Rinse, Blather, Repeat

I keep my fancycam's controls proudly set on MANUAL, but my head ... it's stuck on Auto-Reflect. It's always been that way - even before I shouldered a Sony and started repeating myself. What's that, you say? Isn't a life behind the lens the very definition of exciting and new?  Well, Yes and No. Mostly No. Truth is we news shooters adhere to a routine. We follow our own tracks so often, even mailmen shake their heads. We trot out more old props than a magician's assistant. And we repeat ourselves more than your Uncle Louie does when he lies about killing all those guys in Korea. Don't believe me? Here, I'll prove it - using nothing more than four photos I just now found on my phone. Let's review:

 
Hey look - it's a freakin' polar bear! Actually, his name is Wilhelm and he's a friend of mine. We first met back when the North Carolina Zoo rescued him from a Puerto Rico traveling circus (you read that right). Wilhelm (Willy to his peeps) is a fairly rare bear whose goofy grin and lackadaisical style has made him a crowd favorite and keeper sweetheart. I know this, because I've dragged my glass around the North Carolina Zoo 7,000 times. Not that I'm complaining. (It just sounds that way.)

Ever raced to the middle of nowhere just to lay eyes on a cop car convention? I have - and so has every other tripod jockey on this heartless orb. In fact, the far-flung car wreck is such a staple of news-gathering, they even teach it in college. I'm kidding - they're far too busy pontificating on The Fourth Estate to touch on something as esoteric as when to slip the state trooper your business card, or how to handle that nineteen year old volunteer firefighter who wants you to park six miles back and hoof it up to the scene with half a TV station on your back. 

TIMMMM-BER! Yeah, whatever. Once upon a time, chasing storm damage really appealed to me. Then I picked my way through about a thousand debris fields and the novelty of playing pick-up sticks wore more than a little thin. As is stands (or leans) now, I've hovered over more fallen trees than a first year lumberjack. But it only took a half dozen to realize all that broken wood is nothing compared to the stunned expressions found on the sweet people whose yard you're standing in. I'l just let myself out - through what used to be your garage.  

Of course, I don't turn intrigue into monotony all by my lonesome. Well, not EVERY day. No, on regular occasion I work with our fine staff of on-air reporters and among that lot you'll find none finer than Winston-Salem bureau chief Brent Campbell. That's him - adjusting his microphone and wondering just what in the hell I'm up to. Pity the reporter who has to hear my schtick long before its turned into pixels. Brent, though, he can take it. Dude's seen every bit of inanity I have and he doesn't even blather about it on-line. Guy like that's got a real future.

I just wish this silly business did.

Stringer and The Man

I didn't begin this blog to keep track of photog altercations, but since I need fresh content, let's get started! Lately, there's been some bad voodoo between cops and news shooters, two groups that most often get along, albeit begrudgingly. The most recent case happened just down the road in Smithfield (home of Ava Gardner!), where freelance photographer Carter Rabil got a free ride downtown after refusing to move for law enforcers. Holy F-Bomb! I'm no expert in police-media relations and aside from a few half-watched Matlock episodes, I don't know diddly about the law. But even a rube like myself knows better than to hurl obscenities at a uniformed officer and expect him to do anything but decorate my wrists in court-appointed bling-bling. Did I just say 'bling-bling'? Egads...

Perhaps I'm just rattled by all the conflict. Like Rodney King, I just want everybody 'to get along'. Unlike King, I ain't got a rap sheet that dates back to 1987. Which makes me the average photog - a working class lenslinger who will do anything to get that shot, 'cept curse a cop and go to the pokey. There's just no honor in it. More often than not, such crime scene shenanigans are showboating anyway; puffy-chested posturing by cops who hate photogs or by photogs who hate cops. Fellas, please - is one more shot of crumpled sheet-metal worth a night in the slammer? And officers, why must you single out the lowly photogs when Sally Sue Sixpack and her six ugly kids are trampling through the debris field even as we speak? Huh? If there's a lesson here, it's simply this: Don't tell the cops to' get the $#@! out of your way' - unless you got time to kill and a real hankerin' to be on YouTube. Remember, can't make slot from the back of a squad car.

You can however sample the most troubling of aromas, but that's the subject of another post.

