Tell the stories that you believe in, tell the stories that you want to share.
Lena Nozizwe
Reporter
I grew up with a mother who’s a writer. I’d come home from school and she’d be in a pink beret and a pink turtleneck, on her typewriter. She’s written two very successful books that talk about her life. She’s lived a very extraordinary life; she was an orphan in Africa and she came to the United States via a reality show, one of the original ones, This Is Your Life. I think it was one of the rare times a person of color was the featured person. The executive producer was Ralph Edwards — you may have heard his name; People’s Court was his, Truth or Consequences. He did a lot of reality shows that really celebrated humanity. That was really the person he was, because after that show my mother had a lifelong friendship with him. We were in San Diego and Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo — we always visited him. He had an office on Hollywood and Vine. He was just a wonderful man. She and my father were students and they both ended up with their PhDs and they came to the United States with nothing. In fact, when they came, they had hours to decide. It was kind of like, “You’re going to America, we’re not going to exactly tell you why,” because it was a surprise to be on This Is Your Life, so they made that decision and just took what they could carry in their suitcases. And that’s how my family came to the United States.
I grew up seeing my mother writing: writing about Africa, writing about her background. I grew up watching that and it inspired me to write. The first thing I ever had published was in Seventeen magazine. I did an article about going back to my birthplace, Malawi, and getting my legs bound. Because it used to be against the law — until fairly recently, I think the 90s — that a woman could not wear pants or miniskirts, anything above the knee. It was considered too sexy. You would see women walking down the street bare breasted, that wasn’t considered sexy. Pamela Anderson, she wouldn’t get so much play! But legs were considered sexy. So everyone, even visitors, had to cover their legs. I wrote an article, kind of humorous, in the vein of my mother, sharing culture, about getting my legs bound in Malawi. I liked seeing my name in print. About the same time, I began photography as well. Also I was doing some radio reports, I would take around a portable recorder and interview people and I got an internship my last year of college and I worked at a radio station in San Diego, KFMB. I started doing that and graduated to going out to doing fires and floods and school boards, city council, water authority, all kinds of different stories. I always wanted to be a television news reporter, that was a big goal of mine. I worked in radio, did live shows, did news shows, and then I got an opportunity to be a TV news reporter in San Diego at the CBS station.
I always liked doing stories about so-called subcultures: homelessness, I did a lot of stories in L.A. because L.A.’s a great story, so many different kinds of people. Homelessness, runaways — I followed some runaways over a two-year period. I’m really proud of that piece to this day. Initially, I found the kids on Hollywood Boulevard; I went to their homes and one was under a freeway bridge and one was in an abandoned house called a squat. A couple of those kids, I found two years later when I went back, which was serendipitous. I couldn’t have planned it. I did April in Paris — I convinced the boss that it was actually a job to go to Paris for a week. Smart girl! Then I took a turn and worked for a prime-time crime show because I always liked doing long-form special reporting. I worked for America’s Most Wanted for almost 10 years. But my least favorite stories were crime stories because I would cry, I’d be upset. I remember doing one story about a young woman who was raped after she answered an ad in the newspaper, and I cried. It’s just very hard for me. I went to Milan for Gianni Versaci’s funeral and was in Cunanan’s bedroom, who was on the run. Which probably wasn’t smart because he could have come in at any time… I interviewed his roommate. Oklahoma City bombing. One was about castration as a way of dealing with sex offenders. And the West Memphis Three. There was a story that took me to Sweden and France — Ira Einhorn, who was a fugitive that killed his girlfriend and put her in a box and kept her in his apartment and her family was looking for her. She was eventually found, and they let him out on bail, which was kind of insane. He died recently in prison. And then two really high-profile cases were Tupac Shakur, I got a lot of exclusives doing that story, and the murder of Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G. I interviewed his mother in Brooklyn in the brownstone where he grew up. I went to Africa and did a series of stories in Zimbabwe about AIDS orphans, in Malawi (where I was born) about starvation, and also some stories in Senegal.
