#108 - "Borrowed Time, Part 2": Journalist Alan Weiss, the first to report the news about John Lennon on 12/8/80 episode artwork

EPISODE · Dec 7, 2025 · 48 MIN

#108 - "Borrowed Time, Part 2": Journalist Alan Weiss, the first to report the news about John Lennon on 12/8/80

from Beatles News Briefs · host Steve Marinucci

On Dec. 8, 1980, journalist Alan Weiss, a local TV news producer on WABC-TV in New York City,  headed out on his motorcycle into the night. A crash with a taxi landed him in Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, where, lying on a gurney, he thought he heard a conversation that indicated that John Lennon had been shot and was in the emergency room next to him. How an injured Weiss managed to confirm the story and pass it first to his local news department, which then passed it on to the ABC network is part of the focus of our discussion in which we also examine how the local station and the network reacted to the story. The tragic news became one of the top stories of the year, for which Weiss won an Emmy. That and more on this edition of Beatles News Briefs hosted by Steve Marinucci. We hope you enjoy the show!     --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can binge listen to all of our episodes free at Podbean, on YouTube or on our Beatles News Briefs blog page. CONTACT INFO: You can contact us about the show at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you with your thoughts and feedback on our shows. We hope you enjoy the shows and we thank you very much for listening. We really appreciate you! NEW! We've created a really fab (we think so!) Beatles News Briefs playlist on Spotify to go with the show that you can contribute to.   Send your suggestions to [email protected] and we may use them to add to the playlist.

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#108 - "Borrowed Time, Part 2": Journalist Alan Weiss, the first to report the news about John Lennon on 12/8/80

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