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People often assume reporters have actual expertise in the stories they cover.  Some actually do.  Jim Galloway is a genuine expert on state government and politics.  But I’ve learned to tread lightly when called to represent myself as an expert on pretty much anything.

When Occupy Atlanta became a “thing,” I paid enough visits to the encampment to have developed more insight to the story than, say, those who watched the story unfold on TV.  It turned out my insight was very limited, though.

A guy totes an assault rifle into Woodruff Park during Occupy Atlanta

When Mayor Kasim Reed announced that he was rescinding the Executive Order that allowed Occupy Atlanta to stay overnight in Woodruff Park, he said he would lift the order “at a time of my choosing.”  He said he would try to negotiate the group’s withdrawal from Woodruff Park via a group of clergy.

This led me to casually predict that Reed was “in no hurry” to call in the cops to forcibly evict Occupy.  My prediction was based on my belief that Reed didn’t want to show a heavy hand against folks with whom he largely shared a leftist political outlook.  Specifically, I’d heard Reed complain weeks earlier about corporate America’s failure to create jobs while turning record profits — more or less the exact complaint of Occupy Atlanta.

Shows what I know.  Reed ordered Occupy Atlanta’s eviction less than 48 hours later.

The day after Reed’s announcement, I produced a story about Reed’s upcoming decision.  While I was in the park, another 11Alive crew told me they’d seen a guy walking around the park with an assault rifle.  The weapon was a semi-automatic knockoff of an AK-47.

My thought was:  This is Georgia, where politicians brag about their arsenals.  Ain’t nothing special about toting a big ol’ gun in public.

Shows what I know.

Reed specifically cited the presence of the weapon as his rationale for barricading Woodruff Park that day, then sending in the cops early the following morning.

Fortunately, nobody remembered me speculating about the timing of the dispersal of Occupy.  Or if they did, they were too polite to bring it up.

If I cover a murder trial, somebody will invariably ask me what the verdict will be.  I’ve been wrong so frequently that I won’t do it anymore.

I don’t mind somebody touting me as an “expert,” if you’re merely comparing me to somebody who has no first-hand knowledge of a news event.  But the truth is:  I’m only expert at putting facts together, and weaving them into a storyline on deadline.

That only makes me a TV reporter.

"Where do you think you're putting those hands?" Lisa Borders might have reasonably asked.

“Here.  Let me clip this mic on you.”

There’s no getting around it.  One cannot gather news unless one records audio.  Operating in a world that lacks boom-mic toting audio techs, the local TV news goon typically has two options:  Hold the unwieldy, flag-draped stick microphone under the chin of your interview subject; or clip the discreet lavaliere mic to her garment.

From the standpoint of the visual aesthetic, the latter is almost always the preferred method.  It also has the greatest potential for personal embarrassment.

The above text is lifted from this 2009 post.  The video, which aired this weekend, freshens it up a bit.  Thanks to 11alive.com producer Eden Godbee for playing along; and to photog Richard Crabbe.

This blog encourages you to recycle.

Viewers of WXIA have undoubtedly noticed the TV station’s devotion to the storyof a teenager named Isaac DelValle.  He’s a Marist High School student with leukemia.  He badly needs a bone marrow transplant but has been unable to find a suitable donor.

Isaac DelValle

The TV station raised money and set up a donor testing event.  Hundreds of people attended (including a high-profile guy from a competing TV station) and got their mouths swabbed to see if they’re potential matches for Isaac.

Although I admire the fervor with which 11Alive throws itself into stories like Isaac’s, the cynic in me kept asking nagging questions:

• Are we exploiting this kid’s story to attract an audience?
• Why Isaac?  There have got to be other local leukemia patients with comparable issues.

I knew the answer to the first question already.  The story fits the station’s “brand,” the one that’s very selective about spot-news coverage and more driven to thoughtful stories.  (We’d be the first to admit we accomplish all of this with mixed results sometimes; but it’s a consistent goal and a daily theme during editorial meetings.)

And yes, that branding was created to draw an audience.  Just like every other commercial news organization’s brand.

