so I know,
Speaker 9: cut out the braths.
Speaker 14: Don't start by.
Speaker 9: Saying okay, guys today, we got no like really at
Speaker 9: them with the hook. And so mixing those two I
Speaker 9: realized that it would just trigger the algorithm. And then
Speaker 9: the people want to hear because you're concise, you're giving
Speaker 9: the facts. You're giving them details that they didn't have
Speaker 9: in court, you know, was he rubbing his hands? They
Speaker 9: wanted to know, was what were the jurors doing. Were
Speaker 9: they laughing, were they smiling, were they crying? And giving
Speaker 9: those details.
Speaker 14: I feel like was.
Speaker 9: The advantage the fact that we were in the courtroom,
Speaker 9: that we were there and they were there every day,
Speaker 9: and that you could be reliable.
Speaker 14: Also the consistency. You knew that every night I was
Speaker 14: going to.
Speaker 9: Give you at least three to four videos, and if
Speaker 9: I didn't immediately in the morning I would as well.
Speaker 9: I think where some of the other reporters struggled, like
Speaker 9: if you were with CBS, NBC, ABC, is that it
Speaker 9: was such a hard shift to now like okay, well
Speaker 9: now you guys need to go make TikTok videos And
Speaker 9: it was just like okay, and they're fixing their camera
Speaker 9: and starting the sentence with like okay and many words
Speaker 9: too many brass like we gotta we gotta jump right
Speaker 9: to it. And so I could see how you know,
Speaker 9: it's a powerful tool and how it can be utilized,
Speaker 9: but also the skills that you learn for storytelling and
Speaker 9: being factually accurate and structuring the story in a way
Speaker 9: that people can understand it and why should you care?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 9: The why of it all is important, and that's things
Speaker 9: that you know, whether you're reporting on the five o'clock
Speaker 9: news or you're sharing a TikTok. Don't change and they're transferable.
Speaker 11: Skills really really quickly ten seconds. I think social media wise,
Speaker 11: TMD dominated because we constantly stay true to TMZ. We
Speaker 11: didn't try to switch up because we're covering case. No,
Speaker 11: it was we're gonna get you walking in, We're gonna
Speaker 11: chase you down the block. And literally when the lawyers
Speaker 11: would come out, people would laugh at me. At first,
Speaker 11: I would go, I would be walking backwards. What do
Speaker 11: you think happened? Either, they didn't say anything. People wanted
Speaker 11: that footage and when teens would post it, it would go crazy.
Speaker 11: So we stay true to the brand. I'm going to
Speaker 11: chase you down because that's what I do, and it
Speaker 11: worked out for us. We never shifted from that. As
Speaker 11: far as street coverage, eh oh, I.
Speaker 10: Just wanted to add something and then, you know what,
Speaker 10: let's hear your question.
Speaker 2: I don't want to take time away from you.
Speaker 18: So hi everyone. My name is Crystal and I'm a producer.
Speaker 18: I'm currently working in documentary. First, I want to say
Speaker 18: I love that you were collaborative with Darla and supporting
Speaker 18: each other in the field, but also as a producer,
Speaker 18: something you said kind of raised the red flag for me.
Speaker 18: So I did a documentary series in Dallas where I
Speaker 18: filmed with a judge, and you filming a judge in
Speaker 18: turning a building. It raises ethical concerns for me because
Speaker 18: the judge I filmed within Dallas, they have a separate
Speaker 18: insurance for a reason. And as the young woman asked
Speaker 18: the question about your security, as Lauren is saying, you
Speaker 18: gotta first, right, this is one of the reasons why
Speaker 18: I transitioned out of local news into longer form storytelling.
Speaker 18: I'm like, where is the ethical concern or pause about
Speaker 18: this judge's safety as everyone is rushing to be first,
Speaker 18: rushing to hurry up and get it on there. As
Speaker 18: a producer, I'm concerned because I don't hear that moment
Speaker 18: for pause and reflection because everyone is just like, we
Speaker 18: gotta go. So I wonder if you guys can speak
Speaker 18: to how you handle that. Okay, I just need to just.
Speaker 8: Set the record straight, just on one thing that this
Speaker 8: is a sticking point for me. It's not just local news, right,
Speaker 8: So I know some people move away. I'm very passionate
Speaker 8: about the fact that I've been in local news for
Speaker 8: twenty years, and I always try to dispel myths about
Speaker 8: what it is we do and how we do things.
