Uncool At Any Speed

Note To Self: Drop the family off before you join in on a high-speed chase. Photojournalist Carlos Rodriguez might do well to post that to his dashboard after a fleeing suspect car-jacked his Nissan Cube - with his wife and baby aboard. It happened the other night near Turlock, California. Rodriguez and family were doing some back to school shopping when word of a police pursuit broke over his in-car scanner. Unlike my normal reaction (Unplug scanner. Take to pawn shop. Sell for parts.), Carlos apparently floors it, heading straight for the tri-county high-speed chase with his wife and two month old son in tow. (That's dedication! I think.)  For a few minutes, it's a family adventure - until the intrepid photog catches up and (apparently) pops out of his boxy ride to catch a shot of the approaching suspect. From there, things got hinky:

"There was a split second where I see the vehicle go by, but the suspect wasn't in the vehicle and the next thing I know there was pounding and screaming coming from the inside of my car - I run up and see the suspect throwing the car in gear and speeding off with my car," Rodriguez said.

The mind reels. But as Carlos Rodriguez watched a car-jacker speed off with his young family, he did what any natural born shooter would do: he raised his glass and thumbed the RECORD button. Then he flagged down a cop and told him the man they were looking for was now driving a goofy white Nisssan with precious cargo and a police scanner aboard. Ya know, one doesn't have to be a screenwriting hack or even a cynical lenslinger to imagine how badly this could have gone. After all, three picture revenge thrillers have been built on thinner premises. But luckily... thankfully... mercifully, the true life drama soon concluded.

Brett Phares, the 28 year old tool behind the wheel, pulled over two exits later and let Mother and son safely out of the car. He then cemented his standing among criminal masterminds by running out of gas several miles down the road. (Schmuck!) As for the Rodriguez family, they're happily back together. We here at Viewfinder BLUES Global Headquarters wish them nothing but placid commutes and a plethora of yacht rock to soothe their jangled nerves. That especially goes for MRS. Rodrigue, who might very well have a thing or to say the next time hubby points the family van toward the horizon and proceeds to punch it.

Y'all be careful out there...

Wing and a Prayer

I'm not much for assigning meaning to happenstance, but an encounter on a bridge named for a murdered child is enough to give one pause, if not hope. It happened Sunday, as more than a hundred bikers stopped to pray on the Jennifer Short Memorial Bridge in Rockingham County. Back in 2002, someone took the lives of nine year old Jennifer Short and her parents. Michael and Mary Short were murdered in their home, but it took investigators six weeks to locate Jennifer's remains in a creek alongside the very bridge that now bears her name. I was there that day, but you didn't need to be on scene to be haunted by this senseless killing of an entire family. Nearly a decade later, the case remains unsolved, despite numerous new leads resulting from a profile of the case on America's Most Wanted. For local folks, the only thing left to do is keep the Short family's memory alive. That's what was happening Sunday when reporter Katie Nordeen looked up from a memorial service and saw a royal blue butterfly hovering over her photog's tripod plate.

It landed at the beginning of the prayer and just sat there opening and closing its wings until they started playing the bagpipes. I'm a big believer in "signs" and I'm hoping this is one of those...

A chance landing by a flying insect? Probably, but I was a sailor long enough to think about the transmigration of souls. While the cynic inside me knows it was nothing more than the thoughtless loss of flutter by a gussied-up moth.... Katie and I choose to believe otherwise. Now go hug your kids.

Scenes from a Dream

We all have ‘em, those custom-made frustration dreams that make our favorite blankets all sweaty. Mine usually involve flashing lights, steep gravel driveways and lower back pain. There I’ll be hoofin’ it uphill with tripod and heavy-cam in tow, trying to make it to the hazy news breaking over the horizon. Scanner traffic crackles behind me and sirens wail up ahead as I stumble and climb but never, ever reach the peak. Sometimes I’m carrying 1950’s era broadcast gear, other times sky-filling spaceships rotate overhead. Occasionally I’m dressed as a British school girl, but I don’t want to talk about that right now. I’d rather discuss occupational imagination residue , that familiar but mystifying imagery that permeates the screen of our deepest dream theater. A little clarity amid the disposable vignettes is all I seek - without all that gold medallion over black turtleneck shit.

