27 Dec

At the top of his game

Posted by live apt fire in WXIA.

Richard Crabbe, Summer 2011, Krog St. NE

Richard Crabbe’s retirement was a bittersweet moment. Viewed selfishly, it irritated me because he is such a talented photographer and editor. Such folk can make my stories look great and make me look like I actually know what I’m doing.

Viewed through the evolution of the TV news business, it makes more sense.  Crabbe spent three decades at WXIA.  During the first half of his career there, the station had developed a strong reputation for storytelling and news video.  But the last decade was rough for Crabbe and other veteran photographers.  As Gannett’s fortunes stumbled with the decline of the newspaper industry, WXIA shrunk its staff with buyouts; it furloughed staff in 2008.  Photographers lost a valuable perk when they were no longer allowed to take home news vehicles.

In the last two years, WXIA has updated some of its technology and added staff.  It seems to have built an identity as a news operation (flattered by the occasional cross-town copycat). The storytelling is still strong, and the newsgathering staff is slowly expanding again.

But one cannot overstate how tough it’s been to endure the last 15 years or so at WXIA, which has (by my reckoning) gone through more news directors during that period than WAGA and WSB (and WGCL too, maybe) combined.

Given a sometimes head-spinning absence of stability, one can see why a guy like Crabbe might favorably view an earlier, rather than later retirement.

As he told folks who attended his sendoff, Crabbe was also motivated to retire while still at the top of his game.  Though approaching his mid-60s, he was still physically able to handle the demands of schlepping gear and gunning through breaking news (his coverage of the Fulton County Courthouse shootings in 2005 was pretty much unmatched).

He also embraced technology as a much younger man might.  Crabbe frequently brought his personal Macbook to work, which he used for its Photoshop program, among other things.  When WXIA updated its editing program in 2010, Crabbe immediately mastered it.  Nobody in the building could create quality graphics as quickly as Crabbe did.

Crabbe's last day at work

He had a personal standard for his own work that the entire staff appreciated.   Photogs would say that Crabbe was the guy who set the standard that made WXIA the best news video shop in Atlanta in the 80s and 90s.  Fortunately, many of that standard’s adherents are still on staff.

Crabbe said that he wanted to exit before his skills deteriorated, before he was unable to live up to his own standards.

I respect that.  But damn.  I’m still sorry to see him go.

Crabbe’s retirement spurred a reunion of old-school WXIA folks.  Click here to see a photo gallery.

19 Dec

Confessional

Posted by live apt fire in WGCL, WXIA.

Happy holidays.  Here’s my gift to you.  I’m going to admit that a competitor kicked my ass on a story.

This will be a bit of heresy.  Getting one’s ass kicked on a story isn’t something TV reporters enjoy discussing.  Just the opposite actually.  If somebody beats you on a story, you cling to the hope that nobody notices.  Viewers almost certainly won’t notice — because, quaintly, they’re either watching my TV station or yours, in all likelihood.  But not both.

But newsroom folks will notice because they tend to click amongst TV channels, or watch the wall with four monitors playing four TV stations at the same time.

The worst, of course, is when one of your own supervisors notices.  This happened periodically at a previous employer, where my supervisors obsessively watched WSB’s newscasts instead of the newscasts on their own station.  In fact, they would frequently see an element they liked in a WSB story — and automatically assume that we overlooked it.  We’d have to explain:  Hey– we had that element, and more!  Watch your own TV station, for cryin’ out loud.

I don’t know if my previous employer is still that way.  I’ve heard they’re still obsessed with WSB, but are less scornful of their own staff these days.  I hope that’s right.

I digress.  It’s the egg nog typing.

Not only did WGCL kick my ass, but they did it on a feature story.  In other words, it was a story that was more cute than competitive.  Or so I thought.

The story was about a guy who fired his shotgun into some trees at North DeKalb Mall in order to harvest some mistletoe, the kissy-face Christmas season fungus that grows in treetops.  The cops caught him and he went to jail.

I learned that such practice is commonplace in rural areas.  This gave the story a bizarre touch I found appealing.  I wanted to explore the practice.  Richard Crabbe and I spent all day compiling video elements to tell the story with a bit of flair, or so I hoped.

Mike Paluska, WGCL

My first stop was at the guy’s house.  There, I saw WGCL’s Mike Paluska sitting in a marked car.    Paluska cheerfully informed me the guy wasn’t home.   I’d heard elsewhere he was still in jail.  The house looked empty, but I did the perfunctory knock on the door and nobody answered.  We both drove off and I never saw Paluska again.

