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Dateline listeners. My name is Dan Slepian,

1:43

and I've been a producer at Dateline

1:45

for nearly 30 years. I'd

1:48

like to share a story with you that I think

1:50

you might find interesting. I've spent

1:52

much of my career and my life

1:54

diving deep into the criminal justice system.

1:57

And along the way, I've uncovered what I've come to

1:59

realize. And

8:00

there he was, Tony Gaida. I

8:04

went up to him and said no doubt with the

8:06

energy of a puppy off the leash, Mr.

8:09

Gaida, my name is Dan Slepian, I watch you

8:11

all the time. I applied to be an intern

8:13

at WNBC, but I got rejected. I'll do anything,

8:16

I'll get you coffee, whatever you want. Tony

8:20

gazed at me for a moment. Here

8:22

I was, this painfully earnest 19

8:25

year old vibrating with enthusiasm and

8:27

hope. And then

8:29

he reached into his shirt pocket, took out a

8:31

napkin, and scribbled the number on it.

8:35

He handed it to me with three words, call

8:38

Mike Callahan. Tony

8:40

probably thought nothing of it, but

8:43

those few seconds of kindness would

8:46

forever change my professional trajectory

8:48

and my life. The

8:51

very next day I dialed the number Tony

8:54

had given me and spoke with Mike Callahan,

8:56

the chain smoking managing editor

8:58

at WNBC. Excitement

9:01

brimming in my voice, I said, I met

9:03

Tony Gaida. He said to call you because

9:05

I'd love to be an intern and he

9:07

cut me off and said, come on in. And

9:11

so the next day I found myself

9:13

at the WNBC office in iconic 30

9:16

Rockefeller Plaza. Callahan

9:19

wasted no time and said, you want to

9:21

be an intern? Help out the

9:23

assignment editors on the desk. Simple

9:26

as that. I never

9:28

went back to common cause. In

9:30

fact, I've stayed in that

9:32

very building more than 30 years now. The

9:36

internship coordinator would see me and say, who

9:38

are you? An

9:40

intern, I'd confidently reply. No,

9:44

you have to be part of the program,

9:46

she'd respond. Mike said I

9:48

could come in. That's

9:50

not the way it works, she'd say.

9:54

We would have that conversation on a

9:56

few occasions, as many

9:58

times as she tried to get me. I just

10:01

kept coming in every day, pulling

10:04

faxes, answering phones, and cheerfully

10:06

fetching sugar for assignment editor

10:09

Harry Rittenberg Slimfast. I

10:12

was kind of like the guy from office space who

10:14

didn't have a job and just kept showing up. I'd

10:18

cross paths with that internship director in the

10:20

hallways for years. And

10:23

she'd always have a silence

10:25

there like, you're still here?

10:28

That unorthodox internship eventually paved the

10:30

way for me to be accepted into the NBC

10:32

Page program, a

10:36

highly competitive opportunity for college graduates

10:38

looking to get into the TV

10:40

business. Among

10:43

my responsibilities was giving tours of the

10:45

studios and seating audiences for shows like

10:47

Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday

10:50

Night Live. My

10:53

first real job was working for the man

10:55

I grew up watching after school every day,

10:58

the OG, the original pre-Oprah

11:01

daytime talk show host Phil

11:03

Donahue. For

11:05

the kids who don't know his

11:07

name, he invented running around a

11:09

studio audience holding a microphone in

11:11

random people's faces, and he totally

11:13

revolutionized television. When

11:16

Donahue went off the air in 1996, I

11:19

started working at Dateline. My

11:21

dream job and never left. Dateline,

11:24

NBC's longest running primetime series, has

11:26

been on the air for more

11:29

than 30 years and has become

11:31

part of mainstream American culture. When

11:34

I began there, the show was anchored by

11:37

Stone Phillips and Jane Pauley and aired two

11:39

nights per week. Within

11:41

a couple of years, under the leadership

11:43

of executive producer Neil Shapiro, it

11:45

was on as many as five nights per week. Back

11:49

then, the show was broken into

11:51

several segments covering various topics, from

11:53

celebrity profiles to undercover investigations to

11:56

breaking news reports. Producing

11:58

stories during that time. was like

12:00

drinking from several fire hoses at once.

12:05

My first role at Dateline was what's

12:07

called a booker, meaning it was my

12:09

job to convince people embroiled in the

12:11

biggest breaking stories of the day to

12:13

talk exclusively to Dateline. About

12:16

15 young staffers, mostly

12:18

news nerds, were told to

12:20

keep an overnight bag under our desks at work

12:22

because you never knew when news would break and

12:24

you'd be headed to the airport. When

12:28

the Columbine shooting happened, I was off to

12:30

Colorado with Stone Phillips. After

12:33

Waco burned, I headed to Texas.

12:37

When JFK Jr.'s plane went down, I was on

12:39

the next flight to Martha's Vineyard. A

12:43

few years later, Dateline began to focus on

12:46

murder mysteries, launching a new era as

12:48

the true crime original for its captivating

12:51

yarns with twists and turns that keep

12:53

viewers on the edge of their seats.

12:57

By September 10th, 2001, I was 31

13:00

and had been working at Dateline for five

13:02

years. I'd been filming with

13:04

the Vegas detectives that Monday and happened

13:07

to take the last flight back from Las Vegas

13:09

to New York City, where I lived at the

13:11

time. I landed at

13:13

about one in the morning on 9-11 and

13:15

headed home to my wife, Jocelyn. Hours

13:18

later, when the first plane struck the

13:20

World Trade Center, I grabbed my camera,

13:23

headed down to St. Vincent's Hospital, and

13:25

began interviewing people who were searching for

13:27

their missing family members. Looking

13:31

up 7th Avenue, I could see police

13:33

cars and fire engines driving at top

13:35

speed toward the bottom of the island.

13:37

And I watched in awe as these

13:39

men and women in uniform rushed to

13:41

those buildings. In

13:44

that moment, more than any other, and I'd spent

13:46

a lot of time with police officers and been

13:48

impressed by what they did, I thought,

13:51

these are men and women who have different blood

13:53

than I do. I'd

13:56

never, not in a million years, rush into

13:58

a building in a-