Speaker 8: And you're absolutely right, there has to be a moment.
Speaker 8: But in that it's a personal thing. So I don't
Speaker 8: want you to just say it's local news news or
Speaker 8: it's TikTok or whatever it's it's a reflection of that person.
Speaker 8: So I always have to, like, you know, throw a
Speaker 8: little flag on the play when someone says, oh, I
Speaker 8: don't like local news for that, because I think you're
Speaker 8: just painting a broad brush for an industry when it's
Speaker 8: still about that individual journalist.
Speaker 5: I just had to just jump in and say that, really.
Speaker 11: Quous, Well, I do want to speak to it, so
Speaker 11: I'm not gonna lie like, of course the company I
Speaker 11: work for. Of course, sometimes people we've had a history,
Speaker 11: you know, but I cannot speak for them because I will.
Speaker 12: Never do that. But overall there has been a history.
Speaker 12: I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 11: What I will say is when I did shoot that clip,
Speaker 11: I wasn't sure how it was going to be received.
Speaker 11: But I also am not the person who approves those
Speaker 11: things either, so I sent it in like hmm, okay,
Speaker 11: let's see if they wanted, they'll use it.
Speaker 4: If not.
Speaker 14: Did I feel a little bit worried about.
Speaker 11: It, Yes, but I also kind of felt like, Okay, okay,
Speaker 11: what's done is done. The next day, we continue to
Speaker 11: shoot the entire prosecutor judge, everyone coming in.
Speaker 12: What we did not do was we did.
Speaker 11: Not, of course shoot people who were hidden witnesses or
Speaker 11: try to find those witnesses. We also did not publicly
Speaker 11: say the names of witnesses that we probably didn't know
Speaker 11: who they were. And I stand by that. I feel
Speaker 11: like we did a great job. I feel like I
Speaker 11: did a great job. I do see where it does
Speaker 11: raise some ethically, maybe some immoral, but I feel like
Speaker 11: overall we set the tone for the way the rest
Speaker 11: of the child was going to go. I feel like
Speaker 11: everyone started to follow suit and started to try to
Speaker 11: create content that was off the wall.
Speaker 3: I also think there were already profiles on the judge
Speaker 3: as well too, Like so coming from TMZ and now
Speaker 3: being in a space where I have to make those
Speaker 3: same decisions because if not, I'm under fire. Right, it
Speaker 3: is a personal thing. That's number one will also say too,
Speaker 3: It's just that there's a job to do and how
Speaker 3: you do it, So there weren't profiles on the judge
Speaker 3: like I knew when I researched, and I read about
Speaker 3: this judge prior too, because I was trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what the case would be like, and the judge
Speaker 3: is important. When Selia grabbed that shot, TMC is not
Speaker 3: known for humanizing a lot of people and a lot
Speaker 3: of things right like no shade to them. I was there, cool,
Speaker 3: she can't say it.
Speaker 5: I will.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, that clip in that photo
Speaker 3: she got, he was wearing a backpack, he was listening
Speaker 3: to music. The conversation went from this is the judge,
Speaker 3: will he throw Diddy in jail for the rest of
Speaker 3: his life? To this judge is a person, he listens
Speaker 3: to music, he's young. It's set a different conversation, and
Speaker 3: I get what you're you're saying, but I think a
Speaker 3: lot of times in this people have to also have
Speaker 3: a conversation about There are certain stories that if Celia
Speaker 3: doesn't do the story, someone's going to do it. And
Speaker 3: the way she goes about it is something to say, okay,
Speaker 3: I mean and again it is above her being in
Speaker 3: the newsroom. I remember she would get clips and it
Speaker 3: would send it, and a lot of times we would
Speaker 3: look at things when I was there and I would say, Okay,
Speaker 3: I know that this is coming from Sali.
Speaker 6: I know her.
Speaker 3: I'm a black woman as well, so I know her heart.
