Behind the scenes of Judy Woodruff’s Crossroads town hall in Milwaukee

Tune in to “Crossroads: A Conversation with America” on Monday, Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. EDT.
When Judy Woodruff took her first reporting job in 1970, a producer gave her some advice.
“He said, ‘Just remember, Judy, we just want you to go out, take notes, come back, report the story. Nobody gives a damn what Judy Woodruff thinks,’” Woodruff said.
WATCH: Judy Woodruff discusses takeaways from the Crossroads town hall in Wisconsin
For her, that ethos endures (despite the fact that, as her PBS News colleagues, we do indeed give a damn what Judy thinks).
“One of the great things about journalism is we can ask just about anybody a question, if they’ll talk to us, and listen for the answer. That’s a great privilege,” Woodruff said.
She knew she wanted to get back to that kind of work — going out, asking Americans questions and reporting what she’d found — when she started to plan her next chapter after nearly a decade on the News Hour anchor desk.
So began the America at a Crossroads project, a journey to explore the nation’s deep divisions. In just over a year and a half, the project has reported 42 stories across 25 states and the District of Columbia.
On Sept. 16, Woodruff was preparing to complete a major milestone in the project: a town hall discussion in Milwaukee. For nearly two hours that Monday night, she would stand in front of just over 50 Wisconsinites, asking them to share their perspectives on how the United States became so fractured.
Woodruff noted she likes to look people in the eye and tell them, “‘I’m genuinely interested in what you have to say,’” she said.
So holding a town hall event — an organized, filmed conversation that draws together community members with different life experiences and viewpoints — was always part of Woodruff’s vision. To pull it off would take eight months of discussion, research and preparation.
Here’s a look at how the team made it happen.
Taking the idea of a town hall and turning it into reality began with a series of questions. Woodruff wanted to look at “a battleground state that’s divided down the middle.” But which one? At what venue? Who would they ask to participate? Would they include experts, and if so, whom? How long would the town hall run? What topics did they want to discuss?
“There are a lot of moving parts,” said field segments senior producer Emily Carpeaux, who oversaw the entire process of mounting the town hall.
The America at a Crossroads team and director Chip Hirzel discuss camera positioning before the town hall, on Sept. 11, 2024. Photo by Hannah Grabenstein/ PBS News
Typically, the team produces PBS News segments that capture individual stories, interviewing one person at a time and focusing on one issue. For this kind of event, the logistics are exponentially more complicated.
“We have to think about this as a show in entirety, but also making sure that people here feel valued and like they’re getting something out of the experience that’s happening right now,” Carpeaux said.
For their battleground state, they landed on Wisconsin, a swing state with a local station PBS News had worked with before. The team was also interested in the breakdown of civility in politics in the state over the past decade, which senior producer Frank Carlson said feels representative of the nation’s sharp political divide.
In May, the team started their search for participants. They began by reaching out to people suggested by Milwaukee PBS, which produces a show called “Table Talk” that hosts conversations with voters on thorny issues.
“Invariably [those] people would come back with like two or three names and that would lead us to other people,” Carlson said. He added that sometimes they would work their way through an entire social circle, talking with every member until they got sent back organically to the first person they had spoken with. “I feel like in that way, we got a great landscape of the Milwaukee area.” In all, the Crossroads team reached out to nearly 200 potential participants.

Their goal was to provide a diverse cross-section of Wisconsinites, and by proxy, Americans. The team considered age, gender, race, ethnicity, geography, religion, educational experience and political affiliation.
People who were outwardly willing to talk to a member of the news media as part of a nationally broadcasted town hall event were something of a self-selecting group, the producers found. They found that people who had voted for former President Donald Trump were less likely to want to participate, so the team had to work harder to find those community members in particular.
Ultimately, they found a group of Wisconsin residents who the team felt offered a diverse and representative sample of Americans, 52 of whom eventually participated. Producers interviewed them remotely, asking them questions about cultural and political divisions in their personal lives and the country, as well as their views on hot-button issues like immigration and abortion.
