ESPN PRODUCER, WILLMAN WEINBAUM

 

ABOUT PAT TILLMAN, THE FORMER NFL PLAYER KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN

 

 

William Weinbaum, ESPN NY Bureau Producer, will speak to the Y's Men of Westport/Weston at their first meeting of the season on Thursday, September 6th. The title of his talk is “Tillman's Final Mission; A Documentary”, in which he will talk about Army Ranger Pat Tillman, the former NFL St. Louis Cardinals lineman who was killed in Afghanistan . Cpl. Pat Tillman died on April 22, 2004 in a confusing firefight on a dusty ridge in Afghanistan . He had given up a lucrative NFL career to volunteer to fight. This tragic story has deep roots, which involve his family, the military and has political implication for the nation. The whole story is worth telling with insights from the producer of the popular documentary. The meeting begins at 10AM at the Saugatuck Congregational Church, 245 Post Road East .

William Weinbaum graduated from Northwestern University and has masters in journalism. For 11 years, the New York City native was a producer for Major League Baseball Productions and Sports Newsatellite, consisting primarily of features for the "This Week In Baseball" and "ESPN's Major League Baseball Magazine" television programs and news and events coverage for more than 150 subscriber TV stations nationwide.   

Weinbaum joined ESPN in 1995 as New York  bureau producer. The majority of his work has been for the "SportsCenter" and "Outside the Lines" programs.  For collaborative efforts at ESPN, he has received four national sports Emmys, a National Cable ACE Award, a New York Festivals gold medal and the Northeastern University Center for the Study of Sport in Society Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism (for the 1997 documentary he co-produced on Jackie Robinson and his legacy).  He also received the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society award for excellence in television reporting.

In June, Weinbaum received the Deadline Club Award from the New York Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for his production of "Tillman's Final Mission," a special edition of the "Outside the Line" program that aired last October. His interviews with five former Army Rangers who were on the mission with Pat Tillman when Tillman was killed in 2004 were the first on-camera interviews conducted by anyone with Tillman's platoon mates and were excerpted extensively by ABC News in its coverage of the investigations by the Army and the Department of Defense. The documentary was a nominee for the national sports Emmy for journalism.  Weinbaum also won a Deadline Club Award in 1993 for television feature reporting for This Week In Baseball's story on Bert Shepard, who pitched in the major leagues despite the amputation of a leg after he was shot down over Germany during World War II.

In more than 20 years as a journalist, Weinbaum has covered stories in 10 countries and interviewed four U.S. Presidents and the likes of Arthur Ashe, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. Among the many events he has covered are Wimbledon, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NCAA men's and women's basketball Final Fours, the NBA Finals and the Olympics.  His greatest passion is for compelling storytelling and he is always seeking great stories to share with viewers of ESPN and readers of ESPN.com, for which he has written numerous articles. 

For more information about the Y's Men, contact Bill Meyer, Membership Chairman at 226-3704 or Bob Fatherley, President at 454-3653 or visit their website: www.ysmenwestportweston.org