I’m a TV News photog - so it would stand to reason my dreams reel out in highly-sequenced ninety second chunks, laced with off-screen narration and syncopated natural sound. It’s true - I fantasize in wide-medium-tight, but more often than not my eyelid cinema is directed by someone else. I’m just a runner, a secondary shooter often unable to accomplish the simplest of task from the cameraman’s manual. I suppose postal delivery people dream of rusted shut mailbox lids and apocalyptic Dobermans. Me - I mostly keep it real, when I’m not sporting a plaid jumper and pigtails, that is…

There’s that dream where I’m riding shotgun with that guy from Wildest Police Videos. I try and frame up a shot as he takes ghetto street corners at top speed and spits out weird Shatner-esque rejoinders. These joyriders thought they could get away…but they couldn’t outrun -- the dream police!” If I’m lucky, I wake up screaming.

One recurring nocturnal vignette is based on a true-life incident I remember well. Having sped to Raleigh for a Governor’s press conference, I’d neglected to check if my batteries were charged until I was firmly wedged in a gubernatorial scrum. With every inert brick I pulled out of my runbag, even the Governor noticed the cameraman melting down in the corner. Somehow I got through that day, but in my dreams I’m still yanking EverDead batteries out of a day-glo fannypack.

Other times my head trips are so staggered and jumbled nothing makes sense. The ever -present camera on my dream shoulder is merely an afterthought, just another lowly appendage that fails to explain the situation I find myself in is so damn incongruent. It’s these times I’m most confused. After all, who can tell if you’re dreaming or not when you’ve spent endless hours walking backwards with one eye closed?

Then there’s the most disturbing dream of all. In this nightmare landscape, I’m a badly aging veteran photog stuck in the doldrums of a medium market career. Ribbon-cuttings, ride-alongs and road-rage stretch into the distance as I scribble overwrought prose in tiny notebooks and choke on dollar menu combos. Just when I feel on the verge of cleverness, my cell phone digs into my hip and I’m off to another ground-breaking. I’m telling ya, it’s chilling.

Hmm? What’s that? Oh...yeah. Scratch that last one.

Secrets of the Telegenic

There will be many truths written in The Book of Lenslinger, from proper tripod storage to when not to piss-off a rent-a-cop. But aside from all the tactical claptrap, I hope to include a few of the intangibles. Of those there are many, for the newsgathering craft is riddled with misplaced innuendo. Consider the following case of pseudo déjà vu - a recurring sensation felt by photogs since the very first widow’s porch was conquered in the name of news...

Awkward Situations and Pretty People

Ever accompanied a former beauty queen across an angry picket line? Ever escorted a reality show runner-up through their very first fatal fire? Ever loitered outside a Wal-Mart as your toothpaste model of a partner cajoled the indifferent into an on-camera rant? I have - and I’m here to tell you, folks do respond differently to the acutely telegenic. Be it a homicide scene or a hillbilly hoe-down, nothing greases the wheels of stranger exchange like a chiseled jaw, envied hair-do or well-placed set of dimples. As a distinctly average forty year old, I’m used to amassing interaction withOUT the lubricant of matinee idol looks. No sweat. I got other skills: a gift of gab, familiar logos and an acute sense of lunch time motivation. On any given day, I can usually sway even the numbest among us to fake a pulse or two on-cam. But my meager skills of inquisition pale in comparison to those gifted with a visage more suitable for billboards than my furry mug. It’s this sort of viewer swooning that rightly infuriates the Print Contingent. Let’s face it: skinny notebooks, advanced degrees and a sense of entitlement still won’t get you as many juicy quotes quicker from the flattened trailer park as will an overly-logo’d Ford Explorer and an ex-thespian with really good hair. If that peeves the newspaper people in my life, I can certainly understand - but I for one am still glad that pretty people open doors. It’s facet of the grab I’ve known about for years. But today it occurred to me anew, as I watched our newest easy-on-the-eyes reporter, work a surly parking lot full of would-be demonstrators as if she were a game show host sleepwalking contestants through yet another lighting round.

I love it when they’re tougher than they look.