When I first started, you had to be either a photographer or a writer, you really didn’t do both. Ultimately, I chose to be a writer/producer in broadcast because you write your own scripts and you have someone else take the video. I shot a few stories for Al Jazeera’s digital arm, AJ+, and the one that got like five million views on Facebook and Twitter was one about the Afro-Mexicans of L.A. That was a fascinating look at really how much Afro-Mexicans are part of the history of L.A., in terms of the original founders were Afro-Mexicans. If you’ve ever been on Pico Boulevard, that’s named after Pío Pico, who’s the last governor of California before the U.S. took over California; he’s Afro-Mexican. I never knew that, it’s not a history that’s told. I did a story, not so much getting into the history for my story, but talking about contemporary Afro-Mexicans — the back story is that Black people are like, “Are you Black?” and Mexicans are like, “Are you Mexican?” so it’s this sort of strange place to be. I did the story by going to a series of parties — every weekend there’s a party for something. The main person in the story was saying, “When we’re together, we don’t have to explain what we are.” So that’s the reason they had these parties, and they invited me. I would have people come up and say, “You’re the same color as my grandmother.” It was terribly fascinating.
My next ambition was to write a book. I wrote a motivational book. A lot of people urged me to write a book about Tupac and Biggie… I have the sources and I could have, but to me it was really sad, a young man 25, being killed so young. When you write a book, it comes out of your body, it’s you. I didn’t really want to do that — I just didn’t want to. So I wrote the book that I wanted to write, a motivational book published by Simon and Shuster. I’ve been freelance, radio, video, and some online stories since then.
There are a lot of components because if you do it for video or audio, you need someone to talk you through the story. I’ll give you an example: with the Afro-Mexicans, I don’t even know how I came across it, actually. I pitched it, they didn’t come to me. I learned about it, and I just kept digging and digging. You need somebody to tell the story, I can’t just do voiceover to tell the story. So that is an important component. I did a story that helped win a James Beard award for a restaurant in South Central L.A. that is a soul food restaurant and the chef and owner is from Mexico. How I did that is there was a client that was looking for stories about southern cooking. What can I find in Los Angeles, because the client’s based in the south? I did some research and I found this soul food restaurant and there was never any publicity about the owner being Latino. I talked to the daughter of the chef and asking her a lot of questions and I found out about the father’s history. He ended up working in a really famous soul food restaurant in South L.A. and Denzel Washington and a lot of prominent African Americans would go there. He was in the kitchen, he was a dishwasher at some point, and he grows in the ranks. People would come in and say, “Is he cooking tonight? What?” They wanted to have an African American chef. But there was one chef that took him under his wing, and I interviewed him as well. So the show was sort of Black and brown. Even with the Afro-Mexican piece, that’s the intersection of Black and brown. Because a lot of times you don’t always get the feeling that there’s a lot of love between Black and brown in L.A. So in that case, it was a client who was looking for a story, so I went looking for something that had a southern element, and I found it, and nobody had done that story before. Afro-Mexicans, I was just looking to pitch AJ+ and I came across the whole notion of Afro-Mexicans, which I never had before, and I just did it. I found the story and then I found somebody who had done a documentary on the Afro-Mexicans, it was really good. That one started off as an idea I wanted to explore but I needed to find characters. It’s not always easy. I’ve worked in local news and radio and worked internationally… sometimes you’re helped or impeded by working under the auspices of this or that organization. That can help you and in some ways it can hurt you. When you’re independent, it can help or hurt you, too. If it’s something that I really want to do, I won’t let it stop me. There have been some things even lately where I wanted to get some information and it was a pain in the rear but I was like, “You’re not going to stop me,” and I got it, some might say by hook or crook, but I got what I wanted.