WATCH: Comparing Trump’s and Harris’ positions on immigration and border security
Also that month, the team traveled to Milwaukee to tour venues landing on Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery, an event space at the beer brand’s original brewery. They worked with Milwaukee PBS and an event production company, Bond Entertainment, to square away production logistics, such as set design, lighting and sound.
The Crossroads team compiled a panel of experts to attend the town hall and join the discussion alongside Woodruff and the participants: conservative commentator and Wisconsin resident Charlie Sykes, University of Wisconsin political science professor Katherine Cramer, and retired U.S. Navy Commander and writer Theodore Johnson.
As the taping date drew closer, the production team held editorial and logistical meetings, bringing on PBS News Weekend’s Chip Hirzel to direct the show.
While this town hall focused on Wisconsinites, the team also wanted to know how Americans were feeling about divisions across the country overall. Carlson worked with PBS News colleagues and partners at Marist to craft and launch new national polling in early September. The results were ready to include in questions during the town hall. (Learn how our polling process works.)
A PBS News team of six producers flew into Milwaukee on Sept. 15.
At noon, crew members from Milwaukee PBS and Bond Entertainment arrived at the venue and began to unload equipment. They constructed risers, built lighting towers, positioned cameras, blacked out windows, set up chairs and arranged a backstage area downstairs.
Crews begin to assemble the town hall set at Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Sept. 15, 2024. Photo by Hannah Grabenstein/ PBS News
As the crew built the broadcast-ready set in an otherwise empty barroom, the producers talked logistics with the realities of the space before them. They considered whether Woodruff could wander throughout the audience, or if she had to stay in a small number of places so the eight cameras they were using would always have a sight of her. They worked out what the audience would see when the event began: a wide view of the room, before a camera swept over the heads of the audience and landed in front of Woodruff. They played with and tweaked the seating chart, trying to determine the right way to seat audience members. They also physically moved the seats, inching them forward, left, right and back to create a cozy feel but leave enough space for camera operators to comfortably walk through.
As decisions were finalized, reopened and resolved, Woodruff prepared for the many short interviews with audience members and experts she would conduct the following night. Some of what she would say would be scripted in advance, but there would also be a hefty dose of improvisation. If one audience member responded to another in a surprising or interesting way, she knew she would want to return to the first participant, or respond in real time.
PBS News producers Frank Carlson, Connor Seitchik, Emily Carpeaux, and Talesha Reynolds and director Chip Herzel discuss the town hall in Milwaukee on Sept. 15, 2024. Photo by Hannah Grabenstein/ PBS News
Late in the day, the team ran through a rehearsal again, allowing the director to figure out camera angles based on whom Woodruff would speak to and when. She and the producers made more adjustments along the way.
Eventually, Woodruff headed downstairs to her temporary dressing room as a rough run-through of the town hall continued. With the producers, she reviewed the dozens of participants, committing biographical details and pronunciations to notecards. Finally, at 9 p.m., Carpeaux reminded everyone of the long day ahead, and the team called it a night.
Monday morning at 9:30 a.m., the six producers met in Woodruff’s hotel room to continue their review of the participants. Woodruff noted important demographic information and clarified name pronunciation. Producers described what she might hear from audience members based on their lengthy previous interviews. Woodruff jotted down handwritten notes, which later turned into brightly colored notecards she used during the town hall.
The group headed back to the hall mid-morning for another run-through, with producers posing as guests and answering her interview questions.
At noon the crew arrived to check lighting and sound levels, test camera angles and finish constructing and decorating the set. Dozens of potted plants were brought in to create visual interest in the background. An estimated 50 crew members were involved in the final production — nearly one for every town hall participant.
After all the careful planning, there were still little wrinkles – literally. The fabric at the top of the branded background was ever so slightly warped, 15 feet or so in the air, and needed to be steamed. Green lights from three immovable routers resting atop a shelf were identified as distracting beacons, and quickly covered by gaffer tape. And there were too many plants, Carpeaux thought, so she rearranged them until they were less distracting.
