Wendy Stuart will be hosting TriVersity Talk! this Wednesday at 7 PM ET with featured guest Garrett Glaser. This episode is a part of The Best of Triversity Talk series that takes place on the first Wednesday of each month.
TriVersity Talk! is a weekly web series with featured guests discussing their lives, activism and pressing issues in the LGBTQ Community. With TriVersity Talk!, the goal is to laugh and learn.
TriVersity Talk! Is part of TriVersity’s ICARE Initiative. ICARE stands for Increasing Community Awareness through Relevant Education. ICARE Programs are generously funded by The Greater Pike Community Foundation.
Journalist Garrett Glaser was the first “out of the closet” local TV news anchor and correspondent in the United States. He “came out” while on the air on the Channel 4 News at KNBC-TV, Los Angeles,
on December 5th, 1994, when he was 41. He grew up in Manhattan in the early 1960’s and knew he felt same-sex attractions by the age of eleven. He came out to his parents in 1967, at the age of 14.
The first thing his mother told him was, “You’re going to a psychiatrist right now young man and we’re going to put a stop to this. Do you understand me?”
In eighth grade, Garrett received a scholarship on entering New York’s prestigious Dalton School in 1965 and graduated in 1970. He entered Hunter College of the City University of New York the following year, working nights and weekends as a waiter at New York’s O’Neals’ Baloon (sic) café to pay for it. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree there in Communications and Cinema Studies in 1975. His Master of Arts degree in Communication Management is from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication.
Working his way up the TV news ladder nationwide over the following two decades, Garrett traveled the world for four years as a correspondent for Paramount Television’s Entertainment Tonight, which he joined in 1989. Garrett later served as a business reporter and anchor for CNBC Business News for eight years, based in New York. Earlier, he served as the Media and Entertainment News anchor for WABC-TV Channel 7 Eyewitness News (ABC) also in New York and was also a breaking news reporter for Post-Newsweek’s WPLG-TV Channel 10 Eyewitness News (ABC) in Miami/Fort Lauderdale. In the early days of his career, Garrett covered breaking news and the US Navy for WVEC-TV 13 News (ABC) in Hampton Roads, Virginia and served as a general assignment reporter for WPTA-TV 21 Alive Newsroom (ABC) in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He also served as an off-air newswriter and story producer for one of the most widely viewed local newscasts in the nation at WXYZ-TV Channel 7 Action News, Detroit (ABC).
In 1990, Garrett co-created the Electronic Media Task Force of the newly formed National Lesbian/Gay Journalists Association and was also the first person to “come out” to the entire radio and television news industry during a panel discussion in 1992 at the annual convention of the Radio/TV News Directors Association in San Antonio, Texas. From 1989 to 1993, he served on the Board of Directors of GLAAD/LA.
Garrett estimates he has interviewed more than 1,600 celebrities during his career, including Oprah Winfrey, Diana Ross, Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Madonna, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elizabeth Taylor, Charles Manson (!)
Watch TriVersity! Talk Live on Wednesday at 7 PM ET on Youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/@TriVersityCenter
The official website for the TriVersity Center may be found at https://www.triversitycenter.org