'60 Minutes' producer visits J-School

By Emily Darrell
J-School Web Reporter

photo by Will Moss

"60 Minutes" producer Karen Sughrue discusses the mechanics of building an investigative story with broadcast students.

A producer for the CBS News program “60 Minutes” hosted four brown-bag lunch seminars and spoke to several J-School classes last week about her crucial, behind-the-scenes work for the No.1-rated weekly news magazine broadcast in the United States.  

Karen Sughrue has been with “60 Minutes” for 10 years, working exclusively with correspondent Leslie Stahl, a colleague she calls “very hard-working.”

Kim Cosgrove, a first-year graduate student in broadcast journalism, attended all of Sughrue’s lunch seminars and heard Sughrue speak in two of her classes. The seminars, she said, consisted of a lot of Q &A.           

“There are a lot of questions that only someone in the profession, and at that high a level can answer,” Cosgrove said.

Sughrue showed several of the news stories she’s worked on for “60 Minutes,” including one on Plan B, a type of emergency contraception, and one on infanticide and adoption in China.

Sughrue also spoke to Professor Sharon Barrett’s feature writing class, showing the in-depth, investigative piece on Plan B that “60 Minutes” ran in 2005. Sughrue explained to the class of print journalism students, many of whom did not even know what a television producer was, all the work that goes into producing a long-form broadcast feature.

“Broadcast journalists are real journalists, too,” she said.

Cosgrove found it impressive how involved Sughrue is with “60 Minutes.”

“She does everything,” Cosgrove said. Sughrue handles a segment’s budget, hires the camera crew and pitches story ideas to her executive producers. She also does all of the writing, and much of the reporting, for each of the five stories she is required to produce each year.

In Thursday’s lunch seminar Sughrue told the students that many of the stories she produces often require about a month of research before filming even begins.

She also pointed out many of the small details that go into producing the show, such as lighting and camera angles, scouting locations, and what she calls “the famous CBS walking shot,” where voice-over is used while a CBS correspondent is shown walking and talking with a guest.

“It was very informative,” Cosgrove said of Sughrue’s visit to the J-School.

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