As audience members began to arrive around 5:30 p.m. for a pre-town hall dinner and to mingle, the air conditioning in the main space was set to full blast, an effort to cool the room before it would be shut off during taping.
PBS News special correspondent Judy Woodruff speaks before the town hall at Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo by Neil Kiekhofer/ Front Room Studios
The crew’s final run-through wrapped around 5:45 p.m. Slightly before 6:30 p.m., the audience entered with a rush of friendly chatter. Placards with names rested on chair backs. Everyone turned off their cellphones and took their seats. A member of the production staff instructed the audience on when to stand versus stay seated and how to hold the mic, and reminded them that because this was taped, there might be production-related pauses. Just before the scheduled start time of 7 p.m., taping began.
From a Milwaukee PBS production truck parked just outside the hall, Hirzel directed the action while Carpeaux, Carlson and senior content and special projects producer Talesha Reynolds helped cue Hirzel on what was coming up next. The producers kept track of the timing of each conversation block, and provided guidance to Woodruff through her earpiece when necessary.
A camera operator prepares to shoot the town hall at Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery in Milwauke, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo by Hannah Grabenstein/ PBS News
A few times, Hirzel or one of the producers stopped Woodruff to allow crew members to fix sound issues or redo a question or transition line she stumbled over. PBS News senior executive producer Sara Just was one of a handful of PBS News and Milwaukee PBS executives who watched the event live from downstairs.
After about an hour and a half of taping, Woodruff thanked the audience and brought the main event to an end. She then reopened the floor to allow audience members to ask additional questions of the expert panel for a conversation to be posted online.
Though 85 minutes had been filmed, there was only going to be time for 55 minutes of the town hall to air. During taping, a live transcription feed allowed the producers to highlight important moments as they happened and strike out sections they thought they might cut out for length.
The producers began editing the script immediately after the event ended, spending the next three days working – as long as 18 hours a day – to produce the final version.
PBS News special correspondent Judy Woodruff speaks to the audience before the town hall at Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo by Neil Kiekhofer/ Front Room Studios
The team shortened some longer answers, when audience members went off topic or didn’t fully answer the question, and also worked to balance the piece between liberal and conservative voices.
“We were trying to keep the essence of what everyone said and a lot of the interaction between people, because I think those yield really interesting moments. But I mean, the really heartbreaking thing about this work is that you just have to get to time,” Carlson said. “So in some cases, some people said some really interesting things but we just had to cut them.”
Woodruff and Just reviewed the cut made by the producers. On Thursday, after the final piece was approved, Carpeaux hand-delivered the video file to the production house. There, the piece was prepared to PBS’s technical standards in order to air Monday, Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. EDT.
During the taping, an audience member shared that she had been unsure earlier that day if she wanted to come.
“I want to be direct and say I almost didn’t come to this tonight. And the common denominator was because I don’t trust the media. A lot of us don’t, and so I was very skeptical,” said Cheryle Rebholz, a Trump supporter.
WATCH: Exploring the links between political polarization and declining trust in news media
“I talked to the people that interviewed me. I said, ‘I just want to make sure that this was educational and informative.’” After researching media bias, she decided PBS News was as unbiased as possible. “So I’m here tonight because of that,” Rebholz said.
As participants milled around the set after the taping, chatting and taking photos, some wanted to continue their discussions.
Town hall participants Jim Bluemel and Ryn Botsford continue their conversation after filmint at Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo by Hannah Grabenstein/ PBS News
That included Ryn Botsford and Jim Bluemel, who had vehemently disagreed during the town hall over transgender rights. They both separately wanted to talk to each other after the cameras were off, they said.
“He came up to me afterward, and I was going to go up to him as well,” Botsford said. “Because I have had conversations like this a lot. And the main point is that, ‘I respect you as a human being, and I hope you respect me as a human being.’”
“Absolutely,” Bluemel added.
Discussing gender identity and parental rights, the two carried on their conversation in a civil manner – in many ways, just as Woodruff had hoped for.