Crabbe and I then drove from the guy’s house to the mall; to a Big John’s Christmas tree store that sold mistletoe; to a shooting range; and to the DeKalb police department, where spokeswoman Mekka Parish agreed to answer my silly questions about this holiday tradition.  Including lunch, it killed several hours.

Meantime, Paluska apparently single-mindedly focused on the mistletoe gunman’s house.  Smart guy.

A one-man-band, it appeared Paluska encountered 66-year old Bill Robinson at his house at some point during the day.  Paluska rolled while Robinson described and then justified what he did.  Robinson was animated and colorful.  Paluska’s story gave WGCL’s viewers a lovely first-person journey into the mind of a guy who would shoot mistletoe out of treetops at an urban shopping mall.

Absent the actual gunman, my story (below) was much more of a smoke-and-mirrors effort, dressed up with gunfire and fringe characters.

I saw Paluska’s story on a monitor across the newsroom as Crabbe was finishing editing our piece.  My heart sank.  Nobody else in our newsroom noticed.  Or if they did, they were gracious enough to keep it to themselves.

The next day, I blandly suggested a follow-up.  “The mistletoe guy might talk to us,” I said vaguely in the morning meeting.  The consensus was that this story had gotten sufficient attention already, and I covered something else.  Nobody mentioned our competitors’ treatment of the story, especially me.  Until now.

Perhaps this confessional will go toward saving my tortured and occasionally misdirected soul.  It seems appropriate for this particular season.

Here’s wishing Merry Christmas to TV’s Mike Paluska.  I’ll get you next time.

And Merry Christmas to Richard Crabbe, who retired last week.  I’m gonna miss that guy.  A post is in the works.

12 Dec

Names you remember

Posted by live apt fire in WXIA.

Jorelys Rivera

The disappearance and murder of seven year old Jorelys Rivera was undeniably awful.   Most news folk are able to detach themselves emotionally from stories they cover, in part because they’ve frequently seen similar stories before.  But thankfully, children are rarely murdered in metro Atlanta nowadays.  That made this story rough.

My career in Atlanta started after Wayne Williams was convicted in the Atlanta child murders cases.  In my first two years here, I covered the murders of two children and never forgot their names.

10-year old Amy Holman was abducted, sexually assaulted and strangled in Hall County in 1987.  A sheriff’s deputy who lived nearby was convicted of the crime.

Bricola Coleman was 12.  Her mother found her body in their SW Atlanta apartment in 1988.   An intense police search for the killer produced a suspect, but the charges were finally dropped in 2000.  The child’s killer remains at large.  (Both cases deserve more than the scant six sentences I’ve given them.  Sadly, I can’t find either victim’s photo on the internet.)

Both cases gnawed at me, just as I knew the Rivera case gnawed at the reporters (and the police investigators) covering this case.  I only produced sidebar pieces on the Rivera case and wasn’t part of the media siege at the Canton apartment complex where Jorelys and her alleged killer lived.

WXIA’s Jaye Watson was what she calls “a supporting player” covering the Rivera case.  Duffie Dixon, Kevin Rowson, Blayne Alexander, Jon Shirek and Jennifer Leslie did most of the heavy lifting — as well as photogs Mike Zakel, Charles Olmstead, Tyson Paul and others.  I asked Watson to write the following.

++

In the 12 years I’d been in Atlanta, I couldn’t recall something like this, a story that epitomizes my worst nightmare as a mother. I pictured it:  A sunny day, a playground, the laughter of children. And there in the shadows lurked a real-life monster, about to pick a child to torture and kill.

We camped out at the apartment complex, talking to neighbors, most of whom were already pointing to Ryan Brunn,  People said he put off a ‘bad vibe,’ that he was weird and didn’t look people in the eye, that nobody knew him well and he hadn’t been there very long. I challenged them. I pointed out that it’s easy to call someone weird or ‘off’ once you’ve seen GBI agents in their apartment, towing away their car. They said no, everyone thought he was weird before that.

Jennifer "Jaye Watson" Hamilton, with Jude, Iris and husband Kenny

Later in the week,  I had a rather heated exchange with someone in my neighborhood who said it was the mother’s fault for not supervising Jorelys – that she was an awful mother.  I don’t know anything about Jorelys’s mother, except that she works the overnight shift at a factory, and that she is raising three kids.  We were told a teenager in the complex was babysitting when this happened.