You don’t know if the outlet you’re working for really wants the real story… I did another story for an international radio show. They wanted to do a story about the L.A. school district and how they treat LGBTQ students. Mostly a focus on transgender students, because I’ve done a lot of transgender stories, even on my own I did a transgender short documentary. The school had sort of gotten credit for really reaching out for LGBTQ students, which is remarkable considering how things are going these days. It seemed that they had good intentions but if you were talking to trans students themselves, they didn’t feel like it was the real thing. And the editor didn’t really seem to want to know the truth, either. It’s hard. I didn’t want to slam LAUSD. It’s a nuanced story, it’s not saying that they weren’t trying to do the right thing, but ultimately the students don’t feel like it’s the right thing. Those stories are hard. Getting the nuanced reality. Ultimately the editor was like, “Just get the story out,” and I didn’t think it was fair to the school district because the editor came in with this concept that it was a great program. I always put my heart in it, so I felt bad because I didn’t want to show LAUSD in a bad light, but I also didn’t want to lie and not say, “This is what I’m hearing from the people who are directly impacted by the policies.” I do my best to be fair. My degree’s in journalism. Even with the bad name journalism has these days, I do my best to uphold the standards I was taught.
I didn’t know about Tupac until I was doing a story in South Central about a white man going into Black communities and killing people he thought were small time drug dealers. I mean, drug dealers who got around on the bus or on bicycles, so very small time. I was interviewing somebody at night, and you could hear gunshots in the background, and he was playing on his boom box “I Get Around” by Tupac, and I was like, “Who’s that?” Tupac. It was a few years later that I was in Palm Beach reading a newspaper at a diner waiting for breakfast and I picked up the newspaper and… he’d been shot before in New York so I said, “He’ll survive, no biggie.” I was wrong.
With Tupac, I had to say, “Can we do this, can we do this, can we do this…” and it was not something that was embraced initially. It wasn’t embraced when I pitched it, but then a few weeks later, it was, it was the lead story. You just have to believe in yourself. And sometimes, you don’t always have the right decisions, you don’t always have the best ideas… although I do have a lot of good ones! You just have to believe in what you want. It’s harder — freelance. When you work on staff, it’s nice to get a check every week or every month or whatever. But I’ve really enjoyed the storytelling on my own and making the decision to do the podcast, looking back at Tupac, I’m very glad that I did that as well. Because I learned so much about the case and the world is such a different place in terms of journalism since 27 years ago.
When I did the podcast, it was the 25th anniversary. There’s a huge community that really looks at everything: every video, every photo, every conspiracy theory. I don’t know if you’re familiar with something called the Zapruder film, which was shot when JFK was killed. It’s a piece of film and people analyze that and analyze that and analyze that. Now, this was like the Zapruder film on steroids. Everyone’s like, what about that person, and what about that… it’s incredible. There are a lot of people who are very sincere and earnest; there are also a lot of charlatans who just make up stuff. And it’s a very male space, overall. I’m probably one of the few chicks doing it. Probably among my friends, I’m the only one who knows so many things about Tupac.
I did put the story down for a while because over the years I’ve done hundreds, thousands of interviews and hundreds and thousands of stories. It’s hard to keep up with everything. I interviewed Suge Knight in jail, who was with Tupac when he was killed and was head of the record company, Death Row. I interviewed him in jail and it didn’t go so well. He didn’t like some of my questions and he ended up threatening me and before the interview he even said, “If I ever want to find you, I will.”
So, the evolution: I did the podcast. Two years later, a search warrant was served on a very familiar name to me from 25 years ago. The uncle of somebody named Olando Anderson and from my very first story 25 years ago. Orlando Anderson was a name that was put out there as a suspect. Las Vegas Metro would never say that he was a suspect, more like a person of interest, but he was in my mind a suspect. In fact, I did an episode called “The Usual Suspect” about him. I even at one point met him because I was trying to get an interview with him and he agreed but at the last minute he came and met me at his lawyer’s office and said, “I can’t do it.”