The second question troubled me more.  I knew that somebody had contacted the station about Isaac’s story.  With management’s encouragement, Jaye Watson jumped on it quickly and stayed on it.

She told me she had asked the same question:  Was there, perhaps, a less camera-friendly patient out there with the same story?  She researched it and learned that Isaac’s case — his inability to find a donor match — was, unfortunately, pretty unique.

Last week, Richard Crabbe shot the above Suspicious Package segment on Isaac.  It’s essentially the me-waving-my-arms version of the above post, with a cameo appearance from Watson.  It’s not my best work (and probably the least amusing one ever.  A young manager correctly called it “meander-y.”  The same manager also called me “Pops” week before last.  Lousy kids!)

If you want to find out which competing news guy showed up, click the video.  His photo will pop up toward the end, if you want to turn the audio down.

A cynic might say I’m trying to increase the number of views of the video.  I actually don’t care about that– I’m just trying to fully exploit the twenty minutes Crabbe and I spent shooting this thing.

Phil Kent didn’t really want to talk to me.   When I asked him for an interview September 12, he flatly declined.  He said he thought I was “biased.”  He said I was a “gotcha” reporter.

A cheery departure following the interview.

I was a day or two late to the Phil Kent story.  He’d already talked to two reporters at WXIA, who had asked him about his appointment to the newly created Immigration Enforcement Review board.  But I wanted to ask him specifically about his views on multiculturalism, which he says “wars” with the traditional Judeo-Christian values that make America great.

Kent’s views are easy to find, and he frames some of his opinions with reference to race and the “whiteness” of American culture.  But Kent became wary of me after seeing an interview I’d done with Gov. Nathan Deal’s spokesman Brian Robinson.  The subject was Kent’s appointment, and I’d asked Robinson if Gov. Deal agreed with Kent’s views on “race.”  Robinson wouldn’t answer.

Although Kent’s views were, shall we say, eye-opening (but “mainstream,” he says, among Georgians), Kent had a reputation as an affable, good-humored dude.  He was once a reporter and editorial writer at the Augusta Chronicle.  He currently appears weekly on WAGA’s Georgia Gang.  So after he initially slammed the door on my interview request, I wrote him back, and made a concession that I thought he’d understand and appreciate, given his background in journalism.

I said:  If I’d had it to do over again, I’d have rephrased the question to Robinson.  Instead of asking about “race,” I’d have used the word “multiculturalism.”

Though the rephrasing wouldn’t have substantially changed the meaning of the question, it would have replaced a volatile word with a less volatile word.  I didn’t apologize for the question or say that I regretted asking it.

Brian Robinson evades a question.

(Reporters don’t like to make concessions like that.  It’s easier to admit to a fact error than it is a tactical miscue, which can end up in performance reviews or — much worse — court.   Fact errors are usually undeniable, while tactics can be argued ad nauseum.   I don’t mind admitting to my many flaws.  Fortunately, I work in a humane newsroom that encourages transparency in newsgathering.  Admitting to a less-than-ideal choice of words during a spontaneous Q&A is rare, though it shouldn’t be.)

It took a week, but Kent finally agreed to talk to me.  We chatted for about 25 minutes.  I asked some questions he didn’t like, and he let me know it.  Sometimes, he challenged my motives (“ratings”).  Sometimes he implied I was poorly prepared  (“do your research”)  or just idiotic (“you might have fallen asleep in journalism 101″).

Yet he was never ugly or genuinely hostile.  It was almost like a game to him, undoubtedly honed during his years on the Georgia Gang.  I asked him questions that might have made him defensive.  He adhered to the old football adage “the best defense is a good offense.”  So he clobbered me frequently.

Call me a masochist, but I found it refreshingly honest.

We aired the story.  I also put together nearly 18 minutes of very lightly edited  Q&A.   But I thought viewers deserved to see Kent’s style.  So I re-edited the  Q&A to include highlights of Kent’s aggression.  We aired it in my Suspicious Package segment Sunday morning.

Reporters and editors usually get the last word following controversial encounters.  This struck me as a way to let Phil Kent have his due.  The audience could use its own judgment on who, if anybody, was out of line.

