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Object Description
Interview no. | R-0774 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | R.43. Special Research Projects: NewStories |
Project description | NewStories, begun in 2012, is an ongoing project of the University of North Carolina School of Media and Journalism. Interviews are conducted by students enrolled in media history coursework under the direction of Dr. Barbara Friedman. The series explores the life experiences of North Carolina media workers, whose career fields include print and broadcast news, photojournalism, web journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising and education. Included is a series of interviews with inductees of the North Carolina Halls of Fame. The interviews are biographical in nature, yet some concentrate on particular events or periods within the lifetime of the respondent. |
Date | 17 March 2015 |
Interviewee | Griffiths, Richard. |
Interviewee occupation | Broadcasters |
Interviewee DOB | Undisclosed |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Cotton, Cierra. |
Abstract | For Richard Griffiths, vice president and senior editorial director of CNN, success is built on high standards, long hours and forward thinking. Griffiths and his family emigrated from England in 1974. This provided Griffiths with the opportunity to attend and graduate from an American high school. He went on to college at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as a sociology major. While he was a student, he worked various journalism jobs to pay his expenses through college. Yet success as a journalist left less and less time for classes, and ultimately Griffiths chose work over completing his degree. He worked in Greensboro as a news director at WGBG Radio; as a motel desk clerk at Howard Johnson's; and in numerous positions at WFMY television, the CBS affiliate. Griffiths and his wife moved to St. Louis, where he worked at KTVI, the Fox affiliate, doing long-form programming. For the work, he was honored with an Emmy and a Peabody award. This program was canceled due to lack funding. From there Griffiths went to work for WFAA, an ABC affiliate in Dallas, Texas, where he helped develop one-hour newscasts. Soon, CBS was chasing WFAA’s ratings and Griffiths. Wooed to the network's Los Angeles office, Griffiths worked with such luminaries as Bob Schieffer and Charles Kuralt. He was promoted to senior producer of the network's Atlanta bureau, where he remained until it was closed in 1991. The CNN job was the culmination of Griffiths’s years of hard work and tenacity. |
Citation | Interview with Richard Griffiths by Cierra Cotton, 17 March 2015 R-0774, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |
Description
Interview no. | R0774_Audio |