I heard a search warrant had been served on somebody related to the case. When I found out who it was, the uncle of Orlando Anderson, I wasn’t surprised. I had written a story for Vibe Magazine after Orlando was killed — he was killed about two years after Tupac was killed, they say unrelated. I’d written a story that had included the name of Keefe D, his uncle. Because both Orlando and Keefe D were in Las Vegas the night Tupac was killed. They were also in Los Angeles the night Biggie was killed. Actually, I was invited to that party where Biggie ended up being killed — that was just after I did the interview with Suge Knight and he sort of threatened me, so I said, “I think I’m going to stay home.” It’s like 27 years later — it’s kind of like if you’ve ever watched a soap opera, and I will admit that I have, and you’ve watched that soap opera and you go a year without watching it and you turn it on… and you know everybody and nothing has really changed. This is obviously more serious than a soap opera, but all the players are the same. So it wasn’t surprising. They served the search warrant and then he was arrested. In the podcast, my guest Brent Becker and I were both saying, “Why hasn’t he been arrested?” Because he’s gone on TV and YouTube channels saying he did it, he wrote a memoir… what up? So finally he was. I think what’s going to be an issue, that I find very confounding and I covered crime for almost 10 years, is that the detective who has said that he solved the case, he has not according to the grand jury transcripts handed over the confession that he got in the late aughts. To this day, he has never turned over the full confession to Las Vegas Metro. He’s retired, but with LAPD. I think there are some questions that are going to come out. Because he took home case files. He was originally assigned to investigate Biggie’s murder in relation to a lawsuit… the story’s so complicated and in some ways convoluted and I don’t know every tributary. But it is really an incredibly fascinating story. I don’t think that anybody’s really told the full thing. Just drips and drabs. Some people are happy that an arrest was made, some people don’t believe any of it, some people believe Po-Po 5-0 is just making it up. I know someone who got drunk the night Keefe was arrested because he was so happy. So there’s a whole bunch of different perspectives, but it is one of the most interesting stories that I have ever done because there are just so many facets.
There’s a level of complexity — the prevailing notion was that Las Vegas Metro didn’t want to solve it because it was a Black man. That was what has lasted for years, and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to interview Brent, to say, “What did you do, and what about race?” I asked him some uncomfortable questions, and he answered everything. The night that Tupac was shot, September 7, 1996, Las Vegas Metro asked Brent Becker, Mike Franks, and Kevin Manning to go to the scene. They’re homicide detectives. The prevailing thought has been that they didn’t want to solve the case because it would put Las Vegas in a bad light. And I’ve always thought, “Wouldn’t it put it in a worse light not to solve the case?” It doesn’t make sense. In addition, at one point, and I want to make sure I get this correct, Orlando Anderson sued the mother of Tupac Shakur because the night of the shooting, Orlando was involved in a beat down at the MGM Grand. It’s a very famous video, I was the first one to get it. He sued, she countersued, he won. It was a civil case. And the thing was, that was a civil case so if they weren’t able to prove in a civil case, which has a much lower standard of proof, that he killed Tupac, and Orlando Anderson prevailed, then how would it have prevailed in criminal court? Plus, nobody wanted to talk. Initially, the witnesses really didn’t say much.
Even in the grand jury testimony that just came out late this year, one witness testified in front of the grand jury. I read the testimony carefully, as did Brent Becker, and my last two episodes look at the transcripts. I was like, “Yummy, I want to read all this and see all these details under oath.” Still, they’re not saying very much. They had one witness who was there that night who was a childhood friend of Tupac; he doesn’t say very much. Suge Knight, who was in the car with Tupac, who was injured… he’s never said who did it. And if you want to hear another thing that will blow your mind: Keefe D, or Duane Keith Davis who’s the person who has been arrested and charged with this, he was allegedly in the car where the shots came from… Suge and Keefe D knew each other since childhood. Suge Knight didn’t see his childhood friend in the car from where the shots rang out? In my interview, I asked him who shot Tupac, and he said, “You’ve got it already, you know.” I had been the first reporter to get an affidavit out of Compton PD, it was a search warrant affidavit, that said Orlando and Keefe were involved. In the interview with me, Suge said Orlando and Keefe D did it. He’s changed his mind subsequently. He did an interview with TMZ recently where he said that the police have everything wrong (he told me the police had it right): “It’s not Orlando, it’s not Keefe D.” Opposite from what he told me. So there you have it. Brent Becker said that early on into the case, while he wouldn’t tell me officially until very late into the first season of my podcast, initially he and his colleagues believed that it was Orlando and Keefe. It’s a long and winding case. I don’t know what will happen in terms of the prosecution. I’m fascinated to find out. So many people hype things — no hype needed! Just the facts in this case are really mind blowing.