We Are Not Alone

Call me Richard Dreyfuss, but I can’t drive by Pilot Mountain without envisioning a giant alien spaceship hovering overhead. ‘What would happen if a massive mother-ship lowered slowly from the clouds?’ I wonder - until I usually miss my turn. One thing I know. Unlike the 70’s Spielberg classic, today’s otherworldly encounter wouldn’t be so easily suppressed by government forces. For soon after the giant craft cast its shadow over ‘The Knob‘, a glittering convoy of TV trucks would also hove into view. The cops could try and stop them. But with the vast ship visible from miles away, authorities couldn’t possibly stop the gawking. Before most locals had a chance to even look up, images of the slowly spinning saucer would ricochet across the heavens, before bouncing back to blanket the Earth in high-def chopper-cam frenzy. As mankind stopped to ponder it all, media outlets from every nation would dispatch crew after crew to sleepy-ass Surry County. As the giant ship slowly rotated in silence, a sat truck hive of apocalyptic proportions would ring the base of the famed monadnock. I bet they’d even serve refreshments!

Even still, the End Times would surely be nigh. For even if the life-forms behind the wheel of the incalculable vessel came only to peddle Amway, we in the Fourth Estate would surely trigger Armageddon. It could go down so many different ways. All those upturned satellite dishes down below could reak havoc with the spaceship’s tractor beam, causing it to suddenly crash and creating an intergalactic incident. Or the sentient beings sipping space-coffee deep within the colossal star-liner could simply stumble across our many TV signals. One trip around the cable news dial might render them agog - the shrill hype and dizzying graphics enough to convince any advance race to zap this wretched rock for the good of the cosmos. Or perhaps they wouldn’t have to watch any local tube to opt for annihilation. One sweeping glance into the sat truck encampment below would reveal enough about our society to ultimately do it in. After all, how many screaming logos, hairspray clouds and hacky-sack matches can a space traveler endure before kicking in the afterburners? Especially when there’s some guy with a ridiculous moustache pounding on the outside hatch, demanding an exclusive interview, access to the flight deck and if at all possible, a triple-lit sit-down with the the big greasy Martian that ate Al Capone.

Why, it's almost enough to make a cameraman stop carving cliff faces out of his mashed potatoes. Almost.

Spontaneous Compunction

As a lifelong lover of language, I’m quite used to strange words popping in my head. In fact, I thrive on it. It’s why I fill out crosswords, scribble song lyrics and read non-stop. (That, and all three of those activities involve sitting - something I’m really good at.) Thing is, all that consumption is gonna cause some back-up; I’ll be off somewhere chasing soundbites and some jumbled phraseology will pass through my lips. It happened again the other day in traffic. I was at a stoplight, staring holes through Unit 4’s windshield when I heard someone repeating the same six twisty syllables. It took a second before I realized the voice was mine. I brushed it off, as it happens a lot. (If you find that strange, you’re obviously not a word nerd - but while you’re up and being so smart, explain something I can’t grasp: Fantasy Football - what is that? And how about America’s Top Model? Can you provide an affidavit for that little Eureka moment?) I got more important things to do, like figure out just what the two words I keep pronouncing actually mean. Are you ready? Huh? Here we go…

Cognitive Dissonance

Yeah, I know - not exactly musketeer dialogue, but what are you gonna do? Maybe next week I’ll be speaking in thee’s and thou’s - this week it’s Cognitive Dissonance, which - I believe, is Hospital Talk for feelin’ shitty. But you ain’t here for guesswork, so I’ll try and stick to the facts. Roll that beautiful bean footage...

Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. The theory states that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions.

If you say so…but I gotta tell ya, for a guy who spent most of high school blowing smoke rings, it’s a bit high-falutin’. Let’s break it down to street level, where a schlub like me can understand it. Let’s see, ‘uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time’…Hmmm. You mean the way you feel when you’re covering a tense police stand-off and you hope that whether he gives up or gets gunned down, the guy in the crosshairs has the courtesy to do it before your favorite Chinese lunch buffet closes? Or maybe it’s the emotion that accompanies you up the widow’s porch, where you beg pardon for intruding before asking permission to stick a camera in the homemaker’s soul. Perhaps it’s the conflicting twinge you experience as you gun the engines and giggle at that smoke plume on the horizon.

