On a bone-cold February morning I took part in what’s long been a newsgathering tradition: dumpster diving. This time it was behind the DMV, where a year earlier my reporter for the day uncovered a soggy cache of decidedly un-shredded expired drivers licenses. Having milked that stash for a whole series of special reports, we were back for more, dressed like ninjas and poking our lens through a few more stout vessels of refuse. As I pierced the darkness with my camera’s top-light, a young lady who once sat in some lofty hall of Journalism and fantasized about a glamorous job in TV News squeezed herself through the smelly opening of a rusty dumpster. So much for dreams.
Before long we hit pay dirt: more intact licenses, sliced a little and nicked on the corners, but still clear bearers of easily-exploitable data. ‘Witness, the spoils of Garbalogy!’ I thought as I twisted the focal ring until the image was razor-sharp. People go to school for this? My partner sure did and she squealed with delight at her next discovery: processed speeding tickets, stacked and intact - chock full of easily viewable personal information. The reporter suppressed a chuckle as she fanned the familiar pink ticket slips in front of my lens and narrated her find. I squinted through the viewfinder and thought about breakfast. A few phone calls to this new list of lead-foots and we’d surely uncork someone to point a camera at. The rest would write itself. I love the smell of sweeps promos in the morning.
We could have stopped there, and probably should have. But as the pitch black of night melted into morning light we put off the breakfast bar for an impromptu strike on a certain cross-town waste container. Like junkies on the prowl, we soon loitered at the edges of a different DMV’s back parking lot, shifting from foot to foot and jonesing for another hit.
Trouble was dawn had turned to daylight and all elements of subterfuge were lost. Tough break, that. You try sifting through a DMV dumpster with a flashy TV camera while a dozen state troopers pass by on their way to morning muster. More than one of the high-and-tight haircut set crept by painfully slow in their unmarked Crown Vics, no doubt committing my face, logo and license plate to memory for future possible harassment. I’m still waiting to be pulled over for 36 in a 35 and immediately strip searched for having sunflower seeds in my ashtray and a half-opened RC Cola in the back.
I hate when that happens.
But I'd be remiss in launching this endeavour without acknowledging someone I've never met but unknowingly emulated. His name is 
Soon a non-descript stripped-down Ford Aerostar arrived at the station. Once the local stock car racing detailers completed their work, it sported flashy logos and an oversized picture of our chief meterologist's silly mug. It only took the 'Pinpoint' guys a few hours to install the funky weather antenna, after which I took our newly pimped-out ride to a curvy road for a series of beauty shots. With an assistant driving my pick-up, I sat in the bed with a betacam as we made endless loops around the damn thing. It was the middle of summer and I picked bugs out of my teeth for days afterward.
I used to work alot of A.M. shifts, running camera and live truck for our four hour mega-morning never ending newscast. An admited coffee hound to begin with, I came to rely on the early morning bean for that much needed energy jolt.
There was that one time, after spending hours alone in a live truck parked on the icy interstate. I was already dancing foot-to-foot when the last remote ended. As I scrambled to break down the truck the urge to go almost overwhelmed me. But all around, morning traffic zoomed past - making any clandestine bladder relief impossible.
After much gnashing of the teeth I locked up my frozen vessel and hobbled toward the forest, like some staion-logo wearing Sasquatch scampering over the ice floe. Seconds after disappearing into the thicket several square feet of icy expanse were feverishly melted. Ahhh...sweet relief!
Attending a child's school play can be hard on the photojournalist. Take tonite for instance. While at my daughter's latest acting venture, I literally had to sit on my hands while a sea of Soccer Moms and Nascar Dads mistreated an awful lot of consumer camera equipment. I only hunkered down in my folding chair though, flashing the random thumbs-up to my second grader and suppressing the urge to stand up and scream...
Is that a TV camera or the robot from 'Lost In Space'? Decide for yourself, by visiting Tim Rutherford's on-line shrine to a place most TV stations have done away with these days, the 
I kicked off the year in high style, huddling with the transients at the local shelter, collecting shots and coercing soundbites from a line of diners for a report on North Carolina’s homeless population. As always, my lens and demeanor was met with glee and rancor - depending on the blood alcohol level of the chow-line crowd. But I come in peace, realizing there is no ONE way to ending up in the homeless shelter. A thousand bad decisions and plain dumb luck can get you there. I learned that the first time an old acquaintance called my name from a top cot. Since then, I don't pass judgments; on my deadline I ain't got the time. As matter of personal policy my dealings with the downtrodden is polite, professional and perfunctory.
Days later I found myself trailing a 12 year old girl scout cookie selling champ as she prowled the selling floors of Greensboro’s much ballyhooed ‘Motor Mile’. With order form and green sash in tow the young lady moved from sales associate to parts manager to the F& I Guy, all with me shadowing her every move. We must have looked pretty silly. Still, the sales weasels we encountered seemed prepared; they coughed up an order or four with a barely a shuck and a grin. I’d have felt better about the whole enterprise had it not been for the dour look on the child’s face and the hovering Stage Mother just out of frame. Of course I couldn’t escape their clutches without puttin’ in for four boxes of Thin Mints. Mmm, Thin Mints.
The latter part of the month found me in Burlington, where I ran around a ‘walking tour’ of a Cold War era missile factory. Now shuttered and chained, the sprawling facility once cranked out miles of missiles and scores of warheads for Uncle Sam. That day a man with the company trying to sell the rundown plant led a roving clutch of journalist, unnamed suits and retirees up and down the factory floor. It was a time capsule of a tour. From the faded shag carpeting in the executive offices to the burnt orange linoleum in the employees lounge, the place screamed Mid Seventies Missile Factory - just don't ask about that weird glow coming from that back hallway.