In the beginning, they showed me the case file, which ultimately they had to lock up because everyone wanted to look at it. They showed me the case file, showed the autopsy photo. I really didn’t want to look at it because it’s like, bad dreams. They were saying at that time that tabloids were offering $100,000 for it. I didn’t know that it would evolve into people saying that Tupac’s still alive. To this day, there are people, some that I communicate with even, who believe that he’s still alive. Actually, the person I was having breakfast with in Palm Beach, he was saying it’s almost like a religion. Tupac is very much, I find, an avatar for a lot of young men. Many people who are his fans who I’ve interviewed and interacted with directly were kids or not even born when Tupac was murdered. He’s sort of an avatar for social justice, for rebellion, for his style, charisma.
I know the Tupac story would not have been done at that time if I hadn’t been there. And like I say, I like hip hop, but I’m not hip. I’m not up on everything. But I know my presence made a difference. So it’s important to have different people in news organizations. I think the fact that a lot of people look the same and come from similar backgrounds, you miss stories and the stories that you do tell, you don’t really tell the whole truth. I think even if it’s a big news organization, it’s important to know that. One thing that I don’t like so much about journalism now is that people put their opinions in. You can form your own opinion, you should do your own research. If something comes out of a speech, a quote, look at the whole speech and you can put everything in context. People should see for themselves — that’s led me to have a lot of my beliefs, from seeing for myself. It’s not that hard. That’s really disappointing when you see so many people who are willfully ignorant about things and it doesn’t matter what you say. I’m not a real believer in trying to convince people, either. It’s disappointing that they don’t have the intellectual curiosity to look at something for themselves.
What I’ve always loved about journalism is that one day I might be in Milan covering Versace’s memorial or under a freeway bridge in Hollywood interviewing runaways or in the red light district in Copenhagen interviewing a dominatrix or in Africa talking to people who look after AIDS orphans. It’s been really wonderful in many ways and I really owe journalism as being a magic carpet ride. One day I did a story when I was in radio — I used to contribute to Associated Press radio — and in the morning I was in Beverly Hills talking to Fred Hayman who had a store, very famous, on Rodeo Drive called Georgio. And then in the afternoon I was on Skid Row doing a story about Para Los Niños, childcare for children of homeless parents. That’s only in journalism that you’d do that. I appreciate it.
Going back to my photography, I shot at a lot of protests. I started taking artificial light to protests and the first time I did it was at a protest after Russia invaded Ukraine. I won an award and came in second place at ASMP, the biggest organization for photographers in the U.S. It was the first thing I ever entered, too. I don’t know that you would necessarily say, “Oh, artificial light!” when looking at it, but it’s just really fun. And it’s off-camera flash that I was doing, too. It’s not fun to lug all that stuff with you, that’s for sure, but I really enjoyed it. There was one protest I went to that almost nobody wanted to talk to me or take a picture with me. But generally speaking, people are very cool. I did it after the Roe v. Wade decision was reversed, but the first time was the Ukraine protest. I had some criticism from some people who were like, “Why are you doing a story about white people?” And I was like, first of all, you’re not going to tell me what stories I do. Second of all, do you know my portfolio and all of the stories that I’ve done? I don’t think there’s a photographer in L.A. that’s been to more protests. I was at the protest after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trevon Martin, which really was the birthplace of BLM. I was at protests downtown, Beverly Hills, South Central L.A., Santa Monica, LAPD headquarters. Ain’t nobody going to tell me what to shoot. And also, I’ve had loved ones who have had nursing from people from the Ukraine. Almost half a dozen health care professionals who were Ukrainian who were extremely kind to my loved ones. So you’re going to tell me that I can’t show what happened? They’re very appreciative when they see the photos.
I’m very grateful to my mom for providing inspiration and encouragement every step along the way, very grateful. She was a wonderful inspiration. I think it’s good to just tell the stories that you believe in, tell the stories that you want to share, tell the stories that maybe when you’re gone, people will still be able to look at and say, “I learned something new.” Maybe those stories can bring people closer together, or they at the very least can make them understand somebody who’s not like they are.
Комментарии