I don’t know how cognitive all that is, but it’s damn sure dissonant. And that line about tension ‘compelling the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs’... That’s a little thing we camera pointers call Life. At least those of us who stop the question the madness before the glass. Most of us settle for merely keeping it in focus. But not me. No, I’m cursed with thinking above my pay-grade - savoring the insinuations of all those facts and finks I funnel to the Great Unwashed. I’m no genius - just a guy whose learned most of what he knows by processing happenstance into bite-size nuggets for the nightly news. If you doesn’t drive you up an antenna tower, it’s one hell of an edumacation. I’m just dreading the test at the end...

The Amazing Pace

I’m crazy about The Amazing Race: the mad dash travel, the oddball obstacles, the way the editors make booking airline tickets feel like edge of your seat cliffhanger theater. I also dig the incredibly athletic camerawork on display, courtesy of one Bertam Van Munster, early architect of the COPS shooting style (or lack thereof) and a guy who knows written the book on following the action. Yes, The Amazing Race is by far my favorite reality show, a sped-up, real world version of Survivor in which absolutely no one lies on a tropical beach and flexes their triceps. In fact, I love this show - even if it does remind me of work.

You heard me: work. Take away the Kiwi host, the world travel, and any chance of a million dollar pay-off at the end and you got my job in a nutshell. Why every morning I receive an improbable task with intense time-restrictions, forcing me to race from place to place with a rotating cast of (not always) friendly competitors nipping at my heels. Like the show, road conditions vary wildly; from the steep gravel driveway of an accused murderer’s trailer park to the gilded elevator of some lofty corporate headquarters, my gig can take me anywhere - and almost always in a hurry.

Trouble is, I’ve become accustomed to the pace. So used to ringing people up and announcing my camera and I were on our way, I’m truly taken aback when someone won’t drop everything and entertain my lens. Of course nine times out of then they will, which only encourages me to scramble from one deadline to another with barely my manners in place. But who can take time to be all Southern and polite when flashes of sworn rivals are shimmering in the distance - well-equipped crews giddy with the very thought of your potential downfall. No, I’ve yet to race chariots on the outskirts of Morocco, but I’ve hung from salt trucks while the plowed frozen interstates, backpedaled down stair wells as flash-bangs exploded and faked out opponents in courtroom hallways. There may be no grinning host with a million dollar check waiting at the finish line, but hopefully I’ll look back one day and see more than thirty years of meaningless Lightning Round.

In the meantime, a consolation prize or two wouldn‘t hurt.

Zed's Dead

The TV news business is a small one, with only so many media outlets per populated spot. That’s changing quickly of course as the laptop nation gets in on the act, but for now it’s still a pretty cloistered world of drama queens and A/V geeks. I was reminded of that today when I fell into easy conversation with a striking young woman who used to be in ‘the biz‘. Huddling by the door of a middle school’s gymnatorium, we cackled like hens about look-lives, vosots and re-cuts. As we did, the woman’s husband - a menacing hulk of a man with a close-shaven head and faded gang tattoos - worked the microphone, warning a bleacher full of bored adolescents against a life of crime, drug abuse and ill-gotten bling. Prowling the floor in blinding white Air Jordans and sleek designer sweats, the admitted ex-thug turned motivational speaker held the student body in the palm of his beefy hand. I’d been pretty enraptured too, until my well-honed photog senses told me I’d bagged enough shots for the buck-fifteen report that would air in a couple of hours. Dropping my sticks to their lowest position, I set my camera on the floor and waited for the burly speaker to complete his story arc - at which point I’d retrieve the lavaliere microphone I pinned to him and skulk off to an edit bay thirty miles away. That’s when his wife moved in.