I saw some of my Facebook friends slamming the mother early on, and all I could think was:  This is what we do as humans.  We try to blame the mother to reassure ourselves that something this heinous will never happen to our children.

I’m a mother.  The night Jorelys’ body was found, I went home to my children. I held my almost seven year old son on the couch as he watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  I felt the lightness of his little body as he sank back against my chest, I looked at his slender arms, his tiny boy torso with its bony ribcage, and I imagined it. I let myself imagine the terror and confusion Jorelys felt, how she wished for her mother, for someone to save her, and how help never came.

I imagined my son or my daughter enduring the same fate as Jorelys, and I felt sickened. I felt terrified. Because I’m not always there. I work. I have a wonderful babysitter. But no one can watch every second of every day, forever. And it was in one of those tiny cracks of time that an innocent girl was abducted and murdered.

I stood outside the Cherokee County Detention Center Friday morning, reporting the latest on the case.  As reporters, we see, not through the TV screen but with our own eyes, the last place Jorelys played, the home she used to live in.  We meet the friends she used to know. And while I know how to use sound and images to structure a TV story, I have no idea how to make sense of what happened to a 7 year old girl who deserved what my children have — love, safety, a home.

Instead, Jorelys suffered and was alone with a monster at the end of her short life. Regardless of the judicial system, it’s hard for me to feel that there can ever be any true justice for the destruction of innocence.

5 Dec

A convenient target

Posted by live apt fire in russell dale, WAGA, WXIA.

Gloria and Herman Cain Saturday

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, those stories are salacious — especially when the key players are celebrities.  The audience eats up the stories, while at the same time denouncing the whole business as smarmy.

It would have been much more uncomfortable for Cain to address the particular allegations of the small parade of women who reported untoward personal encounters with Cain, particularly in front of a large group of supporters.  And with Gloria Cain standing in the wings.  “So what if I didn’t tell my wife about my secret 13-year friendship with a single woman, which included generous financial assistance and 4:30am text messages?” Cain could have said.

Instead, the crowd roared at the lines bashing the media.  In interviews afterward, Cain supporters expressed anger at the news media for undoing their candidate.

A woman gave away these buttons at the Cain event

He bitterly attacked “professional scavengers and gossip mongers who have made life hell for innocent people.” An hour later, he went on a local radio talk show and called reporters “vultures and hooligans.”

The above line comes from a 1987  article about Julian Bond, following allegations the former Georgia legislator habitually used cocaine.  The allegations came from his estranged wife Alice.

Bond was and still is an outspoken liberal.  The same guy who broke the story about Herman Cain’s alleged mistress also broke the Alice Bond story.  I honestly don’t know Dale Russell’s political leanings.  But he’s an equal-opportunity pain-in-the-ass to powerful people prone to excess.  Ask Terrell Bolton.  Ask Earl Paulk.  Ask Glenn Richardson.

Donna Rice and Gary Hart share a moment, circa 1987

The rest of the news media are similarly motivated.  We’ll chase a good story, regardless of the political bent of the target.  Since the term became vogue, the “liberal media” has a rich history of clobbering liberals, from Gary Hart to Elliott Spitzer to Anthony Weiner.  Their salacious behavior demanded it.  Hart has probably experienced many flashbacks during the past month.

Thankfully, you don’t hear about the “liberal media” much anymore.  There were “don’t believe the liberal media!” signs and buttons distributed at the Cain event.  It seemed like a throwback to the 90s.

Cain supporters can argue that the string of allegations against Cain were nebulous and unproven.  They can argue that the news media, whose 24 hour presence magnifies the most meaningless stories, gave the allegations undue attention.  They can decry “spin,” though I think that’s merely a pejorative term for the free expression of ideas you don’t like.

The news media is an almost textbook example of a free market entity.  When critics demand reform of the news media and its priorities, they rarely offer an alternative framework.  “Would you rather have the government control the news media?” I’ll occasionally ask them.  “No, but…” the response will invariably begin.

The media is your savior when reporters find dirt on the guy you don’t like.  When your enemy is exposed as a scoundrel, you will happily “spin” the material to suit you.  You might even praise the news media for doing its job.

But when your guy is the target, the media becomes a convenient whipping boy.  It’s much easier than discussing the facts.

28 Nov

The evangelist

Posted by live apt fire in LAF.

