"So What?" The Two Words That Saved Our Emmy-Winning Documentary
How brutal feedback from a journalism legend forced us to rebuild months of work in three weeks—and why it made all the difference
A sales trailer that was created for the TV documentary.
The Chinese food was getting cold in the windowless conference room built for dozens, but only eight of us were there. We'd been walking Al Tompkins through months of work—our ambitious "Generation Addicted" project that had grown from what we thought would be manageable into something sprawling: 100 interviews across four states plus D.C., 90+ hours of footage, plans for a half-hour TV documentary, digital features, social media content, even a cartoon series.
I was running digital for NBCUniversal in Philadelphia, managing NBC10 and Telemundo 62's online presence. This was our second major special project, and we'd thrown everything at it. Smart reporting. Thorough research. Maybe too thorough.
We showed Al our best work, described our vision for complementary content across platforms, shared the rough cut of our documentary. When we finished, I sat back and waited for him to tell us what a great job we were doing.
Al Tompkins—one of America's most sought-after broadcast journalism coaches, former News Director, Senior Faculty at Poynter—was silent. Long enough that we started looking at each other nervously.
Then he spoke: "So what? I knew all this."
When Ambition Meets Reality
We were stunned. Truly speechless. Nothing had prepared us for that specific reaction.
I can't remember who spoke first. I don't recall the tone being defensive, but more unsure. "What do you mean?"
The volume of our work was impressive, Al explained, but we weren't breaking new ground. What might have been new to us—and in hindsight, even that was questionable—definitely wouldn't be new to our audience. The first obligation of a journalist is to tell people what they don't know.
He challenged us to go through our voluminous materials and look for pieces that surprised even us. People in Philadelphia already know about the drug problem, he reminded us. They knew about drug-ravaged neighborhoods like Kensington. So what could we show and tell them that would expand their knowledge and not just make them feel like they were dark tourists?
We took it in. Every. Single. Word.
Recognizing the impact of the moment, Al excused himself and left us sitting in the room. Appreciative, but still coming to terms with what we heard from someone we had the utmost respect for.
After four months of work, we were just three weeks from broadcast, and another project was scheduled to start immediately after. We had to rebuild everything.
The Emergency Rebuild
The rest of that evening is a blur, but I recall some colorful language being thrown around. But we were all so invested at that point—we knew we had to pull this off, for ourselves and, more importantly, for the people who had trusted us with their stories.
We decided to review everything: all footage, all notes, all photos, all outstanding video requests. We chopped. We moved. We tightened. We realized that with so much content, we really didn't need anything else.
We divided and conquered. I took responsibility for watching all the raw interviews and logging the best sound bites. Each team member owned a different piece of the puzzle. But most importantly, we kept asking ourselves Al's implicit question: Is this something our audience already knows?
Our focus became clearer. Tighter. The new script for the 30-minute documentary started coming together, but this time it was built around genuine revelations rather than comprehensive coverage.
The Framework That Emerged
We decided to focus on the young lives and families being torn apart by the heroin and opioid epidemic across the Delaware Valley. This allowed us to "transport viewers into the tragic world of heroin and opiate addiction, placing them side-by-side with young people battling addiction, parents fighting to save their kids, police and policymakers searching for solutions, and doctors racing to save lives."
Viewers would meet Michael Miller, a 22-year-old who graduated from Philadelphia's prestigious Central High School with honors and began pursuing a degree in engineering at Drexel University, only to find himself hooked on pain pills—and later, heroin—his life and dreams derailed. They'd hear the heartbreaking story of Patty DiRenzo, who fought tirelessly to save her son, Sal, from the grips of heroin, but lost him in the end.
There were also stories of hope: Carol Rostucher, who made it her life's mission to help addicted people since her son beat his own addiction, and scores of law-enforcement officers who were shifting their strategy around addiction from handcuffs to humanity by offering people help instead of punishment.
What We Learned About Editorial Process
The difference between thorough and compelling became crystal clear that night. We'd been so focused on being comprehensive that we'd lost sight of being revelatory. Al's challenge forced us to distinguish between what we thought was important and what would actually matter to our audience.
The constraints—that brutal three-week deadline—became our creative catalyst. When you can't gather more material, you have to make the material you have work harder. Every interview, every scene, every transition had to earn its place by advancing the story rather than just documenting the issue.
Most importantly, we learned the value of an outside perspective. When you're deep in a story for months, you lose the ability to see it with fresh eyes. Al's "So what?" wasn't cruel—it was essential. Sometimes the best editorial process is the one that forces you to kill your darlings, even when those darlings represent months of work.
The Aftermath
Our final work was breathtaking and won a number of awards, including the station's first National News Emmy Award. While my team and I did the work, I think we all recognized we wouldn't have gotten there if it wasn't for those two simple words uttered by Al: "So what?"
That question became our editorial North Star, not just for that project but for everything that followed. It's the question every newsroom should have written on the wall, the filter that separates journalism from mere information gathering.
Because in the end, it's not about how much you know or how hard you've worked. It's about what you can tell your audience that they don't already know—and why it matters enough to change how they see the world.
Postscript
A few days after publishing this piece, Al Tompkins himself responded on LinkedIn with a comment that adds important context to that pivotal night in 2016:
"These years later, I hope you can believe that I want now and wanted then for solid work like yours to break through. The danger all journalists face is that in a competitive and noisy world, the public won't hang around our work long enough to hear what you are saying. This is more a compliment of your professionalism to refine, edit, refine, edit in order to get a story in front of people that will make a difference."
His response clarifies what I suspected but couldn't fully articulate at the time: that "So what?" wasn't dismissive criticism but strategic guidance from someone who understood the modern media landscape. Al saw that our work had merit—he was pushing us to make it break through in a world where audiences abandon stories within seconds if they don't immediately grasp why they should care.
That phrase—"the public won't hang around our work long enough to hear what you are saying"—captures the essential challenge every content creator faces today. You can have the most important story in the world, but if you don't hook your audience with something genuinely new from the very beginning, you've lost them to the endless scroll.
Al's "refine, edit, refine, edit" cycle became our standard practice after Generation Addicted. Sometimes the best journalism isn't found in comprehensive coverage, but in the discipline of constantly asking: "What's the story we're really trying to tell, and why should anyone care enough to stop scrolling?"
Eight years later, those two words still echo in every editorial decision I make.
What's your "So what?" moment? Have you ever had feedback that completely changed your approach to a project? I'd love to hear about the times when brutal honesty led to better work. Share your story in the comments.
And if this resonated with you, consider sharing it with someone who might need to hear about the power of tough editorial questions. Sometimes the best thing we can do for a colleague is challenge their assumptions—just like Al did for us.
Al Tompkins is the absolute best! I learned so much from him with each and every workshop, webinar, article and post.