Blonde, smiley and thoroughly lovely, the woman seemed eager to talk. She’d been a reporter/anchor at some hyphenated market in Ohio before leaving the trade to work with her husband. I congratulated her on said sound judgment; she quizzed me about the market size of our particular TV region. When I told her it was in the mid-forties, she expressed surprise. Apparently the clutch of Randolph County towns she’d traveled through hadn’t properly belied our broadcast tower’s reach. Next came a barrage of questions: How many hours of news do you crank out a week? (36, I think) How many live trucks does each station have ? (Too damn many). How often did I work alone? (Every chance I get!) No doubt the lady was just killing time, shooting the breeze with the latest in a long line of crusty cameramen while her virile hubby worked up a tip. I didn’t mind; until I got my microphone back I was a captive audience and what better way to spend ten minutes I ain’t got than in the presence of someone whose perfume smelled so good. At that point, sunlight pierced through the high gym windows and glinted off the speaker’s bald head, reminding me instantly who he looked like ... Ving Rhames, the actor best known for his role as a drug kingpin in Pulp Fiction. In it, Rhames character terrorizes his hyper-violent lackies, suffers righteous abuse from a hillbilly named Zed and - in a key plot point - throws a man off a ledge, for reportedly giving his wife a foot massage.

I spent the rest of the speech back by the bleachers, chatting up the school’s janitorial staff.

The Hardships of Handheld

Of all the things a TV news photog must learn to do with a camera, one of the hardest is holding it still. If that surprises you, then you’ve never counted the beads of sweat trickling down your under-carriage as some blowhard in a clip-on tie yammers on about the finer points of wastewater management. Do that a few times and you’ll surely experience the no-grip shoulder wobble, the three minute knee knock, and if you’re really hemmed-in, a recurring case of Carpa-Telethon Syndrome. That’s when you drop to the rug the moment the red tally light goes off, quivering on the floor with a twisted bladder and a pair of screaming knees - all because you insisted on shooting the ghetto preacher handheld. Who could guess a guy with gold teeth knew so many three syllable words? Next time you’ll grab your sticks and doze off like a pro. Until then, check out these helpful hints, with a little help from the sore-shoulder specialists at b-roll.net:

Relax, Breathe, Pass Gas if you Have To

Sure, your buddies in the scrum may gripe but so will your bosses back at the shop if you’re footage looks like it was shot by a crackhead with hiccups. Loosen your limbs, push out your hips, cop a mental squat and for Nat Sound’s sake don’t hold your breath. All will be well for a bit when your lungs do give out your lens will shiver so violently, TV dinners will be upended throughout the tri-city region. Stay loose, Johnny, stay loose.

Make the World your Tripod

Just because your sticks are back by the podium doesn’t mean you gotta take the tour sans support. Find a wall, a wishing well, even a wino to lean against. Any foundation will help you score better static shots, be it ground level wide-shots of striking mill workers, medium range footage of a portly ribbon-cutter or a far-off frame of some squirrel getting’ his nut on. Just brush off when you’re done, Red ants and Ripple don’t go well back at the shop.

Curb the Caffeine

Sad but true - that hefty vessel of steaming java can come wiggle your lens in the most infuriating ways. It’s one of the three reasons I don’t indulge in my cherished Guatemalan Velvet Roast before work in the morning. (You don’t want to know the other two.) Just understand that what you put down your pipe greatly affects your inner camera pedestal. For that matter, those driver seat cardiac burgers you wolf down every six assignments ain’t good for the dexterity fairy, know what I’m sayin?

Be at One with the Lens

This one sounds like some NPPA mantra, but it’s solid advice that bears repeating. The same inner mojo that allows you to navigate a crowded bar without spilling your big-headed pilsner can also allow you inner lens serenity. Stare at the edges of your frame, affix your vision on the crux of your crosshairs, tweak your knobs with a lover’s touch. Whatever approach you take, there are effective relaxation techniques for every photog, from the puffed-up sports shooter to the beer-bellied burnout to that new skinny loner in the death metal t-shirt. So pick one, but hurry up, would you? Half the viewers are seizing up every time they take your shot and the rest are looking pretty glassy-eyed. Next time: When to Call 911.

A Question of Weaponry

In the daily camera scrum, no one issue sparks a firefight quicker than the VJ debate. You know the scenario: All-purpose journalists with writer’s eyes, magic laptops and shrinky-dink lenses are threatening to take the ‘crew’ out of news crew. Only a couple of stations have bought into the idea so far, most under the tutelage of one Michael Rosenblum. To hear him tell it, this amalgamation of skills is an embittered industry’s only hope. His detractors cite his methods as the unforgivable dumbing-down of electronic newsgathering. Your humble lenslinger is somewhere in the middle, fiercely proud of his hard-earned solo skills, but still not sure he’d want to sit through an entire newscast of his own b-block masterpieces. Besides, at my shop, we produce far more varied fare: breathless live remotes from smoldering wreckage and political melees, esoteric think-pieces wrapped around invisible ideas and continuing team smotherage of the daily uproar. Chances are, your favorite station does too.

