The Articles

Serena Altschul, 26. The MTV News anchor-babe with a blue-blood pedigree has mesmerized music junkies with her good looks and professional delivery. Pro: Just broke up with her music composer boyfriend. Con: Says she goes for the "Ben Stiller-type" - which means her taste in humor is bad.

----New York Post Online

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As an MTV News Reporter, Serena Altschul's responsibilities include developing and writing news stories, conducting interviews, and on-camera hosting. Based in New York City, Altschul hosts MTV's hourly news reports which cover everything from music and pop culture to social issues and politics. Altschul is also the host of "MTV News: Unfiltered," an innovative viewer driven news program. In 1996, Altschul contributed numerous stories to MTV's "Choose Or Lose '96" political awareness campaign.

Prior to joining MTV News in January 1996, Altschul spent two years as an anchor/reporter for Channel One News, formerly Whittle Communications. During her tenure there, Altschul covered a wide variety of hard news stories in the U.S. and abroad.

Altschul has also produced a political feature documentary called "The Last Party." This film about the 1992 Presidential Election was released in theatres around the country.

Altschul grew up in New York City.

----MTV

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“When MTV news reporter Serena Altschul talks, couch potatoes sit up and take notice. Meet the downtown girl who’s turned hard news and hobnobbing with the stars into must-see TV. Serena Altschul gets more face time on the tube than Diane Sawyer, more flack about her hair than Jennifer Aniston, and more E-mail form horny men than she can handle. Since the 27-year-old New Yorker joined MTV two years ago, millions of fans have been tuning in to watch her dish with, to name a few, Madonna, Jakob Dylan, Dave Matthews, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Jewel, Counting Crows, and Gwen Stefani.

One of her first assignments upon arriving at MTV was covering a megadecible Metallica concert. ‘I was nervous--this was not the type of crowd you’d find at a James Taylor gig,’ she confesses. Concealing her jitters, she dove into the mosh pit to give viewers ‘a real sense of the sheer energy coursing through that crowd.’

And while interviewing Beck at last fall’s MTV Video Music Awards, a man lunged out of the crowd and clamped his arms around the singer’s neck. ‘Beck panicked and gasped, ‘Get him off me!’’ says Altschul, who kept her cool as the cameras rolled.

‘For the most part, the people who give me a tough time are the bigger rock stars,’ she admits, recalling a recent interview with the Brit band Blur when their ‘piss-off attitude’ resulted in one-word answers. ‘You have to roll with the punches. If you know your facts, there isn’t a lot people can say that’s going to throw you.’

Besides, she’d rather replay the times she’s really clicked with a star. ‘I liked Sheryl Crow a lot,’ says Altschul, who’s learned that what’s often mistaken as attitude in stars is simply a made-for-publicity persona. “The Foo Fighters are as wild off camera as they are onstage, but then someone like.....turns out to be just a nice, normal guy.’

Clearly, Altschul isn’t easily intimidated. But she was practically speechless after recently interviewing The Artist Formerly Known as Prince--the one star she’d been dying to meet. ‘I’m a huge fan! When I went backstage after the concert, I just wanted to hug him. But unlike his stage persona, in person he’s incredibly shy.’

Luckily, she doesn’t usually get tongue-tied--when Altschul makes a mistake, millions are watching. ‘I’ve done live stuff where I’ve forgotten the name of an album or tripped up on a word. The hardest part when you mess us on TV--or in life--is learning that you have to move on.’

Flubbing on network television isn’t half as mortifying as finding yourself naked on the Web. These days, when this woman walks into MTV’s midtown Manhattan headquarters, there’s a mountain of fan letters and E-mail waiting--especially since faked nude photos of her hit the Internet. ‘The majority is from horny guys--or comments about my hair,’ she says with a smile. ‘My favorite letter was a letter from a high-school student who wanted me to be his prom date. When I turned him down, he named his band the Serena Altschul Experience.’

Any day or night on her job is worlds away from the lifestyle she grew up in as part of one of New York City’s most prominent families. Her father, Arthur G. Altschul, won respect as a writer at the New York Times before making his mark--and his millions--on Wall Street. When her parents divorced, 2-year-old Serena and her two siblings were raised by their mother, a Harvard-educated scholar and poet, in a luxurious Fifth Avenue co-op.

After her senior year in a tony New York prep school, the 18-year-old volunteered for the Junior Peace Corps and switched from socialite to social worker. Sent to Montserrat, she spent three helping start a day-care center and teaching math and English to poverty-stricken children who lived on less per week than she was used to blowing on lunch.

Still unsure of her career path, she moved to L.A. to attend the prestigious Scripps College, majoring in English. Then Altschul put school on hold to work as an assistant to mega film director Joel Schumacher and as an associate producer on the 1993 documentary ‘The Last Party’, narrated by Robert Downey, Jr. She never did graduate.

Hooked on broadcasting, she landed an audition at Channel One (the network that reaches thousands of high-school classrooms) in 1993. Though she occasionally squinted and stumbled over words, Altschul landed a job as an anchor-reporter.

Today, a star reporter, Altschul brushes aside the idea that men might find her intimidating, although she admits she’s rarely asked out. ‘I don’t know why. I’m totally approachable. I go for the Ben Stiller type, not the hottest guy in town.’ Juggling a relationship and a pressure-cooker career does seem to have taken a toll on her love life. For the past two and a half years, she’s had an on-again, off-again romance with a music composer and producer. ‘For a while, we were each other’s home-support system, but we we’re dating other people now.’

