March 5, 2008

ABC News

Posted in life at 10:33 am by Michael

A couple of weeks ago (actually on my birthday), I got an interesting voicemail at work. It was from Neal Karlinsky, a west-coast based reporter for ABC News. He said on the voicemail that he had found my blog, and was interested in talking to me.

I called him back, and we chatted for a bit, and he asked if I was interested in being interviewed on camera, and if so, he was going to pitch his story idea to the “Folks in New York” to see if they were interested. I said that he should pitch it, but that I wasn’t sure to what degree I wanted to participate, or what participation that Anh would want to have, or what could be done at work.

The next day, he emailed back, saying it was a “go”, and we started talking about what they wanted to do. They were interested in a “long” (8 minute) story on Nightline, and a shorter version to air on Good Morning America. He talked about wanting to “follow” us around for day or so, at home, at work, and out and about. From the beginning he related that the actual “story” was how much of a non-story that this actually is. But, he did feel like being able to talk to and interview Anh was an important part of the story, as her voice certainly hasn’t been heard as much.

Anh and I had a number of long conversations on this topic – deep conversations related to the reasons for and against doing it. We were trying to balance the privacy loss with the potential benefit to getting the story of a “normal family with a transgendered spouse” out to a broader audience.

In the end, we decided to do it – we were either going to do it together, or just not participate at all.

Tomorrow’s the day (planned…) We expect that it will be on in the morning on GMA, and then on Nightline.

I’ll post more about what last Wednesday was like a little later, but here was a shot of Anh and I being interviewed.

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