Joseph Cortina and Jeffrey Blount
Pair produce creative media collaborations.
Joseph Cortina (B.F.A. ’76/School of the Arts) and Jeffrey Blount (B.S. ’81/School of Mass Communications) graduated four years apart and with different degrees but found themselves in the same field — broadcast journalism — where they’ve been able to pool their respective talents.
After receiving his art degree, Cortina took a part-time film editor position at WTVR in Richmond, Va. Three years later, he headed for Washington, D.C., and landed a job at NBC News.
Blount narrowly missed working with Cortina when he got a job after graduation as a director at WTVR. Blount eventually made his way north to the nation’s capital as well, getting a job at WRC, the NBC affiliate where Cortina worked.
“Joe and I became very good friends working at WRC,” Blount says. “He was moving up the ladder and I was just starting out.”
The pair first started working together on “Meet the Press,” where Blount served as Cortina’s associate director. When Cortina left NBC, Blount took over as director of the political newscast. He also currently directs “The Chris Matthews Show” and the Washington portions of “NBC Nightly News.”
Soon after leaving NBC, Cortina started his own company, Cortina Productions, a media design firm that works in film, video, interactive exhibits and on the Web. When he had the opportunity to produce a media project for the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Ky., Cortina called on Blount “to bring an eloquence to the story.”
“He respects my outlook and recognizes that I can capture his vision in words,” Blount says. “He pulled me in right from the beginning. I was passionate about Muhammad Ali and what he meant historically to the African-American community.”
The Ali Center opened in 2005 and serves as a testimonial to Ali’s life as a boxer and a humanitarian. Cortina produced, while Blount wrote the scripts for, more than 30 digital videos and a dozen interactive displays.
“It was the culmination of our professional friendship while strengthening our personal friendship,” Blount says.
The duo’s most recent collaboration involves writing a script for the “Newseum 4-D Experience,” an interactive museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to the history and technology of news reporting.
Who knows what the next project will be for the talented pair, but one thing they’re sure of is that there will be plenty of opportunities to work together again.