Speaker 3: They don't care about that, and a lot of times
Speaker 3: you don't have leadership that does. She's not in control
Speaker 3: of that. But at the same time, there are those
Speaker 3: moments where when you put those things out, it does
Speaker 3: kind of like the opposite of what you're saying. And
Speaker 3: that was that moment for that judge. I remember the
Speaker 3: shot that she's talking about, and it's just it's an
Speaker 3: internal battle. I think if you choose a step away
Speaker 3: from it, I don't fall anybody because I chose to
Speaker 3: step away from a platform because I wanted to figure
Speaker 3: out was there a balance of sanity I can have.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I do think that there
Speaker 3: are times where I'm like, man, I don't want to
Speaker 3: have to, but how can I bring my person into it?
Speaker 3: And that's the beauty the platform I'm at now, So
Speaker 3: I think it's about personal platform choice too.
Speaker 12: But lastly, I have.
Speaker 11: I was told this, I have the most published clips
Speaker 11: out of any field producer ever at TMZ.
Speaker 12: Let's put that on the table, right. I have been.
Speaker 11: Able to constantly talk to people who have never talked
Speaker 11: to TMZ. Halle Berry, jay Z two weeks ago, people
Speaker 11: who would run from us come to us now. Jada
Speaker 11: Pinkett never talked to TMZ. I've been able to break
Speaker 11: down those barriers because I am a human being first,
Speaker 11: and even down with the diddy ks, I had phone
Speaker 11: calls from some people who I cannot mention, who are
Speaker 11: linked to the family, that said they love you and
Speaker 11: they love watching your clips because you are so nice
Speaker 11: to them. So I stand by that stuff because it's real.
Speaker 11: People wouldn't say that if it wasn't real, and the
Speaker 11: numbers don't lie. And jay Z talking to me twice.
Speaker 11: The first time they didn't publish it. The second time,
Speaker 11: he said, Sis, I don't want to have to embarrass
Speaker 11: you today. I don't got a story for you, but
Speaker 11: I'm proud of you. This is my story, and I
Speaker 11: stand by everything that I shoot.
Speaker 10: Yes, I think I'm glad that I didn't say what
Speaker 10: I had to say a few minutes ago, and I'm
Speaker 10: glad for your question because I think multiple things are
Speaker 10: allowed to be true at the same time. What is
Speaker 10: true a is that social media is built on viral moments,
Speaker 10: as opposed to the traditional training that Jureika, myself and
Speaker 10: Darla and Mona that you have where you know, we're
Speaker 10: in local news and our job is to tell the
Speaker 10: story objectively.
Speaker 2: We're not supposed to insert our opinions.
Speaker 10: We're supposed to just give you the facts and the
Speaker 10: spirit of Walter Cronkite. But social media is built on
Speaker 10: viral moments. So we heard Selena talking about, oh, you know,
Speaker 10: like what's going to be viral next? Waking up every
Speaker 10: day worrying about how are you going to feed the beast.
Speaker 10: We're all feeding the beast, just in a different way.
Speaker 10: So I think that, you know, we're talking around a
Speaker 10: lot of things. I'm sorry, but there is an appetite
Speaker 10: for viral moments on social and I think that as
Speaker 10: a society we have been trained to only need.
Speaker 2: Here's an analogy.
Speaker 10: Do you remember when you were a kid, you had
Speaker 10: tropicana orange juice in the frozen thing in the freezer.
Speaker 2: I would eat that.
Speaker 10: My grandmother would be all over me, like she wait
Speaker 10: until I make the orange juice. You have to pour
Speaker 10: the water in it, like I just wanted to concentrate.
Speaker 10: And that's literally, it is right and by dating myself,
Speaker 10: but but that is literally what social media is. Everybody
Speaker 10: wants the orange juice concentrate. They don't want it diluted,
Speaker 10: they don't want it served to you in a glass.
Speaker 10: What is also true is there is an appetite for
Speaker 10: long form journalism. And so, you know, just as in
Speaker 10: legacy media, I have been you know, I'm grateful and
Speaker 10: fortunate enough to have my own show where I can
Speaker 10: do those long form stories, where Armand is able to
Speaker 10: sit down and do a two hour show and people
Speaker 10: are there for it. People the diminishing eyes, the audience
Speaker 10: that is on Legacy is there for my show, and
Speaker 10: everyone else is watching Armand right, and so there is,
Speaker 10: you know, an appetite for long form stuff.
Speaker 2: The breakfast, you know, like Lord is on the air
Speaker 2: for how many.
Speaker 1: Hours in the morning, three or four hours.
Speaker 10: Four hours. It's not just about the thirty second hit.