CSI: Enough Already

I know I’m just a lowly cameraman, but can I call for a moratorium on all things CSI? Granted, I don’t watch the silly network shows, but even an avid Caruso-hater like myself can tell when a phenomenon has jumped the freakin’ shark. Case in point: In the past two weeks, I’ve shot multiple stories involving fake crime scenes. First it was the Elon Law School in downtown Greensboro. When Charles Ewing and I strolled through their newly hallowed doors, no one much noticed. They were all too busy huddling over a splayed-out mannequin, who - from the looks of it - had been attacked by a pack of dummies from the wrong side of the thrift store. Hey, I’m no fancy-chancy law student but wouldn’t that gaping head wound pretty much rule out accidental drowning? Forget I mentioned it; just know that no matter how much you wrap the lobby in crime tape, it doesn’t proximate the feeling of an inner-city shooting after midnight. For that you need sleep in your eyes, mismatched socks and an indignant crackhead or two. Then, and only then, can you properly cue The Who.

Now, before I proceed, your honor, can I approach the jury? See folks, I’m no prude. Long before it was cool to scrape for DNA, I was living vicariously through forensics. It began in grade school, when I ran across a most intriguing Readers Digest collection: Great True Stories of Crime, Mystery and Detection. I must have read every word of those London Yard stories a dozen times, before losing the book during the fog of adolescence. When I spotted a tattered copy of my beloved tome lying in top of a church book sale pile, I almost caused my own crime scene by bum-rushing three grandmothers in order to grab it. Years later, I rediscovered my affinity for investigations while posing a bored sailor out to sea. A buddy passed me a torn paperback edition of The Stranger Beside Me. In it, writer Ann Rule describes how the handsome young fellow working the suicide hotline alongside her was far creepier than at first glance. His name was Ted Bundy and I was enraptured. After that I read every serial murderer tome I could lay my hands on, until a skeevy shipmate noticed my true crime tastes and invited me to his satanic church meetings. Check, Please!

Mmm-Hmm. Sorry about the flashback. Truthfully, I haven’t thought about those dark days underway in a l-o-n-g time. That’s a good thing - for certain memories should be forever buried in a shallow grave. But enough about my mental scars - I was talkin’ True Crime. For the most part, I grew out of it (though may I heartily recommend Sebastian Junger’s creepy remembrance of a childhood handyman/monster in A Death in Belmont? Good stuff). No, these days, I’m only vaguely aware of the forensics renaissance in popular culture. It’s an easy enough feat. I abhor the hour-long drama and visual violence as entertainment struck me as dumb around the fifteenth time my old roommates insisted we watch Commando, starring a young and apparently bulletproof Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, I’ve handily eschewed this national fascination with rigamortis. But today, as I trained my lens on a group of seventh graders measuring fake blood splatter, a question I couldn’t answer popped in my head.

What ever happened to The Hardy Boys?

News Crew Cuffed, Stuffed

How can I work on my memoirs when news crews keep getting tangled in the Thin Blue Line? This time it's Memphis, where cops cuffed and stuffed reporter Jeni DiPrizio and photog Eli Jordan. It's hard to know why, exactly. On assignment for Eyewitness News Everywhere (I kid you not), the newsgathering duo were working the fringes of a tile plant fire when a nearby police lady decides they have to leave. Now! Ever tenacious, DiPrizio stalls the officer and gets the newsroom on the horn, while photog Eli wisely keeps rolling. What follows is a ramped-up exercise in foregone conclusions, ending with the ratcheting clatter of shiny metal bracelets. Did the cops overreact? Seeing how the news team were released after only a couple of hours of stewing in a squad car, one would assume so. Could DiPrizio have handled it better? Hard to say; debating property access and media rights with someone wearing a bulletproof vest is a dicey venture at best. I'll give her mad props for stickin' to her guns, at least. And Eli's video? Riveting.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I was somewhere between newbie and burnout...

Get My Good Side...

