REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Getting you to talk is not easy

The discovery last week of a decades-old stationery filer in the CBS 6 Newsroom transported me back to the halcyon days of my misspent youth.

While I had not yet been born when the Deflect-O wall pocket was manufactured in 1977, it certainly is among the items I would have peddled as a child at the Rt. 70 Flea Market in Lakewood, NJ.

The front of the box depicts a smiling woman placing a crisp, brown file folder into a model 632 Deflect-O. To the left of her ample bouffant, eight more wall pockets are neatly arranged around a clock that looks like a consolation prize from the Gene Rayburn-hosted Match Game. For that matter, the woman's blouse looks like one Brett Somers (or, I suppose, Charles Nelson Reilly) would have worn on the show.

The eight year-old version of myself would have trumpeted the features of this unassuming little wall pocket to head-tilted prospective buyers. "It speeds work flow," the little shyster would have said. "And it's ideal for bills of lading!"

I didn't realize it at the time -- and here comes the TV News part of this -- but I was gaining experience that would come in handy when soliciting what we call "man on the street" (MOS) interviews years later. There is a definite sales pitch involved.

When I started my career in radio news six years ago, I assumed that most people want to be on the air. Instead, I came to learn that a surprisingly high number of folks would rather be tied-up and forced to listen to 1940s singing commercials. Unwilling interviewees wave-off reporters like disinterested grazers at the flea market.

For instance, photographer Chris Cornell and I finished our pre-Thanksgiving shopping story on Tuesday with the same record as the 2008 Seattle Seahawks: 4-12. At least a third of the dozen who Deflect-Oed my request said they were pressed for time at the moment. The rest politely declined or fled in horror.

Many prospective interviewees profess to be too unattractive to appear on TV, laughing that they will break the lens. I always counter that I look far worse and that it hasn't broken yet. "It'll only take a minute," "I can't get lunch until I get another interview," and "My boss will kill me if I come back empty-handed" are among the other semi-truthful lines I often trot-out.

Usually, the perfect confluence of charm and chutzpah is enough to secure the necessary cross-section of opinions to fill-out a story. It’s an inexact science, to be sure, but it humanizes a report far more than statistics and expert opinions alone.

Which brings us back to the Deflect-O. Since I no longer earn a living selling garage sale castaways, and since Christmas is just around the corner, I’m thinking my mother could use a handy wall pocket.

After all, it speeds work flow and it’s ideal for bills of lading.

The views expressed by Steve Flamisch are not necessarily those of CBS 6 WRGB. He can be reached at: sflamisch@wrgb.com.