For now, anyway. Who knows what station group will be the next to buy into the VJ model, slash their staff of drama queens and A/V geeks until only the most dedicated or sloppy remain to forge a whole new newsgathering idiom. There’ll be plenty of help. Ever newer firms are clamoring to turn anyone with a pulse into a newfangled VJ, one who, ‘with a DV camera and laptop, can effectively do the work of three people without compromising story quality.’ Best of all it only takes a five day workshop to master these newly-forged paradigms of visual storytelling, lightning fast sessions that transform any old Joe into an instant auteur. And you wonder why that photog with the decade old tripod-scars is offended…

You’d think we TV news photogs would all be in favor of smaller, lighter cameras. You’d be wrong. Most who hold the heavy glass prefer it that way; trading a little lower back pain for a focal tube worth grappling with. I’m fortunate enough to sling an 18 pound (or so) Sony XDCam, a rocket launcher of a video-camera. Shoulder-mounted on a classic chassis, the ergonomically taut optical disc recorder boasts more drop-down menus than most third-world defense systems. With it, I can incite a riot at ground level Mardi Gras or silently lay crosshairs on the crowd from some far off balcony tripod’s perch. It is a precision instrument that takes only seconds to power-up but a lifetime to master. It’s this question of weaponry that, for me, renders the VJ model mute. Quite simply, I don’t wanna take a toy into battle. I can dig the solo groove, squint ad peck at the magic laptops, even buy into about a third of the hokey proclamations of the discipline’s loopiest prophet. But dude, hands off my glass.

Hints of Redemption Spent

Remember twelve scant months ago, when Hurricane Katrina ripped open the Gulf Coast and our nation’s leaders tried to pretend it didn’t happen? Chances are even more people would have died in the days following that deluge had it not been for the dedication and verve of - gulp! - The Media. While politicians slapped each other on the back and the military polished their brass, an army of broadcasters invaded the stricken region and filed gut-wrenching reports on the travesty at hand. Corpses rotting in wheelchairs, whole families stranded on rooftops, infants wallowing in forgotten filth… Middle America could barely believe their eyes as normally glossed-over correspondents toured the Third World conditions in day-old clothes and demanded the government do something, anything to help our fellow citizens. It was perhaps the Fourth Estate’s finest hour and it prompted me to post a few words detailing the Media’s sudden redemption.

Well, I’d like to take it all back.

Over the past week, the upper echelon of my chosen profession has proven itself to be nothing more than a pack of scurrilous dogs, ripping away at the still-warm bones of a ten year old tragedy known as the JonBenet Ramsey case. I suppose you could credit John Mark Karr, the skeevy little worm whose troublesome confession has sparked this latest firestorm of broadcast speculation. But even that apparent pedophile cannot be blamed for the crass behavior and orgasmic glee of the chattering class in the past six days. Networks and cable alike descended on Boulder, Bangkok and L.A. - engorged on salacious details and ravenous assumptions. Whatever respect we garnered in the wake of Katrina evaporated in an instant as over-coiffed reporters stationed themselves in front of the slain child’s final resting place and reached for gravitas. What’s next? Chopper shots from the exhumation? Live slab-side reports from the autopsy table? Hey, how about bringing back the victim’s withered spleen for a set-prop? Something for Chet Graytemples to hold up under the studio lights while he acts all concerned-like...

Heckuva job, fellas. Heckuva job.

Gatekeepers of the Fourth Estate

The bright lights and big egos of my first television station held me entranced for much of my twenties. Back then, the anchors were prophets, the local newspaper scripture and police scanners burped the voice of God. How incredibly important it all seemed. As I aged however, my appetite for the artifice of modern day broadcasting waned considerably. Sure, I’ll always love the visceral thrill of combining sights, sound and words to tell stories big and small. But the canned banter, the infatuation with feigned urgency, the whole crime and grime paradigm…those newscast facets I can live without. Which is why I’m so excited about what the internet. Far more than a confusing series of tubes, Al Gore’s greatest invention has the power to save TV news, by forcing its myopic practitioners to reinvent it. Hear me out...