Speaker 10: It's not just about the one minute clip. They will
Speaker 10: sit there and listen to what Lauren has to say
Speaker 10: for hours. They would sit there and listen to what
Speaker 10: Armand has to say for hours. Sixty minutes is still
Speaker 10: where it is because it's good television fifteen minute pieces.
Speaker 2: So I think that, yeah, multiple things are allowed to
Speaker 2: be true.
Speaker 6: At the same time, before we asked another quick question,
Speaker 6: I know Mona wanted to jump in in the car lit.
Speaker 9: Jump in real quick because I think this is a
Speaker 9: conversation that goes beyond this table.
Speaker 14: I feel like where before there were.
Speaker 9: Gatekeepers, and this is a reason why a lot of
Speaker 9: people weren't able to get the opportunities that for example,
Speaker 9: I've been fortunate enough to have, because journalism is not easy.
Speaker 9: It wasn't easy to break into right and then getting
Speaker 9: our stories told was even harder. You had an uphill
Speaker 9: battle to fight. And so now with social media, it's
Speaker 9: allowed a new wave of people to enter the space
Speaker 9: and take up space. But with that comes some murky
Speaker 9: waters that we're navigating right where people for example, we're
Speaker 9: revealing the identity of witnesses that we're going under pseudonyms,
Speaker 9: and so you know, personally, I'm a decision not to
Speaker 9: do that, But that doesn't mean that everyone who you
Speaker 9: know walks in and is able to see the same
Speaker 9: court proceeding that that I'm watching won't go back and
Speaker 9: put two and two together and get those viral moments,
Speaker 9: and so I think it's not just about one clip.
Speaker 9: It's more about things are changing and how are we
Speaker 9: going to navigate that when the gatekeeper are gone? Which
Speaker 9: is great because now more people get opportunities. But the
Speaker 9: gatekeepers are gone, which means things are not being vetted.
Speaker 9: Ethic codes are not being you know, legal and standards
Speaker 9: are no longer you know, vetting everything.
Speaker 8: So I just want to add them in thirty seconds.
Speaker 8: Thirty seconds, I think to tie a bow on that.
Speaker 8: Thank you for that question, and I apologize.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm actually glad you asked
Speaker 1: the girl. You aren't well be acting like you can't
Speaker 1: do both.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, let me just just say, every day of my career,
Speaker 8: every day that I'm gathering, I always have to answer
Speaker 8: that question.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 8: So when I did a story today about a Jersey
Speaker 8: City police officer who just got arrested for sexual assault
Speaker 8: with a miner who was incapacitated, and you know, I
Speaker 8: had to have that conversation. WHOA, I had a conversation. Okay,
Speaker 8: do I show his life and children?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 8: So so I think, yeah, So what I what I
Speaker 8: say is every day, every decision as a journalist, whether
Speaker 8: your legacy, whether you're armand whether you're Celeiah, Celia, Celia,
Speaker 8: Celia Mona. And that's why, you know, we thank Dareka
Speaker 8: for putting this panel together, because this is the panel
Speaker 8: that you ask the questions too, because we all have
Speaker 8: our different platforms, but you know, cream rises to the
Speaker 8: top when you answer when you ask that question. Guess what,
Speaker 8: Sometimes you're going to get it wrong right, sometimes you're
Speaker 8: going to get it right, but you learn from each time,
Speaker 8: so it doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 8: We all have to ask in this world, in the
Speaker 8: murky waters, the buck stops with us, and it's good
Speaker 8: to ask that question.
Speaker 5: And sometimes it's just what it is.
Speaker 19: Shante from Short and Sweet Well, the trial obviously brought
Speaker 19: up so many triggering topics. What did you do specifically
Speaker 19: to trigger or not trigger, but center yourself in your
Speaker 19: personal life.
Speaker 3: I will go out for dinner and drinks with Arma
Speaker 3: and Celia a lot. And I also took a couple
Speaker 3: of days to just go to sleep and to not
Speaker 3: go to court like I needed to do that I
Speaker 3: was sleep It was one point I was sleepwalking so bad.
Speaker 3: I was at I was leaving a breakfast club and
Speaker 3: our EP was like, do you need me to call
Speaker 3: you a uber home? Like, I'm scared for you to
Speaker 3: drive home cause I was so tired. I got to
Speaker 3: be at breakfast club at like five thirty, then at
Speaker 3: court until six so and then I'm doing my podcast
Speaker 3: so and it's just bringing in the information is draining,
Speaker 3: and then the type of information is draining as well too.