Not even Serena knows what’s next for her. ‘People always ask me where I want to be in 10 years--on 60 Minutes,20/20? I’m not going to say no, but I’m sure there’s also something else. I really want to make a difference.’ Stay tuned.”

----COSMOPOLITAN

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"Altschul, 26, recalls turning on MTV at age 11 in Manhattan to catch an interview with her favorite artist, Prince. Now she's wielding the mike on stories from school dress codes to the murder of"....Tupac Shakur...."'It feels good to give viewers something that might really excite them,' she says.

'She will survive,' says Grubbs."

----PEOPLE MAGAZINE

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"MTV news correspondent Serena Altschul says teens pay attention when their favorite band comes out and tells them to vote: 'They're like, 'Yeah man, he was in my living room last night, you know, and he's talking to me now.' MTV Choose or Lose."

----FIRST CUT

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"Ask MTV News reporter Serena Altschul who she thinks is sexy, and she doesn't pick Diane Sawyer or Peter Jennings. She just says, "Ursula" -- as in '60s Bond girl Ursula Andress. "She's a hottie. I think she's incredibly sexy." Altschul has been heating up MTV's newscasts on a daily basis since successfully subbing for anchor Kurt Loder in January. "There are some reporters who are so beautiful that it's distancing," says Dave Sirulnick, senior vice president of MTV News, who hired Altschul after seeing a tape of her

Channel One schoolroom reports. "I thought Serena's beauty is more inviting." The New York native is surprised to be considered attractive. "I was awkward and wholesome in high school," she says. "I sort of look at my awkwardness now as an interesting quality."

Hot Topics:

Married: No, but says she's "seeing someone"

Vitals: 27, 5'7", green eyes

Most attractive attribute: "My bowling follow-through. I have a real fondness for bowling these days."

----TV GUIDE

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When MTV needed someone to help cover the presidential campaign in 1995, Serena Altschul was just the ticket. Not only had she produced a documentary about the 1992 election, but she was a reporter for Channel One, an L.A.-based daily news show supplied to 12,000 high schools. "[MTV] needed someone who could deal with the political stuff as well as relate to young people and be interested in music," the 26-year-old daughter of investment banker Arthur Altschul and poet Siri von Reis explains. Then last January, MTV moved Altschul to New York to fill in for Kurt Loder as anchor of its hourly news reports. Though she's barely settled into her new 23rd-floor MTVdigs overlooking the offices of The New York Times, her duties are doubling: MTV will soon begin updating its news every 12 hours instead of just daily. "They want it quicker, fresher, more frequently," Altschul says. Currently Altschul is finishing up a story about medicinal marijuana use for MTV's health show, Mega-Dose (June 1). She has a passion for science, but "along with [interviewing] NASA scientists, I want to get Prince to talk to us," she adds. "I was so in love with his music in my teenage years." Now her tastes range from Me'Shell Ndegéocello to the Beastie Boys, the Chemical Brothers to Puccini. "I shouldn't admit this as an MTV personality,"; she says, "but if it weren't for being here, I might still be listening to the same Squeeze or James Taylor albums."

----INSIDER TV GUIDE

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"The smallness of the College allows for unbelievable interaction. The classes are not lecture to, but lecture with. They encourage me to look at many different angles of an idea, whether it is a work of art or a point in history. I make up my own mind, rather than being influenced by the outside. It has really been a lesson in learning. From the first class at Scripps we were encouraged never to be limited, but to explore our own creativity and to cultivate and challenge our own ideas. This is what I have taken with me." -- Serena Altschul

----SCRIPPS COLLEGE

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"News correspondent Serena Altschul didn't set out to be in the news business.

`I wish I could say that,' Altschul said. `But it's the kind of career that found me.'

Actually, now its MTV viewers who are finding her. Altschul joined the youth and music-oriented network last year as a West Coast-based correspondent handling political coverage. Her face time since then has soared, thanks to a relocation to New York combined with the departure of Alison Stewart to CBS and a work cutback by Tabitha Soren.

In addition to anchoring MTV's news briefs, Altschul is the new host of `MTV News Unfiltered,' a series that uses viewer-generated footage, airing next at 10:30 p.m. ET Sunday.

Altschul, 26, is the daughter of former New York Times reporter Arthur Altschul and poet Siri von Reis. She got her start in the business at Claremont (Calif.) College in 1992, when she helped a fellow student produce `The Last Party,' a documentary about the presidential campaign.

`It was a crash course,' she said. `I was lucky to be surrounded by some people who had a lot of experience.'

That experience led to a correspondent's gig with Channel One, the controversial news show supplied to schools around the country.

`I went down to the studio and had a couple of horrible reads,'' she said, recalling that early gig. `I was so nervous I was shaking.''

But the producers stuck with her and over time she grew more comfortable in front of the camera.

Good thing. During a typical day, Altschul will write and tape news segments, tape news items for MTV's syndicated radio program and work on upcoming stories for the network's documentary unit. `It's an ongoing education,' she said. `Every day I get to learn about things that I'm excited about ... I'm learning about stuff that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.'"

----NEWS TIMES