The voice on the phone probably sounded familar. After all, Paul Broussard was no stranger to the staff of KLFY. A TV-10 news crew profiled the self-described security consultant earlier in the year, when he announced a less than magnanimous campaign for Governor. This time however, it wasn't gubernatorial glory the local man was seeking, but the chance to explain why he'd just been forced to shoot a cop. Cue the furious hand-motions. Moments later a TV-10 camera rolled as Broussard explained via speakerphone how he and his assault rifle had been taking a walk when they were accosted by State Police. Demanding he drop his piece, the troopers fired on Broussard, who returned the favor with lead of his own, winging one officer before barricading himself in his mobile home. That's where 'Colonel' Broussard was calling from now - the very same trailer KLFY had interviewed him at a few months back. Wouldn't they to like to rush on over now?

They would, and did. Soon a TV-10 live truck joined the fleet of squad cars and unmarked Crown Vic's parked askew outside Broussard'd door. Neighbors only did a half double-take when they heard the commotion - even as the old coot's showdown with the PO-lice forced them to evacuate their own cribs. 'Whadaya expect from a guy who rides around pretendin' to be a cop?' some weren't heard to say. I'll tell you what to expect: extended megalomania. Sure, I don't know Broussard myself, but anyone with a cop fetish, political aspirations and the local TV station on speed-dial will regularly use all three to pedal crazy. Trust me on that one. Or, consider the conclusion of this protracted stand-off: Sensing his fifteen minutes was just about up, Broussard pushed the hyperbole into overtime by demanding a TV-10 camera accompany police to come in and get him. KLFY photog Keith Verret answered the call, suiting up and moving in. Wisely, it seems police kept him far enough back to avoid any spontaneous acts of armed granduer on the part of Broussard. Instead, a Governor's incumbency was peacefully spared, a local affiliate got one hell of a freebie and an old man with more sidearms than sense went to jail.

Wonder if he knew it was Sweeps?

Fairly Unbalanced

Affixing your name and phone number to the shell of your fancy-cam: highly prudent. Slathering your batteries in Metallica stickers: dated but acceptable. Gluing novelty-store eyeballs to your fuzzy microphone cover: one of my favorites! Flying a Mexican flag off your camera's antenna while covering a pro-immigration rally; uncool on either side of the border. But that didn't stop this KPRC photog from representin' while on the clock - a bonehead move that earned him justified heckles from counter-demonstrators gathered outside Houston's Mason Park. Hey dude, I'm all for regional pride, but what part of 'neutral observer' don't you comprender? I got myself got plenty of opinions, but I can wander both sides of a Klan rally with a poker face and half a pack of Tic-Tacs. Try it sometime. For now though, help me out with a little translation. What's Spanish for dumb-ass?

The Scrum and the Numb

'It's TV news at its best and TV news at its worst.'

That was the assessment of one colleague last week as broadcasters from across the hemisphere converged on a shell-shocked Virgina Tech. I can't agree more, for rarely have newsgathering forces turned crisis into commodity quite so precisely. Before the sun set on the day of the shooting, a growing herd of TV trucks grazed on a campus hillside, a labyrinth of cables and light stands spilling out from behind their overly lacquered logos. As the unfathomable death toll echoed across the globe, more and more media outlets dispatched crews to Blacksburg. Midwest affiliate reps, foreign bureau chiefs and every network hotshot you can think of soon roamed the grounds of what some consider the largest sat truck summit ever convened. At dusk, hundreds of tripods lined every inch of the grassy ridge, those tricked-out HMI rigs spotlighting the very edge of Virgina's darkest day. Over coiffed correspondents stood almost shoulder to shoulder and nodded gravely on cue, before introducing their own uniquely assembled dissection of the day. Walk that line of talking heads and you'll find whatever spin you're looking for, from the shrill demagoguery of cable news outlets to the melodramatic whispers of the public broadcasting set to the indecipherable rapid-fire of the Spanish-speaking channels. Translation aside, the incident at hand had already transformed. Hours before, the massacre at Virginia Tech had been but a madman's depraved fantasy. By nightfall it was a slick and salacious sat-shot juggernaut, available in every skewed perspective the 24/7 news universe has to offer.