Or simply be amused, as I was.

Here’s a little secret.  TV stations have no trouble staffing early-morning newscasts, whose grueling schedules require workdays beginning anywhere from midnight to 3:30am.

It’s not just because, in this economy, any paying job with a decent salary can get filled.  In the below live shot, you see two perfectly sensible dayside TV news veterans engaging in a perfectly ridiculous 5:30am live shot, working that shift because they want to be there.

When you turn on your TV at 5am (or 4:30am — and apparently, plenty of you actually do this), odds are good that the cheery newscasters and reporters you’re watching have kids at home.  At WXIA, the folks who schlep into work at the ripe hour of 3am have a very good chance of exiting the property by 12:30.  That gives them a chance to get home, maybe grab a catnap, then actually function as parents when school lets out.

(Not all workplaces are so predictable, schedule-wise.  One Atlanta TV station has been pretty well known for abusing their 3:30am reporter, putting him through the morning live shot grind, then assigning him a story at 9am to produce for the evening newscast.  That poor SOB almost never left before 3pm.  And no, reporters don’t get paid overtime.)

When Ted Hall anchored WXIA’s evening news, you could tell that the format stifled his folksiness and easygoing charm.  The below live shot shows him drily unleashed.

Likewise, Jaye Watson has an erudite ice-queen quality when delivering stories for the evening news.  The live shot below shows the amusing and impulsive Watson known by her coworkers.  It’s the kind of thing that you’d never see during the evening news.

On Thursdays and Fridays, when she works mornings, nobody in the newsroom looks more content than Watson, a mother of two small children.  Except maybe Ted Hall.  Or Jennifer Leslie, who has cheerfully worked the 3:30am shift as a reporter for years.

Especially at 12:30pm.

“It’s a concept piece.”  I’ll say this when the puzzled look forms, after the questioner has asked the most reasonable of questions:  What’s your story about?

The answer doesn’t help explain the story necessarily.  It’s usually just a desperate effort to make my convoluted explanation seem sensible.

A GSU student holds a Kindle

The concept piece is the hillbilly cousin to the more urbane think piece.  It’s just as analytical, but typically explores lighter subject matter.  I like doing concept pieces.  I even enjoy the challenge of trying to explain them to people, up to a point.  “You’ll get it when you see the story,” is the last, desperate explanation.

I’ve done several concept pieces in recent weeks.  The story about the Decatur Book Fair-in-the-age-of-Kindle was easy to explain.  It was my idea.  I’m one of the few TV reporters who doesn’t feel it’s beneath them to cover book fairs or cat shows.

(It should have been easy to execute, too.  But try to find somebody actually reading a Kindle in Decatur.  Go ahead, try.  The coffee shops are slammed with laptop users and — gasp — readers of actual books and magazines.  But in three coffee shops, I couldn’t find a single person reading a book on a Kindle or Ipad, until Richard Crabbe and I left Decatur and headed to Georgia State University.

(This, of course, would lead many to question the very concept of my concept story.  But I was untroubled by the absence of Kindle readers in my age-of-Kindle story.  The evidence was too strong, as any bookstore owner will tell you.)

Firefighter Patrick Lindstrom takes a breather in the stairwell.

The concept story about the Dunwoody firefighter hosting a 9/11 climb up a staircase was a bit more difficult to explain.  The firefighter was doing it to raise money for the Georgia Firefighters Burn Foundation.  He wanted to give folks a taste of a meaningful 9/11 experience.  My job was to climb the 27-story staircase with him (twice, it turned out), then write the hell out of it so that it was somewhat analytical.

Climbing the staircase was much easier than writing the story.  And much, much easier than explaining it to puzzled producers.

The third piece I pitched thusly:  Labor Day begins the slippery slope to Christmas.

Those of us who are in no hurry to put reindeer antlers on our car hoods got it pretty quickly.  A two-month long Christmas season is already too long.

But it also met with puzzlement.  You’re doing a story on– the calendar?  What?

“It’s a concept piece.”