Speaker 3: So I physically had to disconnect a couple days in
Speaker 3: a couple of times, and I felt like, dang, I'm
Speaker 3: missing it. And I was like, if I don't miss it,
Speaker 3: I don't even know what I'm gonna be talking about.
Speaker 5: I'm'na be so delirious.
Speaker 1: But also to community was a big thing.
Speaker 3: At the end of the trial, me and our mom
Speaker 3: were talking about how it kind of felt like I
Speaker 3: went back to college, or like we went back to college,
Speaker 3: because we all got so close going through it together
Speaker 3: and we were able to talk to each other about
Speaker 3: it and be upset with each other about certain things,
Speaker 3: and you know, just and that was so important because
Speaker 3: unless you were at that courthouse every day, you really
Speaker 3: couldn't fathom the intensity of certain things that we were experiencing.
Speaker 3: So leaning into community was like a big thing for
Speaker 3: me too.
Speaker 15: I missed the question, guys, can can y'all just tell
Speaker 15: me what the worst one?
Speaker 6: What were you responding to the question was about things
Speaker 6: that were triggering and how folks processed it. Lauren was
Speaker 6: saying going out to drinks with you helped.
Speaker 15: No, Oh, I have a triggering thing really quick. It
Speaker 15: wasn't until after the trial though.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people do.
Speaker 15: Well, maybe you guys didn't experience, but I did, and
Speaker 15: I know a lot of like my peers kind of
Speaker 15: felt it. But after all of that, I think I
Speaker 15: fell into like a whole I don't know, I kind
Speaker 15: of got it. It was like a little week they
Speaker 15: were calling like a giddy depression.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 15: It just kind of felt like ugh, Like once it
Speaker 15: was like all over, I had felt like it's what's next.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what. I didn't know what I felt.
Speaker 15: I felt like it was so much energy there, but
Speaker 15: I was like doing it for the to eight weeks
Speaker 15: that I was there. Then once it was over, like
Speaker 15: it was just this weird cloud over me where I
Speaker 15: kind of was like.
Speaker 4: Sad, I was fatigued. I didn't really want to work.
Speaker 15: I didn't know what was going on with me, and
Speaker 15: I think I didn't know what that was, but I
Speaker 15: started to slowly pull myself out, you know, like talking
Speaker 15: to my friends me, I would go to New York,
Speaker 15: hang out with Salid, we would go out, have dreams,
Speaker 15: running to Lauren, like, I would just start doing stuff
Speaker 15: and then I would find myself getting inspired to get
Speaker 15: back to it again. But that was something that kind
Speaker 15: of hit me hard after the trial, Like you know,
Speaker 15: went there, made a bunch of money, did a bunch
Speaker 15: of content, had some big highs, and then like I think,
Speaker 15: people we don't talk about enough when you hit those
Speaker 15: big highs like that and then you just drop, it's
Speaker 15: like you feel it, like I definitely did.
Speaker 9: I will say the information is difficult to listen to.
Speaker 9: I mean there's a lot of things that came out
Speaker 9: and they was it was disturbing and you know information
Speaker 9: that was coming out. I will say my years of
Speaker 9: covering court has helped me compartmentalize things and not take things.
Speaker 14: Home because it will wreck you.
Speaker 9: It is why I kind of distanced myself from hard
Speaker 9: news and started getting into entertainment news because after years
Speaker 9: of that, it is difficult, right, But I will say
Speaker 9: the amount of work that I was doing, all of
Speaker 9: the you know, the long days in Core trying to
Speaker 9: get all the content out all this stuff.
Speaker 14: At the end of it, I was beat. I was
Speaker 14: burnt out.
Speaker 9: And it was something that I realized our newsrooms are
Speaker 9: demanding so much of us these days. Like when I
Speaker 9: first started, it was one hit, and then it was like, oh,
Speaker 9: we added a four o'clock show, and then now you
Speaker 9: got to produce yourself, and then you have to now
Speaker 9: do something on social media.
Speaker 14: And so I feel like a.