Since the first test pattern was beamed into living rooms, viewers at home have watched the world through a rigid template. Avuncular anchors clamoring for gravitas bring us the days’ events in predictable patterns: breathless headlines, a smattering of hard news, Commercials, super-duper dorked-up weather, Commercials, big board sports!, More Commercials, then back to the studio for a wide shot of the Channel X elders chortling over something inane. Viewers knew the blueprints, but they still had to be led by hand from room to room before they found what they were looking for in a back closet. No more. Now the audience can wander around unencumbered, explore hidden crevices and cross well-traveled corridors - all while marveling at the architecture. Or better yet, deciding where to re-decorate.

My own employer is a good example. A charter member of a global communications dynasty, we have benefited from our uptown cousins with a powerful new website. Now, viewers who were once resigned to looking from the outside in can fling open the cyber-doors and poke around the property. Weather geeks can peruse radar and satellites without having to wait for a dapper meteorologist’s smarmy permission. News nerds can cue up that story they missed when the dog soiled the rug - without having to sit through endless teases rife with close-ups and clichés. Best of all, newscast consumers can file a complaint, register a request, or add to the subject matter at hand with wisdom and insight once deemed unworthy of inclusion. The end result: a deeper, more detail-oriented news product - one that boasts the immediacy of moving images, the analysis of long-form print and the interactivity found only in a hyper-linked world. And we’re just getting started.

But the metamorphosis won’t come without a few growing pains. Despite our claims of cutting edge abandon, your local broadcast newsroom is really a rather staid place, a highly segmented landscape where job descriptions form borders and individual disciplines rarely mix. Reporters write, photogs shoot, anchors gesticulate and never the twain shall meet. No more. Technology is breaking down age-old walls and forcing both scribes and technicians to learn new skills. No longer married to one particular medium, the denizens of newsrooms everywhere will soon have to learn the skills of their co-workers if they want to stay in the game. Not everyone will survive, but in order to survive the great unbundling of media, we must all abandon the priesthood of our particular tools and learn how to tell stories in a smattering of formats - before a newly empowered audience decides the self-appointed gatekeepers of the fourth estate are little more than crumbling statues of a pompous age.

So That Others May Preen

In a recent thread focusing on the various ways broadcasters go about filling their newscasts, Frank McBride revealed a clever, albeit crass war cry often overheard in his neck of the newsroom.

“Launch the Probe!” a desk dork would bellow as an unfortunate photog loaded up in a live truck and steered it into the abyss. Cute … I can just see the deskies high-five each other as they chortle over their air-conditioned brilliance, all while someone with twice the experience and three times the tripod scars ventures off into the storm, the ghetto, or worst of all - the incalculably protracted County Commissioners Meeting. As one who has spent the last decade and a half staging these unlikely sorties, I gotta tell you, the fun (and the frustration) is in the field. Besides, who wants their news served to them on a silver platter?

Not me. I’d much rather cross my fingers behind my back while I sweet talk the guy at the roadblock, than pace under a bank of TV screens and claim victory based on freeze-dried clichés, revved-up graphics and the cruelties of counting backwards. That way I remain seaworthy, a modern day news pirate who isn’t afraid of hostile waters and competitors’ carronades. If I’m mangling metaphors, forgive me, but I’m transcribing from notes I took while circling the block for a better view of some temporary tempest. Judging from my penmanship, I was quite stoked at the time - but that’s what happens when you spend a lifetime turning today’s scanner traffic into tomorrow’s water cooler chat.

Trouble is the open news road is the path to career-long obscurity. No matter how quickly we photogs take that next hill, it is the manager, the producer, the main anchor who swoops in at the last moment and plants the flag in the name of the almighty affiliate. Oh well - at least I have my pride. That and the quiet knowledge that I stand a better chance of making history than my newsroom bound brethren. After all, if nefarious aliens ever do crash land their vessel on our heartless orb, it’s a safe bet some news photographer will be the first schmuck to get his melon scrambled. Look for that footage on the six o clock news. While you do, I gotta boogie. Seems there are some glowing rocks making weird noises out in Lake Cesspool and the desk wants me to ‘put some eyes on it’.