But at what cost? For every talking head, sound tech and camera-hump scouring the Virginia Tech proper, there were countless more local folk sleepwalking in grief - trying to wrap their heads around the crushing loss and a dark new legacy, all while news crews clamored for close-ups of their still-falling tears. With classes cancelled for the week, only the media and the bereaved remained to duel it out. The resulting frenzy was ugly at times. No sooner could a crew corner a subject than a gaggle of new logo'd lenses would descend - turning an impromptu one-on-one into a gang-bang of obscene proportions.The melee of microphones was pack journalism at its worst - a phenomenon in which truth is lost in fervor and the signal turns simply to noise. Certainly not every member of the Fourth Estate so egregiously devolved on spot, but even the accepted tactics - from celebrity reporters using their household names to get to the victims' families to the rampant bum-rushing of the many memorials - were pretty damned unsavory. But don't take my word for it - I was only there for a day. Listen instead to a VT student named Jason M., who left this reply to an earlier thread:

During the candlelight vigil, a group of friends and I were standing next to another group of people, one of whom lost it about halfway through. Instantly the cameras began to swoop in and wouldn't go away when we all told them - to basically piss off. So one of our group began singing and walked straight into his shot. Seeing this small spectacle, others joined and formed a wall around the grieving group - a wall that moved in tandem with the asshole photogs until they gave up and went away. I'm all for freedom of speech, but it seems like much of the media (especially TV, local just as much as the big guys) tends to hide behind the mantra of first amendment rights in order to ignore the fact that they're being completely insensitive pricks.

However you might envision the above scene, it wasn't our finest hour. But among the victimized were members of the media itself. For many local news crews, the long-gone crush of jet-setting competitors has left a lasting impression on those who remain.

You national/international folks really messed up my community. A place where I've done more than a hundred stories is no longer welcoming. The people stare and harass us, something never done before. I know it will never change, but a lot of y'all need to check into the school of respect. I'm glad you're gone as is my community. I hate it that we have to pick up your mess. Thanks to all the unethical bastards that invaded my space. Those that posed as students, hospital staff and who knows what else. Thanks to god that there's a new disaster to take you away so our community can start to recover from our disaster. Adios. -- Newsman

It must be noted that Newsman has been pretty much eviscerated by his fellow photogs, most of whom credit the assassin Cho for Blacksburg's remaining woes. I don't totally buy that, for asinine behavior on the part of strangers cannot totally be blamed on a homicidal college kid lying dead in a classroom. In my short time on the drill field a full week after the attack, I saw enough boorish camera behavior to make me wonder why I ever wanted to sling a news lens at all. That's not to say I think we should revert to two cans and a string . Wonderful new tools are at our disposal; hell, the web alone makes the idea of a 500 channel universe seem hopelessly quaint. But is it too much to ask that we retain some air of civility amid all this mass communicatin'? Apparently so. It's something this reformed southerner will never get used to - even when I myself am caught up in the ugliest of scrums. It sure doesn't make defending my profession any easier - not when its glaringly obvious that despite your favorite newscast being late-breaking, localized and live(!), basic human decorum is all but dead.

No news-flash there, I guess...

Split Indecision

Who IS this woman? How come's she's just standing there? Why does she look like Sandra Bullock? Three questions that run through my mind as I stare at this photo taken by Rich Abrahamson of The Coloradoan. Seconds after the frame was captured, Colorado State receiver George Hill reluctantly plowed into four year old Caden Thomas. The resulting gash would require thirty stitches, launch a whirlwind media tour and place all involved in the viral video hall of fame. Just this morning the gang appeared on the Today Show - the kid, the football player and the parents kibbitzing with Matt and Meredith while the slow-motion hit played and over and over again. It was all enough to tear me away from my punishing regiment of morning Pop-tarts, uh, I mean push-ups - long enough to wonder what kind of dillweed of a parent lets his kid roam the sidelines during padded gladiator combat. After that I pretty much forgot about it...

And then I saw this picture. It's a beguiling enough shot, fraught with implications that are probably unjust. After all, who knows how you'd react if you found yourself cradling a video-camera in the end zone as a human rocket homed in on a passing toddler. I'd like to think I'd somehow save the kid, but I know guys who'd zoom in and roll on their own demise - let alone some kid's undue clock-cleaning. Still, I'm struck by the lady's choice to do neither. Wielding a lens but not really using it, she seems to be watching for the collision that is surely about to ensue. Hmmmmm. I don't wanna play armchair quarterback here - I'm just some goob with a web address and a writing compulsion. But as someone's who's had his own melon thumped by an incoming quarterback, I can tell you - that shit hurts. George Hill should be commended for doing what he could to lessen the impact. Little Caden should get a free scholarship. His parents should be more embarrassed than giddy. And that lady with the camera ... well, she should probably look into another line of work.

