Orange Appeal, March 2016
By Kseniya Taranyuk
Scott Hays leans forward in the control room making sure the positioning of the cameras are correct, the sound mics are working, and the lighting is hitting the right angles. As a producer, Hays is involved in just about everything happening around him, and somehow he remains calm and collected, going with the flow.
Getting cozy in the middle of two technicians on a Tuesday morning taping, Inside OC begins at the KDOC Studio and the teleprompter rolls.
“We’ve got this new show Inside OC that is airing on PBS SoCal seven times a week,” says Hays. “We also just got a commitment from Cox that it will air from San Diego all the way to Palos Verdes seven times a week.”
From radio to video to being an instructor here at Saddleback College, Scott Hays is doing what he loves and expressing himself through all his various media.
“The one thing I’m really into right now is writing and recording songs,” Hays says.
Hays just finished a song about the California lifestyle writing both the music and lyrics. Three months ago he got the show Inside OC up and running. He also used to freelance for publications such as Los Angeles Times and Men’s Health.
It all began while attending the community college Orange Coast College, where he received his Associate’s Degree. He later transferred to Chico State receiving his Bachelor’s in communications with a minor in political science. He received his Master’s in Communications from California State Fullerton and his Master’s in English literature from the University of California, Irvine.
“Writing was a thing I naturally gravitated to as a young person,” Hays says. “Whether it was writing lyrics to songs or whatever, it was a way to sort of express myself in the written form.”
The campus newspaper at Chico was his first journalistic experience and his first professional experience was for an alternative newsweekly where he wrote a piece with his editor about a neo Nazi white supremacy group in Northern California.
“It was a pretty exhausting and extensive piece we wrote,” Hays says. “I got a lot of feedback from it though.”
Hays’ first job back in Southern California was for a chain of weekly newspapers. He stayed in the newspaper business for about two years before quitting his job and going into freelance magazine journalism.
“I felt constricted in my writing by the inverted pyramid style of newspapers,” Hays says. “I wanted to branch out and try different styles of writing”.
In an unexpected turn, Hays transitioned into teaching. Saddleback College was the first place that hired him with zero experience. Before he knew it, Hays fell in love with teaching.
“Teaching was a whim, I’ve been teaching since 2001,” Hays says. “I just saw a couple other writers that I knew who were teaching part-time, and I knew I had the degrees to do it.”
“What I love most about teaching is the energy,” Hays says. “And the dynamics that occur in a classroom”.
With all his experience gained as a journalist, Hays has been approached over the years to be a consultant for many different types of companies consisting of entirely of media related projects.
“That’s sort of how I fell into the consulting business and the video work,” Hays says. “It started in 2007 when I ran into Dave ‘Holland’ McMahon who was a homeless guy in Laguna Beach, and we became friends. I’d walk downtown and go sit in the alley on the ground with him and his guitar. He’d play me some of his songs.”
That chance encounter inspired Hays to make a CD for Friendship Shelter titled “Shelter Me,” which has songs on it about the issue of homelessness. Hays also produced a video-documentary about it, as well.
“That was just an incredible experience,” Hays says. “Probably one of my top professional experiences and I made zero money.”
It wasn’t about the money, though, but about the creativity and purpose behind the project, which Hays said was really inspiring.
Two years ago, Hays got involved in radio when someone asked him to be the first guest on a new radio station in Laguna Beach. After his appearance, Hays was asked to co-host the radio program.
During the interviews he conducted with various guests, Hays began filming himself curious as to what it would look like, and he started doing several 30-minute shows getting Cox TV to agree to air.
“I just thought it would be interesting,” Hays says, “to see what I looked like conducting interviews on a radio station.”
After 18 months of shows, however, the radio station owner wanted to own the content, but Hays said no and stopped doing the radio show entirely. Six months later he was in production with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rich Reiff on the PBS SoCal show Inside OC.
“Everything I’m doing right now I’m enjoying,” Hays says. “I love teaching for the reasons I expressed, I love doing the radio/TV stuff, and I’m digging the music a lot. And that’s my lifestyle so there’s really nothing that I’m working on that I don’t enjoy.”