Anybody seen my sunglasses?

Fishing for Sound

“So why do you TV news people always interview the biggest goobs and losers you can find?” asked a new neighbor.

“Because,” I said “they’re the ones who seek us out. It’s a socio-economic thing. Or maybe it’s educational. Either way, folks with reasoned opinions and large vocabularies don’t flag down news crews quite the way guys with gravy stains on their t-shirt do.”

My new neighbor nodded as if my answer sufficed, but I could tell that it didn’t. Truth is, I’ve never figured out exactly why some people shun my lens while others sprint through heavy traffic to tell me and the audience how the tornado sounded ‘just like a freight train’. As far as I can tell, the decision to comment on camera correlates directly with how much authority you invest in said logo’d device. Let me explain. I can waltz into a thousand dollar a plate fundraiser with my fancy-cam in tow and feel they looks of disdain radiating from somewhere above the rubber-chicken entrees. That same day, I can roll into a public housing project full of curious crime-scene watchers and be treated like a visiting emissary. Why exactly, I don’t know - but being received as a conquering hero one moment and a filthy leper the next is a sensation anyone who’s shouldered a lens for very long can write a book on.

Like the time a woman turned away from the house fire that was swallowing everything she owned to repeatedly ask me that age old question, “What time will this be on?”

Or the time a group of disgruntled airline passengers demanded I use my aging betacam to get their cancelled flights immediately re-scheduled. I blamed my inability to do so on dying batteries and they seemed okay with it.

How about the hundreds of times I’ve used my gear to gain access to the freshly bereaved? I’m still amazed at how many people will talk to the press before their loved ones are even in the ground.

Even the happier times are just as perplexing. I still don’t know what that mob of drunken Halloween revelers wanted from me when they bum-rushed the ice machine I was standing on and began singing “You Can’t Touch This.”

Nope, no matter how long you heft a lens for a living, you never really know how some people will react when you stick a lens in their face. Hey, while I’m on the subject of close encounters, here’s a tip for the general populace:

Say you’re out in public and a telegenic young woman approaches you with a question about a current issue. Behind her, a scruffy enough chap climbs out of a brightly decorated SUV and opens the tailgate. While he scrounges around in this mysterious vehicle, the woman moves closer and engages you in conversation, all while holding a tubular device with a familiar symbol down by her side. As you answer the woman’s open ended queries, you notice the scruffy one moving in slowly behind her. As he grows closer, he lifts an awkward dark object and places it on your shoulder, its strange, reflective surface almost winking at you. At the same time, the well-coiffed female who’s been talking all the while raises her shiny pointy thingy at your face and raises her eyebrows in feigned consternation….

Are you ready? Here comes the clue….

IT’S A #%$@ TV NEWS CREW! THEY WANNA TALK TO YOU - ON CAMERA! YOU CAN AGREE TO DO SO OR NOT, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S RIGHTEOUS, DON’T ACT SURPRISED WHEN A DUO DRAPED IN YOUR LOCAL STATION’S LOGOS AND HOLDING HEAVY EQUIPMENT ACTUALLY WANNA POINT THE DAMN THING AT YOU! IT’S A CAMERA, NOT A CONSPIRACY! CHANCES ARE THE NICE PEOPLE WITH THAT CRAZY GEAR JUST WANNA GET SOME LUNCH, NOT WASTE THEIR TIME EXPLAINING THE BASIC CONCEPT OF BROADCAST TELEVISION TO SOMEONE WHO HAS NO INTENTION OF ALLOWING THEMSELVES TO BE RECORDED IN THE FIRST PLACE! EITHER FORM A WILLING SENTENCE OR TELL THEM TO GET LOST - THEY’LL GLADLY GO AWAY! BUT FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE, DO NOT SPIN CIRCLES, DROP TO A CROUCH OR HYPERVENTILATE JUST BECAUSE THE LOCAL NEWS BUNNY AND HER CAMERA NERD THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING WORTHY TO SAY!

Ahem....sorry.

P.S.) The above outburst has absolutely nothing to do with the hapless lady I spooked yesterday with my lens, microphone and highly-identifiable ride. Apparently she thought I was ‘with the paper’.

That is all.