Who’s out of line?! is the wildly unpopular game started in this space earlier this week! In it, we examine actual moments of confrontation between competing Atlanta news crews, based on this blogger’s second-hand knowledge. If you missed the first round of Who’s Out of Line?!, you overlooked an exciting judgment made in this space [...]
Archive for the ‘WAGA’ Category
14 May
Who’s out of line?
Good news! Today, this blog launches a service called Who’s Out of Line? It’s a service nobody wants, and does no good whatsoever, designed to resolve the occasional disputes that arise in the field among competing TV news crews. Because most TV news crews in the Atlanta market behave professionally and get along reasonably well, [...]
30 Apr
4.30.92
I have a shelf with a few odd souvenirs from what passes for my illustrious career in TV news. There’s a ceramic, ashtray-sized mockup of the Tokyo Dome, from a 1994 series about Japanese baseball. There’s a mason jar full of Tennessee moonshine, with cherries floating in it. There’s a concrete cylinder, artistically painted by [...]
16 Apr
Where the bunny dwells
I knew the story had no chance of passing muster in the morning editorial meeting, but I pitched it anyway. There’s a creepy character who targets children in shopping malls at this time of year… I began. So far so good. It was the Monday before Easter. The heads of a few of my coworkers [...]
26 Mar
Monty’s weird little war
One day, a man named Monty White Jr. decided to start a heating and air conditioning company based in Marietta, GA. The company did legitimate HVAC work. But it also developed a reputation for diagnosing nonexistent problems, and clobbering customers with a “no refunds” policy buried in its standard contract. Monty’s company drew some deserved [...]
12 Mar
Unanswerable questions
The Hemy Neuman murder trial will go to the jury this week, and reporters covering the trial will have to brace themselves. This is the part of the trial where anxious and perhaps inexperienced newsroom personnel will ask them unanswerable questions regarding the verdict and the coverage thereof. Fortunately, nobody in my newsroom will ask [...]
27 Feb
Within the pool
What’s she doing in the shot?!? The question erupted in the press room of the Hemy Neuman murder trial. The courtroom camera was fixed on Andrea Sneiderman, who was seated in the gallery of the courtroom. Mrs. Sneiderman was having a visible reaction to some of the opening statements made by attorneys at the start [...]
20 Feb
Calista, Jill and me
Q: Callista. That’s an unusual name, no? A: Well, there’s Calista Flockhart. That bit of chit-chat followed an encounter with the wife of Newt Gingrich last weekend. I’ve made smalltalk with Mrs. Gingrich once, and the weather was the subject. My encounter with Calista Flockhart, the actress, was much more interesting, though not because of [...]
23 Jan
Winne Watch 1.23.12
“He’s agreed to talk to Mark Winne and nobody else.” Those spirit-draining words came from Lt. Sean Smith, the new temporary PIO for the Gwinnett County Sheriff. We were at the Gwinnett County jail, which was holding inmate Victor Hill. Hill, a former sheriff, had been arrested following a public corruption indictment. Every local media [...]
5 Dec
A convenient target
Herman Cain ended his campaign for president Saturday. I attended the speech he delivered announcing his exit, and heard the crowd roar loudest when he denounced the news media. The news media is a convenient object of scorn. It’s easy to clobber reporters, whose jobs are to look for and tell interesting real-life stories. Frequently, [...]
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