Citizen Psycho

I find it haunting that between killing sprees, Cho Seung-Hui stopped to vlog. Using video, words and digital stills, the Virginia tech student assembled a rambling screed of murder and hate he needed the world to see. Apparently, a disturbed young man known for speaking little had a lot to say when he was all alone. 1800 words of venom, countless photos of him and his weapons, first person video clips of his monotone yet murderous rage. Cho Seung-Hui wasn’t just obsessed with smiting his self-perceived enemies. He wanted the globe to know why he did. So he snail-mailed his ‘reel’ to NBC, certain the news-gathering goliath would unleash it on an unsuspecting planet. Did that satiate his rage - the knowledge that his twisted message would be seen far and wide shortly after the bodies fell? That his YouTube-infamy was guaranteed, affording himself a place in history that an old school wacko like Mark David Chapman could never even conceive?

I’m reminded of those scenes in the movies where the villain addresses the hero from beyond the grave. A flickering screen of a overacting mug, smugly explaining every detail of his madness and laughing diabolically. But played out in reality, its fare from entertaining. Instead, the pictures and clips ricocheting across the web feature a lingering peek into a mass murderer’s mind. It makes the notion of cops traveling to a prison to grill a serial killer feel positively Baroque. Yesteryear’s Zodiac letters are today’s ‘multimedia manifesto’ a term that will grimly go down as a Word of the Year. Thus, Cho Seung-Hui not only ended 32 lives and then his own. He changed the lexicon of evil, upping the ante for mass killers to come, asssuring that no dastardly deed in the 21st century would be complete without a cyber-portfolio of madness. It was blund to happen In a new frontier teeming with personal journalists, activists bloggers and MySpace moguls, I’m afraid we now have a new kind of cyber-savvy, plugged-in super villain: Citizen Psycho.

Pity the victims won't be so well remembered.

For All the Wrong Reasons

Unlike, say - Weaver - I haven’t been to the mountains this week. But with a local 12 year old missing in steep terrain ninety minutes away, it was only a matter of time until I saddled up and headed West. Or so I thought. This morning, as I whittled footage of a certain bald singer, the newsroom exploded. Suddenly co-workers scrambled this way and that as shards of broken news fell over the cubicle farm. Dropping to the floor, I low crawled past the anchors’ desks and dodged scanner fire until I made it to the feed room. There the morning editor hunkered over an open timeline as raw footage poured in through multiple satellite windows. Wedged up under an equipment rack, I watched in silence as flickering images played out on every screen. Searchers scurrying up a hill. Men in camouflage waving walkie-talkies. A lady forest ranger grinning into a bank of microphones. Lying there in the dust-bunnies, I realized that 1.) Michael Auberry was freakin’ alive and 2.) that I could stop hiding from the assignment desk. Feeling all warm inside, I decided to rise - even before a passing janitor jabbed me with a broom handle.

Back in the edit bay, I thought about the missing kid cases I’ve covered and how very few of them ended in anything less than misery. The latest example was just last September - when a week-long hunt for two young Danbury brothers came to a sad halt when a couple of lifeless forms were found upriver. I was there that day. The pall that fell over Search Headquarters when the bad news broke was the kind that sucks the wind out of your local lenslinger - even while scrambling to interview teary-eyed neighbors. Too much of that, I’ve found, erodes the soul. Thus, I faded into the background when the suits began dispatching crews up the mountain. It’s not that I can’t handle the ninety minute drive, the steepest of schleps, the familair halitosis of your most cadaver dogs. No Sir, I can cope and focus simultaneously while still finding time to dig on the view. But when you’re in it for the long haul like me, there’s never a shortage of tragedies and chasms. The sheer odds of doing what I do guarantee my presence at more calamities than I can ever pretend to forget. So understand if I don’t volunteer every time one invades the local consciousness.