Mom, Mrs. LAF, Jimmy, Rosalyn, Clint and Doug

Odds are, you haven’t been to Plains, GA on a Sunday morning when Jimmy Carter is teaching Sunday school.   Maybe you’ve considered it but have always had something better to do on a Saturday night / Sunday morning.

The trek has gnawed at me for much of the last twenty years.  I’d see the 39th president on TV, or see his grandson at the Capitol, and the prospect of a Sunday school visit would briefly flash in my mind, then recede.  We finally did it this weekend.

The impetus came from Mrs. LAF, who encountered Bill Clinton at a book signing this month and kinda dug it.  “We can go see Jimmy Carter pretty much any Sunday,” I told her.  I went to the Carter NPS site, which linked to his church’s site.  The Maranatha Baptist Church faithfully posts Carter’s Sunday school teaching schedule, often weeks in advance.

My mom was in town for Thanksgiving.  Mom loves Jesus and voted for Carter.  The plans were laid.

I’m often struck by longtime Georgians — and by people in the news biz — who overlook the amazing things about Georgia.  Odds are, you’ve never been to the Okefenokee Swamp.   Most people I ask haven’t.  It’s a uniquely breathtaking locale.  But it’s in the middle of nowhere, and the whole alligator thing freaks people out.

Likewise, it’s easy to underappreciate Georgia fixtures like Carter.  Some Georgians loathe him, still.  I’ve chatted with him on-camera several times.  He’s easy to take for granted.  Why make the trip to watch the guy teach Sunday school?  Like the Okefenokee, Plains is kind of in the middle of nowhere, and the whole Baptist Church thing freaks some people out.

the Windsor, Americus GA

We stayed at the Windsor Hotel.  The Windsor is remarkable, a fully restored antiquity that dominates downtown Americus.  I don’t know of another hotel in the state — including Savannah — that’s like it.  The lobby is ancient and breathtaking.  Our rooms had twelve-foot ceilings, walk-in closets and cost a hundred bucks each.

We showed up at church at about 8:45 am, fifteen minutes after the doors opened.  A dog sniffed our car upon entering the parking lot.  Secret Service agents casually wanded us at the front door.  We took seats in the fourth row.  Another row filled behind us by the time Sunday school started.

At 9:45, a woman entered the sanctuary and gave an amusing take on the ground rules.  Photos were allowed at certain times.  He is “Mr. Carter” or “President Carter” but not “Mr. President.”  Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter would take photos afterward, but you had to stick around for the hour-long church service that followed Sunday school.

Mrs. LAF insisted on watching from an overflow room with a TV so that she could also watch our one-year-old.  While backstage, Clint kept toddling into the Carters and their security detail.  Mr. Carter made eyes at the boy and cooed at him several times.

Wearing a bolo tie and sport coat, Carter began by referring to the book of Hebrews.  He talked about a little-known bit of Jesus lore rooted in Hebrews 1:2– that Christ was present at the Creation.

His lesson veered between the teachings of Jesus and the work of the Carter Center, and a story or two from his presidency.  He knew his audience — much of which was very versed in the New Testament, but were also politically-minded.

The closest he came to talking about politics was when he referred to 1 Corinthians 1:10, where Paul beseeches Christians that “there be no divisions among you.”

the program

“I may disagree with some of you about homosexuality or abortion” Carter said, while saying that followers of Christ could stay united in their faith.  Carter did not elaborate on his positions on those secular topics.

It was an entirely nonpartisan lesson, with matter-of-fact references to Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and the upcoming elections in Egypt and the Congo.  It sounded like he referred to his wife as “Rosa,” though here may have been a silent “n” at the end, kinda like military folks call sergeants “sarn’t.”

My wife and mother sat through the church service afterward while I played with Clint in the nursery and on the swing set behind the church.

The 11am service ended promptly at noon.  The Carters took a side exit and stood within a rope line outside.  As the parishoners and tourists exited the front door, the woman who laid out the ground rules hurried them toward the rope line.  There, the Carters posed for photos with everybody who wanted one.  The ground rules included no handshakes and no autographs.  A volunteer used our camera, and shot a much-too-wide photo of our group.  The above photo is cropped.

Neither Carter appeared to recognize yours truly as part of the Atlanta local news rabble.  Our only conversation during the photo op was about Clint’s age.  I thanked him for the Sunday school lesson.

It was a life experience.  I recommend it.  Do it while the Carters are still young.

It’s also a a pretty brilliant way to spread the Word.  Carter is an unabashed evangelical.  How many of us actually remember the Biblical chapters and verses cited during Sunday school lessons?

