Lynn Sherr: 'Outside the Box'
Sept. 14, 2006 — -- Lynn Sherr's reporting career spans four decades, multiple networks and the world over. Her new memoir, "Outside the Box," details her life on camera and off.
Sherr has been a trailblazer for women journalists, from her days covering the women's movement for The Associated Press to her years reporting on politics, exotic animals and everything in between for ABC News.
In "Outside the Box," Sherr unveils what's behind the glitz of TV news and talks about her own struggles and triumphs.
Outside the Box
We were at my mother-in-law's apartment in New York. It was six thirty, and Larry, my husband, pointed toward the television set.
"Lynn has a story on the news tonight," he told her. "Let's watch."Diana Hilford smiled with anticipation. By then in her late eighties, after a lifetime of success at a business she had created, her body was failing and she rarely left home. A visit from her son always lifted her spirits; the two of us together made her beam. I was in awe of her guts and her accomplishments, and I loved making her happy. Letting her know when she could catch me in action on television was one of those rituals that just made me feel good.
But I'd never before been in the same room while it happened.
As Larry clicked on the TV, I stood aside, watching Peter Jennings open World News Tonight and trying to recall where in the lineup my piece was running. It had been finished much earlier in the day and was safely on videotape, which is why I could leave the office in time to watch with them. Finally I saw it coming and alerted Diana.She looked at the screen, listened to my voice, saw me on camera. And then the strangest thing happened. Clearly puzzled, she turned her head to look at me in real life. Then back to the screen. Then back to me again. Back and forth throughout the entire piece with a bewildered look on her face. I don't think she absorbed a word of my story. This incredible woman, who had escaped from Russia as a teenager, who had raised a child and run a company all by herself in America, could not figure out how I could be on the tube and standing in her apartment at the same time. Which "me" was the genuine article?
It's the kind of confusion that often results when you step outside the box.I know because it's a position, maybe even a mind-set, I've adopted regularly as a reality check on this mighty medium. Call it self-preservation, or even call it mutiny, but if you can't keep straight which "you" is you, then neither one has a chance. Because in the public mind, TV trumps real life every time.
The flip side of the Diana story occurred during liftoff of the first space shuttle. I was assigned to the VIP viewing area, where I interviewed guests and celebrities in the dim predawn light. We were on the air live, and I was talking on camera to our anchor, Frank Reynolds, who was in the booth about fifty yards away. My producer had her arms stretched out like a giant bird, for crowd control, and we had a tiny, twelve-inch black-and-white monitor on the ground so she could check the shot and so I could see what was being broadcast. The monitor was angled half toward me, half toward the cameraman and the crowds. As I spoke into the microphone and faced the camera—no doubt delivering some vital nugget of information to the audience at home—I was pleased to note that the audience at hand was hushed, listening to what I was saying for news of the launch. But no one was looking at me. Even though I was standing three feet in front of them in living, breathing real life—and in color!—their eyes were all directed downward as they watched me on the teeny gray monitor. TV was the reality; life, a mere bystander. Outside the box simply didn't matter.
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