John Kosich wraps up interview with Charles Ramsey as he gives the thumbs up on his way to internet stardom.
In all of my years of working in television news I have never had a week, like the one that started around 6:30 p.m. May 6, 2013.
While waiting for a story to start in Bay Village, my photographer Tom Livingston rolled down the window of his live truck “I’m being pulled, you’re staying,” he told me. The assignment desk had just called and said some woman called 9-1-1 saying she was Amanda Berry, a Cleveland woman who disappeared ten years earlier on the eve of her 17th birthday.
So out of right field was this news that he immediately followed it without missing a beat with “so I’ll be right back.”
The news as well didn’t strike me as being real either. We had covered so many false hopes over the years in the search for Amanda and Gina DeJesus, who vanished a year later only a short walk away from where Amanda was last seen.
We had anxiously waited along with both families on two different occasions when police acting on credible tips dug up an empty lot and the garage of a home looking for Amanda and Gina’s bodies respectively.
So this latest news had to be just someone making a sick crank call to police.
Just a few minutes after Livingston left with the live truck, that perception would change when the assignment desk called my cell phone and in an urgent voice said you have to go, it looks like Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus have both been found and they’re both alive!
How I didn’t get a speeding ticket I don’t know but as I raced to Seymour Avenue on Cleveland’s west side my stomach began to turn in a way I had rarely felt. So many years of seeing the pain and anguish in the faces of these families as they gathered each April to mark the respective anniversaries of the girls’ disappearances, could it really be ending?
As I pulled up to Seymour Avenue I ditched the car on West 25th and made my way through the growing crowd, Livingston was already setting up the truck to establish a live shot I began scanning the crowd looking for familiar faces from either family to get confirmation.
It was in this time that I overheard a man telling his story of the rescue, the man was Charles Ramsey.
As I waited for them to come to me on the air I began interviewing Charles on tape because I didn’t want to lose him in the crowd and he told me of the “amazing sh#t” that had just happened.
When they came to me live a minute or two later Charles was still within arm grabbing distance so I immediately brought him in and asked him to tell the story that began with him hearing screaming… the rest is viral video history.
As the interview was going on what was going through my mind was the fact that Charles had just dropped the “S” bomb prior to us going live so my fear was him dropping another on live TV. They were telling me in my ear to wrap it up and toss it back when Charles delivered what would be the most famous line “I knew something was wrong when a pretty little white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Dead giveaway, dead giveaway.”
In my mind I’m thinking OK where are you going with this, so I thanked him and tossed it back thinking it was a really good interview but I’ve interviewed some colorful people before and began the process of just looking for more information, the next interview in this incredible story. I had no idea what was about to follow.
Within an hour the interview was being played and replayed across the country and our website Newsnet5.com was exploding with hits as the video was quickly becoming viral.
By the time I got back to the station around 12:30 a.m. the numbers were off the charts and several of my co-workers were telling me you watch this is going to get autotuned, something I had never heard of before. They explained it’s when an interview gets so big it’s set to music and if it’s really big the Gregory brothers will take it on… within 24 hours they did.
With the song and with the attention Charles Ramsey began the process of moving from news figure to pop icon. With the interview popping up on shows like TMZ.
Around the same time Jimmy Kimmel was introducing an even wider audience to Ramsey.
And then came the Taiwanese cartoon recreation of the interview.
I’ve had some amazing interviews over my career, amazing in the sense that the individuals were amazing because of who they were, presidents, celebrities.
This interview ended up surpassing them all in terms of global reach not because of who Charles Ramsey was but what he did and the timing of his coming forward so early in a process where people were starving for insight, information into this unimaginable tale.
The global news vacuum in the early stages of this story transformed him in a matter 2-3 hours from a guy eating McDonalds to an international figure.
One of the many Charles Ramsey shirts available for sale on the internet
Finally the French take on the Charles Ramsey phenomena.
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