Speaker 9: Lot of the reporters that were out there can can
Speaker 9: agree that we are being stretched really thin. And at
Speaker 9: the end of it, by summer, I'm like, first of all,
Speaker 9: my summer was gone because you look up and it's
Speaker 9: mid July. We started this in like May, so you
Speaker 9: look up and you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't
Speaker 9: go on vacation. I was in this courtroom and and
Speaker 9: processing all this difficult information. But also the workload was
Speaker 9: so much that by August I was burnt out and
Speaker 9: how to just keep going?
Speaker 14: And so I think trying to figure out how to navigate.
Speaker 9: This and the demands and you know, more content and
Speaker 9: great people want it, but we're only just one person
Speaker 9: trying to produce all of that as well.
Speaker 11: Hello.
Speaker 5: My name is Cynthia Horner.
Speaker 20: I'm on the board of New York Association of Black Journalists,
Speaker 20: and I want to thank you all for having such
Speaker 20: wonderful comments. And we've learned so much from what you've
Speaker 20: had to say. There's so many diverse viewpoints. My question
Speaker 20: is what was the most difficult moment for you in
Speaker 20: covering this trial? Because there are some people that are
Speaker 20: readers of publications or viewers of television shows who felt
Speaker 20: that there were some moments in that trial that were
Speaker 20: so horrific, the depravity and all of that that they
Speaker 20: couldn't even stomach listening to it. So what was your
Speaker 20: take on how did you navigate with that? Because you
Speaker 20: have the reporter in you, but you also have the
Speaker 20: human side, and you know, especially women, hearing testimony from
Speaker 20: women who had been sexually assaulted and all of that
Speaker 20: kind of thing. So if you could just give us
Speaker 20: quick comments on how you navigated and if there was
Speaker 20: one moment where you just.
Speaker 5: Said, I don't know if I can keep doing this.
Speaker 6: And if one person wants to take that, because we
Speaker 6: got one more question and then we have announcements, so
Speaker 6: we got like five minutes left. Sorry.
Speaker 10: I think with every story you try to approach it
Speaker 10: as a person. I'm a father of two daughters, so
Speaker 10: hearing stories of domestic violence in that graphic nature was hard.
Speaker 10: But at the same time, compartmentalizing is key to be
Speaker 10: able to tell the you know, the audience, what's happening
Speaker 10: without getting personally emotionally involved to the point where you
Speaker 10: can't do your job.
Speaker 21: All right, I'll respect all you ladies, and I don't
Speaker 21: feel like I respect black journalists. I love black journalism.
Speaker 21: Lonald Rossa, Dollar Miles, Jerika ducclan, I love y'all. Don't
Speaker 21: suppress anything that y'all do. I'm from Jersey, and if
Speaker 21: y'all feel suppressed or threatened by any way, I got
Speaker 21: a hundred goons that will protect yourup, keep your foot on.
Speaker 4: Donald Trumps. I'm not here to tear puff down or none.
Speaker 22: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't got nothing to do with that.
Speaker 21: I do know the dude that dropped the book, Courtney,
Speaker 21: that dropped the book with Kim Porter book.
Speaker 4: I do know where.
Speaker 21: I don't know how legit that book is, and I
Speaker 21: don't know if y'all read the book or.
Speaker 2: Whatever, whatever, but keep your foot on Donald Trump net.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, and know.
Speaker 6: Where you were going with that conversation. Brother, I said,
Speaker 6: wait a minute, wait a minute.
Speaker 12: So I thank you for your support.
Speaker 4: Now support you.
Speaker 14: No, I appreciate hard.
Speaker 22: I support y'all whole heartedly. I support y'all whole horribly.
Speaker 22: I respect y'all journalism. I love black journalism. You know
Speaker 22: what I'm saying, Like our story needs to be told.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: What joy read to the fullest?
Speaker 8: I got you. You know, we got five now, we
Speaker 8: got like three minutes.
Speaker 2: Oh, I support you all right.
Speaker 8: I appreciate what we got like, we got you all.
Speaker 1: Right, thank you.
Speaker 8: The one thing I want to end with appreciate you.
Speaker 8: Appreciate that. You know we'll get your number outside. So
Speaker 8: I heard the same question twice. How did we deal
Speaker 8: with it? And I don't think.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 5: I didn't address it.
