Word: geraldo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Geraldo Rivera thinks big. "I went into news knowing I wanted to be more than a local newsman standing in front of a burning building talking about the number of firemen being treated for smoke inhalation," he says. Thirty-year-old Rivera has now been in the news business exactly three years and eight months as a reporter for New York City's WABC Eyewitness News. During that time, the former Brooklyn street-gang leader, merchant seaman, dry-goods salesman and poverty lawyer has won five Emmys, 74 other awards, and a $100,000-a-year salary...
Rivera has accomplished his celebrity with a combination of aggressive investigative reporting, cocky flamboyance, bulldozer ambition and the preemptive coverage of his own convictions. Like television news itself, the Rivera style is half journalism and half show business. Long-haired, casually hip in crew-neck sweaters and saddle oxfords, Geraldo (pronounced Heraldo) Rivera is sometimes identified as the first "rock-'n'-roll newsman...
Reports like these have earned Rivera the reputation of a crusader. They have also brought him unusual freedom. He and Cameraman Martin Berman have separate headquarters away from newsroom hustle in a cluttered basement office known as "Geraldo's Bodega." Rivera simply notifies the station when he has a report ready for broadcast. "Reporters are paid for each appearance on the air," says Rivera. "It is the greatest single cause of TV news mediocrity. It fosters quantity rather than quality...
...experience. Others point to his aggressive tactics. Last fall, for instance, Rivera decided to cover the Israeli war. When the station's decision was to send no one, Rivera dashed over the station director's head to the network and wangled an O.K. Says one WABC executive, "Geraldo lines people up behind him to fight for what he wants, and then plays them off against one another...
...minute show every night with the right kind of staff." His idea of the right kind of staff? "An army of young, committed investigative teams who would rove the world reporting subjects relevant to me, not necessarily to ABC News President Elmer Lower." That's big thinking, Geraldo...