Let's Get Physical...

Perhaps it's my blue-collar upbringing, or maybe it's my learned disdain for academia - but a recent study really chaps my batteries. Actually, the study has some merit, for in elucidating the obvious it finds that the newfangled crew of one (read:VJ) is capable of only pre-planned, simplistic mews coverage. That is true, to a point. For example, I shoot, write and edit TV news stories sans assistance every day - by choice. Such an arrangement affords me the kinf of freedom and autonomy most photogs can only dream of. I like it - a lot. Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to voice my own reports again. Here's why I don't: The moment I go back on-air as a one-man-band, my bosses will throw me to the wolves, er, expect me to play full-on reporter.

No longer will I be able to waltz into the morning meeting and cherry-pick the the most visual story of the day. I'd be required to come up with lead stories, schmooze prickly contacts and cover city hall. Out with the biker club prayer breakfast. In with the heated city council meeting. No thanks, I've climbed the widow's porch solo as a younger man and while it's not beyond me, I simply garner no joy from standing by live outside the meth-lab. Sooo, I hide behind capable anchors with far smoother delivery than mine and foist actual happy news upon an unsuspecting public. It's a living...

And not a bad one, I might add. As practiced as I am in the art of whine, I truly dig what I do. Which is why I take such O-ffense at the study in question's other key assertion...

Another struggle for many VJs is the physical strain of working alone. “This is a craft that demands not only intellectual capacity but real physical stamina and a lot of people are not going to be able to do this simply because they haven‘t got the stamina,” one VJ says. ... The National Union of Journalists in England is starting to hear health complaints–such as exhaustion or back problems–from VJs who have been on the job a few years. There’s also the problem of doors. As mundane as they are, doors pose problems for VJs because their hands are nearly always full, and they have no partner. Getting through a door with the equipment, and protecting the equipment from being damaged by a slamming door, is a daily challenge. (One VJ reports a new appreciation for automatic doors!)

Don't get me wrong, humping gear up a courthouse's steps all by your lonesome CAN be a bitch. I do it every day. But photogs have been doing it daily since the first broadcast engineers traded a few horse blankets for an Indian-stitched test pattern. Try as I might, I cannot recall a single breathless study decrying the health risks suffered by generations of TV stevedores. And with good reason. See, even when the average news shooter schlepped 60 pounds of gear on his or her back, it just doesn't compare to actual backbreaking work like , say, appliance repair or ostrich farming. No matter how stridently I might disagree after a long shift of the one-eyed backpedal, electronic news-gathering is not the long haul some would have you believe.

Rather, it's a brisk run through someone else's reality - often followed by a stop at Starbucks for a Java Chip Frappuccino and a little handheld wi-fi. To compare carrying a fetus-cam around for an hour or two a day to actual labor does a great disservice to working folks everywhere and I want to do everything I can to distance myself from such self-serving horseshit. Am I being too sensitive? Probably, but when journalists of any stripe start complaining about their jobs being too physically strenuous, I'm more than a little sickened. Can field crews have a rough go of it once in awhile? Youbetcha. But can a lusty ingenue toting an eight pound camera compare to the many travails of a factory worker or traffic cop? Not on her worst day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a shelf full of self-serving trophies not to polish. I gotta tell you though: my back is killing me!