Speaker 8: I don't know if you got the answer that you
Speaker 8: were looking for from a woman's perspective, from a black
Speaker 8: woman's perspective, from my point of view, right, I mean,
Speaker 8: I think we've addressed it. The only thing I will
Speaker 8: say because I do get that question a lot. Let
Speaker 8: me just land a plane. You know, we're coming back
Speaker 8: over from your But you know, I've seen a lot.
Speaker 5: I've seen a lot in New York City.
Speaker 8: I've covered a lot, and I kind of feel like
Speaker 8: we're second responders.
Speaker 5: So like first responders, they go.
Speaker 8: Out and they compartmentalize, they compartmentalize and they just go home.
Speaker 8: And so we're kind of like second responders and we,
Speaker 8: whether we know it or not, we do compartmentalize in
Speaker 8: that way. And I'll say, just to Lawrence's point, the
Speaker 8: community of us who kind of like we're pledging the
Speaker 8: Diddy trial together, you know, really made it great. Jay
Speaker 8: and I would talk about Armand's show in the morning,
Speaker 8: did you see Armand? Last night I would see Salia
Speaker 8: and what you This panel is a product of the
Speaker 8: community that we built during that experience.
Speaker 5: And I'll say that that's not the worst I've ever covered.
Speaker 1: That's how I felt.
Speaker 8: So I've covered so much more that was also horrific.
Speaker 8: It really wasn't the worst that I've ever covered. And
Speaker 8: I was very happy that they didn't show us the
Speaker 8: tapes because I didn't want that in my brain. I'm
Speaker 8: very particular about what I put in my brain. So
Speaker 8: I was happy that they kept some of the stuff
Speaker 8: away from us and I protected my brain and we
Speaker 8: just were second responders and we comportmentalized blast.
Speaker 11: Every woman, black, white, Asian.
Speaker 12: Everybody talked about every little detail being flewed out. I mean,
Speaker 12: you had Emmy award winning.
Speaker 11: Journalists that you see on TV that are like, well,
Speaker 11: I was flewed out. I don't remember that experience. We
Speaker 11: were all comparing that was not me. I'm just saying,
Speaker 11: it's like I never.
Speaker 1: Been flewed out.
Speaker 11: The thing women got together of all different racist ethnicities
Speaker 11: and we're like, well, I don't know. I mean when
Speaker 11: I looked that this could have been me, we were
Speaker 11: all like wow, Like it was like stories.
Speaker 12: Anybody staring sharing stories. It was insane.
Speaker 11: And then people kept telling me that TMZ loved Diddy,
Speaker 11: which really was weird, and I was like, that's not true,
Speaker 11: and I felt like I had to defend myself and
Speaker 11: it was just weird. But so there was so many
Speaker 11: different components, but yeah, everybody got together and talked about
Speaker 11: it and it was a great bonding experience.
Speaker 4: Can I follow up that question? Sure, it's it's real
Speaker 4: fast because you know, we gotta.
Speaker 2: All live through our felly and now the ditty trip.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to follow up usively that do you guys.
Speaker 13: Think that as a society we're talking about sexual violence
Speaker 13: and the next like our conversation around this GB's sexual violence,
Speaker 13: is it evolving?
Speaker 8: Because it just seems like, you know, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 8: Epstein files, No no, no.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Ten years ago, we wouldn't this conversation now, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 8: our kick off the.
Speaker 4: Conversation good night.
Speaker 5: I remember when r Kelly and Alijah came.
Speaker 10: Out and to my night he could when the whole
Speaker 10: marriage story broke, I thought it was a marketing floor.
Speaker 5: I was speaking to myself at the time.
Speaker 4: Her uncle was her manager. Might there's no way her
Speaker 4: parents were coach signs.
Speaker 5: I truly thought it was a marketing ploor to sell age.
Speaker 4: Ain't nothing one enough. It wouldn't have occurred to.
Speaker 12: Me at that time that it was a real thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 13: So I think my answer, and I can't speak to anybody,
Speaker 13: but I will say my answer is yes.
Speaker 8: Because again, ten years ago, we wouldn't be having the
Speaker 8: conversation we would have it now. You're right, I mean,
Speaker 8: I think the conversation with me too has advanced the discussion.
Speaker 8: I think to quantify my earlier knee jerk reaction is
Speaker 8: and maybe that is my perspective as a woman, because
Speaker 8: I don't think justice has caught up with a conversation.
