And then you can have lunch...

In the previous post, I wrote about the news beast and how it must be fed each day. After the day I had Friday, I have to mention that the beast's appetite doesn't always stop at news.

My day Friday actually started Thursday (one of my days off) evening with a message from our assignment manager, "Chris, this is Jenny at the station, I was calling to see if you could come in at 8:30 (my normal start time on Fridays is 9:30) tomorrow so you can shoot a court case. Give me a call and let me know."

I made a quick call to the desk to let them know I could.

And on Friday...

8:30 a.m. - I arrive at the station, load and head for the courthouse. I'm not a big breakfast eater, so I'm just having coffee on the way.

11:00 a.m. Having sat through just over two hours of testimony with no resolution, I leave the courthouse and call in...

Me: "Jenny, this is Chris. I'm done here. They heard testimony, but three people weren't available so they've continued to the first of May."

Jenny: "OK. Bring that back and then you can have lunch."

11:30 a.m. I arrive back to the station and Jenny greets me, "They need you to cut a VO of that for the midday, do that, then you can have lunch."

I head for the edit bays.

11:50 a.m. I'm about to send the courtroom VO to the server for the midday when I look up and see Jenny...

Jenny: "Are you done with that?"

Me: "Just sending now."

Jenny: Holding out a map, "OK. There's a cement truck that overturned, I'm going to need you to go check that out and then you can have lunch."

Me: "This is on Sylvania-Metamora road. That's a haul from here."

Jenny: "I know, but it sounds like it'll be there for awhile."

12:25 p.m. I'm finished with the overturned cement truck. Fortunately, the driver only had a minor injury. As I load my gear into my Jeep, I feel my cell phone vibrate on my hip...

Jenny: "Chris, are you done out there?"

Me: "Yes"

Jenny: "OK, I know this is far away, but I need you to go get a pep rally at Riverside Elementary that Efrem is MC'ing."

Me: "Riverside's nearly at the opposite end of the universe from here."

Jenny: "I know, but you're all I have. When you're done there, you can go have lunch."

1:20 p.m. I've been at Riverside for the past 15 minutes. The pep rally doesn't start for another ten. My phone vibrates again...

Jenny: "Have you finished at Riverside?"

Me: "No, it doesn't start for another ten minutes. I haven't seen Efrem. I don't know if he's here yet."

Jenny: "OK. As soon as it starts, shoot it fast and then come back. You're going to have to go do an interview with Jennifer at 2:00."

Me: "If this thing starts on time, the best I can do is get back to the station to pick her up by 2:00."

Jenny: "OK, just get back as quick as you can."

Me: "So that lunch thing isn't happening."

Jenny: "For you and everyone else."

2:05 Arrive back at the station. Pick up Jennifer Jarrell.

2:35 Arrive at 180th Fighter Wing Base with Jennifer to interview four people who have been waiting for over a half hour.

6:14 After shooting four interviews, editing a package for the 5:30 show, refusing a live shot and two other editing chores, and handing off my 6:00 VOSOT to someone else, I'm sitting in Barry Bagels wolfing down a sandwich in order to get to Sylvania Northview in time to see my daughter sing in her school's Songfest.

The moral of our story:


Some days, the news isn't enough to fill up the news beast. Some days, it has to eat your lunch too.

Why is this news?

Recently, I've had a number of people at accidents and fire scenes asking the question, "Why is this news?"

The answer to "Why is this News?" can get complicated, but on some days, it's just that there's nothing else going on. Last Tuesday is a perfect example of this.

Before I go to last Tuesday, though, I want to do a little tangent on the news beast and the part it plays in the decision process.

An editor once told me that News is a beast that must be fed each day. The news beast doesn't care if you had news that day or not. It only knows that it must be fed. Each and every day, we have an hour and a half of news at 5 and a half hour at 11, whether something happened that day or not. The news beast must be fed...

True story: A number of years ago there was a newspaper editor named George Frye at a small paper in Indiana. George had a paper coming out and no lead story for the front page. Nothing local, no news on the wire. It was just one of those days. The deadline loomed closer... the press needed to run... the news beast needed to eat. Finally, George made the announcement to the newsroom that the next story that came down on the wire would be the lead on the front page. Then the story came across the wire... Olaf, the king of some country so small that nobody had heard of it, had died. (I don't remember the name of the country.) George had his story. It went on the page, but there was another problem. King Olaf dies wasn't a long enough headline to fill the alotted space. But the beast had to be fed. So the press ran, and for that day in Huntington, IN, the big story was Good King Olaf dies. True story!

To this day, I still refer to those days without any news as Good King Olaf days.

For Zack Ottenstein and myself, Tuesday, April 10 was a Good King Olaf day. There just wasn't anything. Every story we tried went to a dead end. Interviews we tried for fell through. Finally, we were able to contact a vetrinarian for a story about the pet food recall. There had been a few more types recalled that day. It wasn't what we were trying for, but it would work. We went and did the interview. Arriving back at the station, our producer, Rob, told us that there was a structure fire on Bigelow and that the Red Cross had been called to help the family. We arrived to find two things: our live truck already on scene, and a garage fire that had spread to the back of the house, but the fire department had managed to contain it to the garage, which was destroyed and the breezeway behind the house, which was heavily damaged. Nobody was hurt, but the family was going to be out of their house for the night. So, I shot the firefighters putting out the hotspots, Zack and I interviewed the battallion chief, I edited the video together with a short soundbite from the chief and we led the news live from in front of the house. The beast was fed.

So, was this news? To the family put out of their house for the night, certainly. For the neighborhood, probably. For all of Toledo, maybe. Was it "big news?" On that particular night... it was.