David Begnaud, the CBS News contributor and former lead national correspondent, is launching a new media company, Do Good Crew, with a signature podcast that has as its first guest a big “get”: Oprah Winfrey.
The video and audio series, The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud, features a different take to the celebrity sit down: famous figures sharing stories of people who believed in them and proved inspiring to their careers.
In Winfrey’s case, she shared about a teacher who, when she was in the seventh grade, took notice of her interest in reading. The teacher, she says on the podcast, patrolled the cafeteria and “one day he just stopped and said, ‘You’re not like all the other kids. You know that, right?'” He would continue to stop and talk to her, and gave her books.
“Having someone appreciate that, or value that, was really important to me,” she says on the episode.
In forming his new company, Do Good Crew, Begnaud is the latest legacy media figure to branch off into his own endeavor. He’s continuing his CBS Mornings weekly Monday segment Beg-Knows America, but Do Good Crew, focused on inspirational themes and stories, includes a weekly newsletter and a live events series branded as The Good Stage, recognizing everyday Americans and the work in their communities.
“It is both exhilarating and terrifying, because what I have done is work for a company,” Begnaud said in a recent interview with Deadline. “I’m now starting and running my own company. But I think the benefit of starting it today at my age, versus 20 years ago, is that I sort of had the humility and the perspective to say, ‘I want to keep a foot in the traditional basket while I step out into this new frontier.'”
He said that he has “deep reverence and respect for what has been my life for the last 25 years, which is broadcast television,” but the new venture builds on some of the types of stories he told at CBS News.
The network’s news division also is undergoing a period of upheaval, with recent rounds of layoffs and buyouts. Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss recently outlined her strategy for the news division, emphasizing a need to build brands around talent.
“When Bari Weiss said she thought of CBS as a startup, in a way, it resonated with me, because of where I am,” Begnaud said. “And so when I identified with what that meant, I also understand that the business has to evolve. I respect the fact that she’s the one in the chair, and she gets to make those decisions. But I will be very candid with you in saying that the decisions don’t have a lot of impact on me, and so far as I don’t do the news anymore. I tell the good stories, and everybody unanimously loves those. I’m probably not high up on her totem pole of things that she’s both thinking about or worried about.”
It’s a shift from what he was doing as lead national correspondent. Begnaud’s breaking news reporting included coverage of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017 and continuous reports on its aftermath and recovery, work that was recognized the next year with the George Polk Award for Public Service. His coverage also included the Pulse Nightclub shootings in Orlando, FL, and the terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, CA.
One of his Beg-Knows America segments was about his high school English teacher, Josette Surratt, and how she inspired him. Surratt, he said, talked of the need “to give back, and in giving back, there is an exploration of who believed in you in order to give back to them in a way that is filled with gratitude.”
That helped form the idea for the podcast. He said he thought, “How do I create something at my company that has a celebrity component, but doesn’t just fawn over them because they don’t want to be fawned over?”
The podcast is “centered around shining a light on the person who believed in them before the world did,” he said. Each episode starts with Begnaud presenting a photo of the person who believed in them, and the conversation starts.
Growing up, Winfrey’s daytime show, “was a bit of church for me” particularly when she launched the Live Your Best Life season, he said. “To get her to say yes and to believe in this before it was even a live, living thing, meant more to me than I can even articulate adequately to you,” he said.
Other guests include Ava DuVernay, Barry Diller, Sherry Lansing and Charlie Puth, as well as other figures like the CEO of Uber and the CEO of Chobani yogurt.
While there are aspects of the daily news grind he misses, Begnaud said that there is still “a bit of an adrenaline rush” with the types of stories he is now producing.
He also said that it “grounds me more than it goes to my head, because I’m very clear: I’m not building a business where I’m the hero. I’m building a business where I shine a light on the heroes. That’s what I do with the storytelling.”
English (US) ·