Speaker 10: Hmmm, no, no, And you know, really quick social media.
Speaker 10: We've said it before. It's about everybody wants to see
Speaker 10: the car accident, so you know, the most graphic details
Speaker 10: that you can imagine that we were not discussing ten
Speaker 10: years ago, because everyone wants the you know, the most
Speaker 10: salacious details on their feed that they can just scroll through.
Speaker 10: A lot of it is falling through the cracks into
Speaker 10: our phone and onto our feeds. And I know we're
Speaker 10: about to wrap up, but I just wanted to say
Speaker 10: this that, you know, for people like me and Darla
Speaker 10: I love, I don't want there to be any kind
Speaker 10: of misperception about what's happening in this business. I love
Speaker 10: seeing Lauren Win, I love seeing Celia Win.
Speaker 2: I love seeing armand Win. And I told Armand that
Speaker 2: to his face.
Speaker 4: You know, I it's so now you put me on
Speaker 4: your show. I did.
Speaker 10: I did, And you know what my producers are like,
Speaker 10: who is that and why is he a guest on
Speaker 10: your show. But as the managing editor and the creator
Speaker 10: of it and the co producer of it, I get
Speaker 10: to call the shots and who's on the show man,
Speaker 10: And I said, I want armand on my show. And so,
Speaker 10: you know, to have people who look like us carry
Speaker 10: us into the next generation about of what is going
Speaker 10: to be seen. I think it's so important. And there's
Speaker 10: another The plate is big enough for all of us
Speaker 10: to eat, and I'm looking to them to teach me
Speaker 10: how to evolve. And so I just wanted to say that,
Speaker 10: you know, I'm so grateful to all of all of
Speaker 10: you for leading the way.
Speaker 6: I just yes, thank you guys. I know this went
Speaker 6: by so fast. I wish we had more time. Mona,
Speaker 6: you had one more thought? Did you want to say
Speaker 6: one more thing.
Speaker 9: Just quickly, about the conversation about sexual violence and if
Speaker 9: we're having these conversations. I think we've come a long
Speaker 9: way since the days of normalizing R. Kelly and making
Speaker 9: jokes on the Chappelle Show about what he was doing.
Speaker 9: But I also think that what was complicated about this
Speaker 9: case is you had it. We were almost saying that
Speaker 9: it was, you know, a test for the me too movement?
Speaker 9: Is a me too movement done, and I don't think
Speaker 9: that one case dictates if the Me Too movement is effective.
Speaker 9: But also what I think happened is people were torn
Speaker 9: between is this a black man who is, you know,
Speaker 9: being the government's trying to throw a black man, a
Speaker 9: successful black man in jail. Or is this someone who
Speaker 9: was a very powerful, rich man who was taking advantage
Speaker 9: of women and using his power to do so. And
Speaker 9: I think sometimes that mix of a conversation was happening
Speaker 9: as well.
Speaker 6: Hopefully with a reporting that everybody here did you get
Speaker 6: to make that decision, We're not here to tell you
Speaker 6: how to think so, and then.
Speaker 4: Lastly the real quick, real quick. Okay, but I think too.
Speaker 15: Because I always got to add the LGBTQ factor into
Speaker 15: I think people also were having conversations they were so
Speaker 15: interested in is.
Speaker 4: D D gay? What about the men? What about the escorts?
Speaker 15: So you know, they people were becoming desentitized because they
Speaker 15: were so infatuated with whether.
Speaker 4: Or not he was interested in the men or not.
Speaker 15: So it's just a lot of things that kind of
Speaker 15: went into that when we get into the sexual stuff.
Speaker 6: So you make sure you follow everybody on this panel.
Speaker 6: Check out our Moms Show Jay's show, Darla, all of
Speaker 6: us please, we need to support you.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for joining me for this conversation. Look,
Speaker 3: I always say I can't ever be afraid to answer
Speaker 3: a question because I'm the girl that's gonna ask him.
Speaker 3: I know y'all hate the way I say ask. I'm
Speaker 3: also never going to learn how to say that the
Speaker 3: correct way. But thank you guys for joining me in
Speaker 3: this episode. You know I tell y'all every single episode.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you guys because y'all could be anywhere with anybody,
Speaker 3: having these conversations, and you choose to be right here
Speaker 3: with me. By Lowriders, I will see you in my
Speaker 3: next episode.