Or write about them in secular blogs?

22 Nov

The Thanksgiving Trifecta

Posted by live apt fire in WXIA.

When young people enter the TV news business, they often do so for two reasons:  They desire a career that spontaneously puts them in strange situations on tight deadlines.  And, they want to see their pretty faces on TV and make lots of money as a big-time TV personality or whatever.

The spontaneity aspect of our industry is a given.  In fact, it’s so prevalent that veteran reporters (particularly with young families) often curse the very thing that drove them into it.  Events and assignments control the workday of the News Professional.  And after years of 6pm live shots in faraway locales on the fringe of their viewing areas, they crave predictability.  They want to know they’ll be home at a reasonable time that night.  At the very least, they want to exercise a measure of control over their work days.

Paying homage: Duffie Dixon, WXIA

Thanksgiving anchors a week that can provide that elusive predictability, as outlined in the above Suspicious Package piece.  The Thanksgiving Trifecta refers to three stories that Atlanta TV covers unfailingly, year after year, during Thanksgiving week.  You already know which stories they are; if you need your memory refreshed, click “play.”

My favorite part of the piece is the cameo appearance by Duffie Dixon, shot by yours truly with an Iphone — and it goes to the “pretty face” part of what motivates newcomers to the TV news biz.

I told her I was going to introduce her by dead rolling the video into her spoken portion of the piece– so she would appear on camera for a few seconds before speaking.

She responded with an ironic tribute to The Nod, the seemingly involuntary head-bob that nearly every reporter produces upon hearing their name in the earpiece while awaiting the completion of an anchor toss during a live shot.

While watching local news, it’s fun to watch for The Nod.   Some reporters exaggerate it with great flourish and importance.  A casual viewer could turn it into a game, rating the nods on various newscasts with a 1-10 scale.  My current favorite is the furrowed-brow neck-twist, perfected by Aasif Mandvi on the Daily Show.  In the past, my nod has tended to lean toward a lone arched eyebrow; lately it’s evolved into a last-minute eyeglass adjustment.

It’s another predictable element in an industry that draws newcomers looking for careers defined by spontaneity.

14 Nov

The 60s coat

Posted by live apt fire in WAGA, WXIA.

This month, I started packing my winter overcoat to work.  I’ve been wearing the same coat to work for 23 years.  45 seconds into the above video, you’ll see the coat on a much-younger version of yours truly in 1991.  Jeff Hullinger, Brenda Wood and Bill Hartman are also in it.  I’m pretty sure they’ve changed out their overcoats since then.

I continue to wear the coat for several reasons.

Pete, Steve, EC (in a coat like mine) and Bruce

1) I like its style.  WXIA photog Al Ashe identifies it as a Donegal Tweed.  Whatever it’s called, I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one like it (with one significant exception:  On Elvis Costello on the cover of Get Happy! album, and inside sleeve of Taking Liberties).

About every other winter, a stranger will gaze at the coat and proclaim it awesome.  Usually, the admirer is an older gay man.  Otherwise, its style mostly goes unnoticed.

2)  It’s got a family history.  The coat was tailor-made for my step-grandfather, Charles R. Leick.  He married my grandmother Juanita while my mother was a teenager.  They lived in the Missouri Ozarks, and I frequently stayed with them for weeks at a time — doing chores on their cattle farm, and helping my grandfather get elected Magistrate Judge in 1978 in Crawford County.  One day in 1988, I fished the coat out of a cedar closet in the attic of their farmhouse in Davisville.  He told me he’d rarely worn the coat during the previous quarter-century and gave it to me on the spot.

3)  It’s a link to history.  A label inside the coat shows that it was tailor-made in  August 1963 by a Philadelphia clothier called White and Co.  Aside from that unhappy Dealey Plaza business in Dallas, 1963 was still an interesting year.

  • George Wallace became Governor of Alabama;
  • Betty Friedan jump-started feminism with The Feminine Mystique and the USSR put a woman in space;
  • Patsy Cline died in a plane crash;
  • The Beatles appear on record for the first time;
  • Instant replay aired for the first time during a sporting event;
  • Bull Connor’s cops fire-hosed protesters during the Birmingham campaign, and racist killers bombed the 16th St. Church;
  • The US Post Office introduced ZIP codes;
  • Lots of crazy shit happened in South Vietnam, culminating with the CIA-backed assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem;
  • Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech.

