I haven’t yet written about my interview on NTN24. I haven’t myself seen it yet. I wrote to the lady who had invited me on, and asked for a clip, and she says I can get it in a few days. In the meantime, somebody from Colombia commented on my blog in Spanish.
At 7:00 p.m., NTN24 wrote me saying “Can we interview you on Skype at 10:00 p.m.” and I wrote back immediately saying “Yes” and then I remembered I didn’t have Skype. I began frantically calling various relatives trying to find someone who had it. My nephew did, so I went to my sister’s house and he helped me set up an account. (If you’re asking why I didn’t just do it myself, it’s because I wanted to make sure everything worked perfectly — otherwise no TV appearance.) Then my nephew left to go to a friend’s house and my sister and brother-in-law and me just sort of sat around talking and waiting.
Oh, and before I left the house I changed out of my t-shirt that said “PROCRASTINATORS OF THE WORLD UNITE” and put on a shirt with a collar. Just to look more professional and all.
At 9:00, NTN24 called me to confirm the interview. A little before 10:00 they called to pre-interview, where basically they asked the same questions they did during the actual interview. It’s a good thing they did this because the interpreter had an accent that made it difficult for me to understand her, and I had to ask her to clarify something. Then they did the actual interview, which took only a few minutes. My sister’s family has three dogs but fortunately they were asleep and didn’t start yapping or photobombing. I was asked basic questions like how many missing kids are there in the U.S. (My answer: No one knows.) And then it was over, and the TV people said thanks, and I said thanks, and went home sometime later.
My sister and brother-in-law couldn’t hear the questions, only my answers, but they think I did all right. I’m hoping it did go okay and I didn’t make a fool of myself before the entire Spanish-speaking world. If, when the clip finally appears and it turns out I did, guys…don’t tell me.
The Charley Project Blog 
Meaghan,
Charley is the most comprehensive source on long time missing people in the country. Ii is frequently mentioned in the press and I suspect that you will get more requests, both print and TV, in the future.
I suggest that you make up a list of talking points to common general questions like “how many children are missing?” The answer is about 800,000 children under 18 are reported missing each year, the vast majority are quickly recovered but thousands remain missing for over one year. The ones featured on Charley have never been found.
Rather then spend hours looking up those answers you may want to contact NCMEC to get their current statistical breakdown.
The important thing you need to do, what Charley does best, is to lead the interviewer beyond those numbers and tell them about a few individual cases from Charley.
BTW love the T-shirt, where do I join?
Yeah, I quoted the 800,000 figure but explained that it was in flux so much that a precise number could not be given. They asked about cold cases and I estimated somewhere in the tens of thousands, emphasizing that Charley profiles only a fraction of all the MPs in the US.