Damn, I sound selfish. A young Boy Scout goes missing and I worry only about my own well-being. Untrue. I got kids myself. In fact, before I low-crawled my way through the newsroom this morning, I dialed up the wife and gave her the good news. Her joyful shrieks would have you believe we know the family in question. We don’t. But my wife - who harbors a healthy disdain for TV news - never questions her gut feelings. Its what makes her a kick-ass nurse and a champion Mother. So it was with my bride that I commiserated on the goodness of it all - before stashing my phone and my feelings. That’s nothing I’m proud of - but a gift for disconnecting comes in handy when you quiz victims for a living. That way, when the stories at hand veer off into the utterly senseless, it does not jar the psyche quite as bad. So forgive my melancholy; it is a warm, protective cloak. Should I dare to ever shed it, I might not feel so damn guilty about being happy for all the wrong reasons.

But then what would I blog about?

Aiming at Fate

Days after an Indonesian plane crash killed at least 22 passengers, people are still asking what prompted Wayan Sukardo to film the wreckage - even as he stumbled away from the burning aircraft with a broken leg. I think I know: He's a professional cameraman - a freelancer working for Australia's Seven News. He and other journalists were on board the 737 when it overshot the runway at the Yogyakarta airport and grinded to a fiery halt in a rice field. That Sukardo managed to crawl out of the crippled airliner with videocamera in hand IS amazing. That he promptly began using it to document the unfathomable isn't.

The resulting footage is disturbing: dazed survivors, screaming jet engines, flames licking the fuselage. It is as close to being there as any student of disaster could ever hope for. It is also valuable. Investigators now have a visual record of the scene just moments after impact. As painful as it may be to watch, survivors can now get an objective view of an event that will no doubt scar their lives forever. And though the taped images will do little to soothe those who lost loved ones in the crash, I'm guessing it's already helped the man who hobbled around on a broken leg to shoot it. Not in a monetary fashion, mind you - but in a way that's almost spiritual. See, those of us who shoulder a lens for a living do so because it's etched in our DNA. It damn sure ain't the money.

Instead, it's an abiding urge to capture the world as it happens. Be it the smoldering metal of a distant jet or the mere flash of giant scissors as they slice through a shopping strip's yellow ribbon, image-gathering is everything to a guy like me. That's why I'm sure Sukardo was glad to have his camera with him as he panned a most unbelievable scene - as it no doubt provided him a familiar way to mentally process the near-impossible. It may not be as noble as a doctor stumbling from the carnage to adminster CPR - but by no means is it something to be ashamed of. Wayan Sukardo should be commended for his quick thinking and innate lenslinging. Hopefully authorities can use the evidence he created to prevent future tragedies.

For now though, remember the victims...

Rats at Eleven

You think the photog who recorded video of those restaurant rats knew he was capturing history? Freelance cameraman Rafael Garcia Jr. is credited with shining his light (and lens) through the Taco Bell/KFC’s window, after local stations received phone tips about rodents doing the hokey-pokey in the fast food joint’s dining room. This, my friends, is why the space aliens who crash-landed in Roswell gifted us with all this new technology. I mean, covering global politics is good, I suppose - but nothing titillates the denizens of our twisted orb like something real, something important, something, well…skeevy. Taco Bell’s mouse club is a textbook example. Within hours of Garcia’s landmark ‘get’, his footage ricocheted from satellite to living room, holding a nation no less than enthralled with the scampering health code violations. For a few minutes the cable nets even stopped ripping flesh off Anna Nicole’s corpse to dish on the fast food rats. By midnight, the whiskered little fellas were reading the Top Ten list as Letterman pretended to chortle off-screen.

It just goes to show you how easily we in the Fourth (and Fifth Estate) are distracted by something stupid. Is this what Gutenburg had in mind when he invented the printing press? What Al Gore was thinking about when he created the internet out of PVC pipe and elbow noodles? I think not. I remember what my journalism professor said - you know, the one whose classes I never once attended… I’m told he spoke at length about using our journalistic powers for the greater good - and not be sidetracked by the slippery and the salacious. It’s one reason I’ve dedicated my entire career to covering nothing but substantial issues, eschewing the prurient and the silly in a lifelong quest to serve --- Hey look! Is that a squirrel in a top hat??? Roll the sat truck, I‘ve got a job to do!!!