3)  It’s still a rock-solid coat.  Its structural integrity is sound.  Except for the liner — which I’ve replaced a few times — nothing on the coat has frayed or even worn, except for the labels.   It’s warm.  And now, it’s “vintage.”

In the Suspicious Package segment below, I clunkily turn the old coat into a parable for the worthiness of old things — like TV reporters — that still work well.  “Like the man who wears it, the old coat still works fine.  I see no reason to trade it in for a newer, fresher, less weathered model” I intone, while gratefully accepting the assistance of Blayne Alexander, a newer, fresher, less weathered reporter.

The video is worth watching for her punch line at the end.

7 Nov

My magnetic TV personality

Posted by live apt fire in WTVA, WXIA.

Tuesday, I’ll deliver election results in-studio in front of a green screen on WXIA and WATL.  Though I’ve pre-recorded material in front of a green screen before, this will be my first live performance wherein I reference graphics chromakeyed behind me.  This is weatherman territory, a place I’ve ventured exactly one other time in my career.

It was a nightmare.

The internet says this guy is Brace Gilson of WHNT-TV Hartford, master of the magnetic map. Or maybe those are Colorforms.

At WTVA-TV, my very first post-college TV station, there was a rotating weather map in the middle of the news set featuring state and national maps.

Each of the maps were suitable for overlaying with magnetic pieces that composed graphics.  A series of magnetic squiggles could be used to create a cold front, for example.  There were magnets depicting sunshine, clouds, rain and whatnot.  There were magnetic numerals for temperatures.

One night in 1980, I had to do the weather.  The same night, I also had to produce, write and anchor the newscast– including sports and weather.  It was a Saturday.   The show was at 10pm.

After I’d written most of my newscast copy, I quickly looked at the AP weather wire, which broadly described fronts and weather systems across the US.  The same wire also showed forecasts for major cities.  I deduced the shapes and locations of the weather fronts, and started putting up magnets.  By the time I was done, it looked somewhat like a weather map.  I moved on to preparing the sportscast, which was filled with late scores.

The problem was:  I’d never done weather before.  In fact, I’d never really ad-libbed on TV at any length before.  I was accustomed to benign anchor tosses, or stuff that was otherwise scripted in advance.

Plus, I was a horrible ad-libber.  It’s never been a strength of mine.  Some people can talk lucidly all day off the cuff.  Not me.

That night, I delivered the first ten minutes of the newscast, then teased weather.  I think I gave myself five or six minutes to do weather — about 50 percent too long.  But I needed to kill the time.

During the break, I grabbed a pointer used by our real weather guys.  I extended it, like they did, so that I could reference the fabulous magnetic map I’d made.  I stood at the map, with only my magnetic graphics to guide my remarks.

The break ended.  I inhaled.  I began my spiel.

My coherence quickly began to fade as I babbled about fronts and weather systems with which I had scant familiarity.  I flailed with the pointer.  When I whacked the map with the pointer, some of my magnets clattered to the floor of the studio.  My confidence dropped just as quickly.

And then the guy behind the studio camera started laughing uncontrollably.

The cameraman lost control because he habitually smoked marijuana behind the TV station shortly before each weekend newscast.  He always offered to share; I always declined — a lesson indelibly learned from one rough decision made during my first radio news job.  Let’s just say the mary-jane does NOT make the newsman smarter.

So here I was:  Standing under bright studio lights, wrestling with unfamiliar material with zero self-confidence, flailing with a pointer, trying to avoid whacking my magnets, trying to ad-lib — all while gazing at a camera operated by a stoned, red-faced, howling cameraman.  We were the only two people in the studio, though I could also hear muffled laughter coming from behind the glass in the control room.

I was utterly embarrassed and humiliated.  However, only one person I knew had actually seen the broadcast.  “What happened?” he asked, charitably.

The video editor, who’d promised to tape the newscast, forgot to hit REC.  Regrettably, no record of the newscast exists — except as a fragmentary broadcast signal perhaps still drifting toward Alpha Centauri.

If aliens pick up the signal, they will not be impressed with humanity.

Tuesday, I return to the weather position.  Fortunately, my material will be about politics and geography.  Unfortunately, I’ll be mostly ad-libbing and probably won’t have much prep time.  I’m somewhat pumped to have an opportunity to redeem myself.

At least there won’t be magnets.

31 Oct

Prognosticator

Posted by live apt fire in WXIA.

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.

24 Oct

Mic check

Posted by live apt fire in WXIA.

"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.

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