Features

AAPRC Weekly: Johnnie Roberts

Johnnie Roberts
Senior Writer
Newsweek magazine
NYC


In 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the race for President, interest rates were sky high and the U.S. was in fairly lousy economic shape末a fact that played no small part in Reagan's victory. The new President gave a lot of speeches about small business development and the economy. Johnnie Roberts, then a young reporter at the St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, Florida) guessed末and rightly so末that the business beat would probably yield a lot of big stories in the years to come. He applied for a job with the Wall Street Journal and was assigned to the publication's Boston bureau. In 1994 he joined Newsweek magazine as a senior writer in the business section, covering the media and entertainment industries.

Roberts spent 13 years at the Journal末first in Boston and then in New York末writing about the biggest business stories of the time. "Back in those days a lot of newspapers didn't have a separate business section," says Roberts. "Papers all across the country started launching [business] sections and there was a lot of attention and interest on Wall Street because of the bull market; and then you had all those Wall Street scandals. You had the takeovers. You had corporate raiders. Business just became a huge, huge story."

And Roberts wrote some of the most important stories of the era, winning awards for breaking the Dun & Bradstreet credit-rating scandal and for his stories on the abuses of power by the cable company TCI. He covered the advertising industry, emerging electronic information services, newspapers and telecommunications. He also started writing about big media deals. "These media companies were just taking over one another and getting bigger and bigger, so that they owned everything under one roof," Roberts recalls. "That was a big story for a long while and to some extent it's still going on today. One of the stories I covered this year was the now-aborted takeover attempt by Comcast of Disney."

The media and entertainment industry captured Roberts' attention and he began writing about it exclusively when he moved to Newsweek. "Everyone has a television in their homes, everyone has cable in their homes. They're familiar with the services that I'm writing about, so I think there's a potential natural interest," says Roberts. "Television, the movies, music末good and bad末it is there. We're inundated with media."

Roberts has done profiles of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Russell Simmons, Brian Roberts and Richard Parsons; a cross section of moguls, including media barons Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner, Barry Diller and Sumner Redstone, and countless studio, network and music company executives. He's written about hip hop's financial impact on luxury brand, and his profile, "The New Black Power," chronicling the rise of Richard Parsons, Ken Chenault and Stanley O'Neal to the pinnacle of Corporate America, was a Newsweek cover story.

Roberts, who hails from Ft. Meyers, Florida, could look back over his more than two decades in journalism with justifiable amazement, mostly because he ended up in the field by happy accident. As a student at a small college in his home state, he took a part-time job at the St. Petersburg Times for pocket money. "Out of the blue one day an editor walked over to me and said they had an opening in the editorial department for a researcher," Roberts recalls. "It wasn't even a full-time job, but I so enjoyed it I thought I'd do it for a couple of years and then go on to law school."

But after college the paper hired Roberts as a general assignment reporter. Writing had been a favorite hobby since childhood, so he was thrilled to find himself suddenly making a living at it. Law school was immediately forgotten.

In the years to come Roberts looks forward to having the time to write a series of non-fiction books about media and entertainment末broader, richer examinations of the industries he covers. Meanwhile, he spends his downtime with his wife and three-yearold daughter, Lily, in their South Orange, New Jersey home. "I spent a good chunk of my professional life doing the job," says Roberts. "Taking time out for kids末I didn't have time for that. But now I have a three-year-old and I'm just in to that. I spend huge amounts of time with my kid."

As a business reporter, you've covered the entertainment beat for nearly 15 years. What major changes or trends have you observed in the industry?

Consolidation is by far the biggest change or trend in the media and entertainment businesses over the period. All of the major networks--NBC, ABC and CBS--were independent business until the mid-1980s (Fox was launched late in the decade). Since then, they have been swallowed by giant media and entertainment companies--Disney owns ABC; GE owns NBC and Viacom owns CBS. The same is true in the music business.

In your opinion do you think the current economic downturn in the music industry is simply a reflection of the state of the overall economy or is the industry being completely transformed by developments in technology (e.g., downloading, file sharing, etc.)?

The economy and technology are just two of the powerful forces behind the downturn in the music business. Music companies became bloated, wasteful and probably too big for their own good. As part of massive public companies, they were forced to focus on quarterly earnings to the detriment of artist development. One artist sounded no different than the next. The price of CDs should have been reduced. In other words, mismanagement also is a big part of the problem.

Do you think the propensity toward mergers and consolidation will continue in the entertainment industry? Is there a saturation point?

One certainly would hope that consolidation will run its course. But bluntly, no. Earlier this year, Comcast, the number one cable operator, sought to buy Walt Disney Company. Even now, a number of the cable giants, including Comcast and Time Warner, are weighing the possibility to buy Adelphia, another major cable company. MGM Studio may be purchased by Time Warner, which already own Warner Brothers studio, or Sony, which owns Columbia and TriStar studios, or GE, which owns Universal Studios. So there's no evidence yet that merger mania has run out of gas.

The growth of Internet and cable and the public appetite for celebrity news seems to have created a tremendous demand for content. As a journalist who writes about the business end of the entertainment industry, do you believe the market can sustain this trend?

I believe there will continue to be an insatiable appetite for celebrity news. But the huge numbers of magazines, cable networks and shows devoted to the subject won't all survive. There's just so much advertising revenues to divvy up among all of them.

As a journalist what attracted you to the media and entertainment industries?

It's the intersection of a vast audience that consume media, the big money the industry attracts from advertisers and consumers, and the colorful people in media--from the moguls in the business suites, men like Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner and Steve Jobs. They are the most interesting people in business. Many started from scratch. They are very colorful characters. Then, finally, it's all about the fun.

What's the most challenging aspect of your job?

Juggling it all. All of these businesses末music, television, movies, the Internet, publishing末are 24/7. They are all dynamic and fast changing.

Do you have a journalistic idol? Is there anyone after whom you model yourself?

No. But that's because I fell into journalism. I didn't study it. I grew up reading newspapers and magazines, but not with a professional eye. Any piece of work by any journalists that reflects hard work gets my nod.

In terms of your career, what are you most proud of?

Stories that make a difference. That means articles that other major media follow, or that generate a big response from readers or prompt changes.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I don't know that I have typical days. It depends on whether I'm actively working on a story or hunting for a story. The most typical part of every day, however, is staying in touch with the world beyond the phone. I'm always out or on the phone trying to learn what's going on.

Tell us one thing people might be surprised to know about you.

I want to be an R&B star.

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The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) is an assemblage of professionals who provide communication conduits among clients, journalists, media and our communities. We come together as a collective because we recognize the importance of building those same conduits amongst ourselves.

A great deal of what we do is professional development末updating our skills, keeping pace with technology, refining and streamlining processes, providing a forum to tackle the issues that impact our work environment末but we believe our professional lives benefit most from the forging of effective alliances. Connected to one another, we possess the power of a nationwide body of committed, knowledgeable practitioners with an eye on the future.

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