Budd Dwyer and I

I don't really know much about Bud Dwyer or why on my twentieth birthday, he decided to off himself on live television. But pull the trigger he did, jettisoning his legacy into the darker expanses of pop-culture's stratosphere and eclipsing any chance of his being remembered for something other than how he chose to check out. I wonder if that was his intention. Hope so, because shortly after his grisly exit aired on live television, the whole episode languished in our collective imagination before glimpses of it cropped up in song, satire and print. These days of course, the video is again available for wide consumption, thanks to the unflinching twin-tubes of the internet. That's only natural I guess, but I wonder how many out there chose (like me) not to watch it? Hell, I've never seen it. I don't have to in order to understand what the beleagured politician did that day. As best I can anyway. I just feel for the photogs and reporters unlucky enough to be present during that particular press conference. I got mental scars from briefings like this that have merely gone on too long. The poor newsfolk in that room got the kind of highlight clip that isn't easily erased. Nice shot? If you say so...

Deception at 11

Further proof that that a career in electronic newsgathering ain't what it used to be: After firing most of its newsroom staff, a California TV station is asking local citizens to provide fodder for their nightly broadcasts. That's right, KFTY-TV, a miniscule Clear Channel outlet fighting for market share in highly competitive San Francisco, has shit-canned their in-house pros in hopes Sally Joe Housecoat will do the job (for free?). Good luck with that. Hey, I'm all for citizen journalism. Some might even say I'm guilty of it myself. And it's certainly true that much of what passes for nightly news content is stagnant, broken and increasingly irrelevant. But to turn seasoned professionals out on the street so they can exploit cheap technology and eager amateurs is nothing short of pure gimmickry - even if they do lay a new-age name on it (Local Content Harvesting, of course).

Now, before you phone-cam enthusiasts label me an old-media dinosaur, hear me out...I sincerely believe that citizen-driven visuals and common-man commentary have a place in 21st Century news. The advent of household lenses, laptop editing and YouTube ubiquity makes personal journalism a foregone conclusion. And that's a good thing! For far too long, we pros have had all the toys to ourselves. Decades of this broadcast monopoly has resulted in a newscast paradigm that is increasingly dumbed-down, dull and derivitave. Need proof? The next time your'e state-hopping, switch on the hotel TV to the local news. It all looks the same. Rampant consulting has beaten every vestige of regionalism out of local newscasts, leaving the entire form a mere shell of its former self - no matter how they might dress it up with plasma flatties, toothy news-bunnies and superdy-duper Doppler.

In short, we are long overdue for a shake-up. But does the Fourth Estate deserve to be turned into a graffiti-strewn public park? God, I hope not. I'd much rather see my medium of choice receive its much-needed injection in sensible doses. Tricked-out one man bands, now known as VJ's, can complement the output of two-person crews - not replace them. Citizen vignettes can infuse the glossiest of over-produced newscasts with badly-needed organic content. Internet outlets can put a station's quality product in front of eyeballs too damn hip to tune it at 5, 6 or 11. Bring. It. On. But to think an undersized station can compete with whatever they can glean from an mostly unpaid populace is giving the possibilities of all this new wondrous gadgetry incredibly short shrift. In short, beware the gladhanding GM of a tiny affiliate, folks. That's something a maniacal puke in Chocowinity taught me a l-o-n-g time ago.

Shot of the Night

Hi-def cameras, driving rain, unforgiving inertia...What's NOT to love about the Super Bowl? (I hear they even keep score...)

Ice-Breaker LIVE!

Just when I thought I'd seen TV live trucks destroyed in every possible way, a CBS 58 photog submerges her van in Milwaukee's Big Muskego Lake. According to reports, the truck drove off a boat launch and about 150 yards out onto an iced over channel leading to the lake when the ice suddenly gave way. Yikes! The photog managed to escape unharmed, but no doubt she's weathering a storm of unwanted publicity after dipping her equipment into The Drink. Boy, have I been there! Which is why I'm sympathetic to this particular photog's fate and hope that her bosses will go easy on the ribbing and retaliation. After all, if you clamor on the edge of calamity for long enough, you're bound to get some on ya. Now DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

Leave it to Ziggy

It's been a while for me, but it damn sure happens...