KATE MCNEIL - Daily Herald | Posted: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 11:00 pm
Between rides being pimped and 16-year-olds being primped is the inconspicuous, bespectacled reporter of "10 to the hour, every hour."
For some of the MySpace generation, MTV's Gideon Yago is the only voice of news authority in their media saturated day.
Though he works for the channel that spawned Attention Deficit Disorder, Yago took a different tact Wednesday at Utah Valley State College.
"What MTV sells you is cool," Yago confessed, before presenting a real, if not "hip" view of the Iraq war and politics. More specifically, he spoke on how 9/11 changed MTV, and him.
Yago began working at MTV in 2000 without any journalism experience. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was the only employee in the building who could go on air to report.
Before 9/11, STDs, guns in school and paying for college were more important to teenagers than a war in Kosovo, he said.
Shortly after the Twin Towers fell, Yago said, The Onion, a parody newspaper and Web site, ran a photo of Britney Spears holding an albino boa constrictor at the 2001 Music Video Awards. Next to it, a headline proclaiming that the nation longed to care about meaningless events again.
So MTV had a choice to make. Continue to air the latest reincarnation of rapper Sean Combs, or get real with their audience.
Two weeks later, Yago was in Afghanistan.
"MTV had never covered a war before the Iraq war," he said. "At the same time, we knew your demographic. We were lucky if you could find Washington, D.C., on a map, much less Riyadh or Kabul. They could be film sets in Hollywood for all you cared."
Scott-Jamin Jessop, sitting in the second row, wondered how the TV network of "The Real World" and "Laguna Beach" could cover a war.
"MTV is sexy," Jessop said. "I know this because I went on TRL and they sat me in the ugly section, the one where the camera only gets the back of your head."
"So how do you make the Iraq war 'sexy'fi" Jessop questioned Yago.
Yago denied MTV had a goal of "sexy" reporting (i.e., troops with shirts off and AK-47s, he said) and focused instead on making the war "real" for America's youth.
"Real" being these three topics his Viacom executive bosses told him to cover in Kuwait: the opening of the Virgin Megastore in Kuwait City, the new young veterans of America, and the troops' reaction to the newest 50 Cent album -- a result of MTV's close relationship to Interscope Records.
Embedded in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq, Yago's reports weren't about suicide bombs and Donald Rumsfeld. They were about the youth of these war-torn countries. "They're just like you," he said. "They like Xbox and Will Smith."
"I get asked a lot, 'What's your most interesting interviewfi' " Yago said. "It's not a celebrity. It's not a politician. It's you. They're not real. You're real."
For Allison Shiffler, a sophomore humanities major from Pennsylvania, Yago's "real" speech surprised her.
"It's interesting that he's such a supporter of MTV," she said. "He was so real about their intentions. You'd think he'd say MTV is a load of popcorn and bubble gum. It was very oxymoronic."
"It was interesting to see his two sides," Jessop said. "He's part of this major network that many people don't like, yet he's just like one of us."
Jessop said he learned more from Yago's hour speech than he has in a year of watching "Fox News soundbites."
"I feel very disconnected from the evening news," said Rachel Juarez, a communications major. "He's my Dan Rather."
Later, Juarez confessed her crush on the 28-year-old reporter. "He's so smart and sincere," she said.
Kate McNeil can be reached at 344-2549 or kmcneil@heraldextra.com
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.