Everything Must Go

When a landmark shuts down, I show up. A dreaded specter through the showroom glass, my lenslinging silhouette strikes fear in the heart of broken retailers far and wide. Okay that’s pouring it on a little thick, but when you’ve documented the death of the American Dream as many times as I have, you do start to feel like the Grim Reaper.

Technically, Blumenthal’s isn‘t closing. But they are moving, to an unremarkable location in outer Urban Sprawl, leaving behind the empty husk of a dying downtown landmark. It’s a shame, really. Since 1926, this high-ceiling hall of commerce has traded in great denominations of denim. In the process, this old school trading post has clothed generations of blue collar folk in the very latest in workaday dungaree. For twice as long as I’ve drawn breath, bargain shoppers from the immediate Piedmont have made countless sojourns to this dusty retail den. At least that’s what they tell me. Before today, I’d never stepped foot in the place.

Luckily for me, the proprietor at hand is a class act. Bob Blumenthal first got involved with his father’s business the year after I was born. While I was wrestling with adolescence in the bowels of Down East, he was moving units, under-pricing competitors and winning the loyalty of a legion of customers. Today our paths crossed in the most pleasant of ways, despite the circumstances. As his staff sorted through a mountain of blue jeans and liquidators hung last-chance signs, Bob Blumenthal took time to chat with me, my camera, lights and wireless mike. A most gracious host, he chuckled sadly through it all, as together we distilled 79 years of history in a six minute interview.

He told me of his father Abe Blumenthal, a plucky businessman who’d founded a no-nonsense business and built his life around it. He spoke of decade old relationships with cherished customers, people who meant a lot more than a drawer full of receipts. He talked about downtown revitalization and the parking spaces it took from him. Finally he related the facts of a January deal, a timely sale for a tidy sum that would foster his reluctant retirement. But concern for his workers, outrage from his customers and a nagging dread of inaction coerced the lifelong purveyor of pants and accessories to set up shop across town. The American Dream, deferred.

Blumenthal knows his new West Market Street location can’t rival the dusty environs of his downtown digs. But he’s taking his trademark neon signs, old wooden tables and careworn check out counter with him, hoping to infuse some old school charm into the Great American Strip Mall. I wish him luck, and will cross his threshold the next time in need of a pair of Carharts. I only wish I’d visited this historic store before, before one more Temple of American turns into just another prefab suite of new age boutiques.

I guess there's always Wal-Mart.

21st Century VJ

Trusty Weaver files an enlightening report on the modern day Video Journalist. One-Man-Bands have been around since the dawn of television, but shrinking technologies and tightening budgets are bringing them to the forefront of medium and major markets. Here in the Piedmont, a competing station is outfitting diminutive females with everything they need to get the job done - with no lack of success! News crew purists may not like it, but this new and improved breed of newsgatherer is here to stay. Now go check out Weaver's blog for a proper introduction.

Swelter and Stew

We were somewhere into our third stand-up attempt when the realization kicked in. Summer had officially arrived. I knew it by the way the perspiration coming of my forehead made the viewfinder look like a windshield going through a car wash. Jeff Varner knew it too. Why else would he keep substituting ‘FFA’ for ‘FAA’? The guys wearing matching denim jackets back in high school might forgive the slip, but the aviation wonks standing just off screen surely would protest. They didn’t have to; Jeff caught the flub and started over, after running a few fingers through his carefully coiffed do. Perhaps the heat waves bouncing off the tarmac were baking his brain. They certainly were mine.

And so begins the season of my discontent. For as long as I’ve squinted through station-owned lenses, I’ve mopped sweat from my brow for three miserable months of each year. And boy, do I sweat. I sweat like an escaped convict trying to blend in at a prison guard social. Luckily, I work alone a lot, allowing me to hide my shame behind a revolving collection of unfortunate tropical shirts. But it isn’t easy. How could it be - when the sweltering humidity of a Carolina summer wraps around you like a force field. I know I’m not the only suffering from the heat, but when its 90 degrees at ten in the morning and you’ve just been assigned the construction worker beat…well, it’s enough to make anyone complain - especially a sticky lenslinger with a penchant for epistles and a nasty web habit.

So look for the beleaguered ramblings of a sweat-soaked madman to be a running theme here at Viewfinder BLUES until...oh, about mid-September. By then I'll have found another force of nature to bitch about - like those pesky hurricanes that terrorize our coast in the early fall. Have you ever tried to get a half dozen pizzas delivered to a satellite truck in the middle of an evacuated beach resort? I'm tellin' ya - it ain't easy. Why, there was this one time...

The Age of Convergence (part 1)

‘May you live in interesting times’ - the fortune cookie’s message read. I crumpled the paper into a tiny ball and signaled for the check. As the old Asian man in the corner snapped to life and headed my way, I looked out the window at my dusty news unit and bit into the cookie. Interesting times, indeed...

In the fall of ‘89 I stumbled into my first television station, a small market affiliate sporting the very latest in 1970’s newsgathering equipment. Three-quarter inch rigs - large, bulky cameras attached to oversized field decks with heavy cables - were the weapon of the day. With a front-heavy camera perched on one shoulder and an ancient VCR-in-a-bag hanging off the other, making television, and deadline, was an aerobic event. Still, the lenslingers I knew ran hard, schlepping that ancient gear through drug dealer living rooms, down sun-baked railroad tracks and up lofty fire towers.

Amazingly, most of us slinging this museum-ready gear were also our own reporters, producers, editors. I wrapped up many a shoot with by slipping on a tie and stepping before an unmanned camera. Shooting your own stand-up was tricky at first, but far from impossible. The hardest part was always figuring out what to say, since you’d spent all your time on scene with a face full of viewfinder. Nonetheless, I’d always manage to record one or two passable passages before scrambling back to my bureau where an aging electric typewriter and a newfangled fax machine connected me to Mother Newsroom.

There I’d review my footage, banging my thoughts into the heavy carbon paper while chain-smoking Marlboro Lights. Once my script was approved I’d roll my antiquated office chair to the tape-to-tape edit bay in the corner and try to magic of the material I’d gathered. Less than an hour later, I’d spin the jog-wheel back on the control panel and cue up a finished piece. With a quick call to the tape room engineer thirty miles away, I’d flip a heavy toggle switch and microwave-feed my humble story home. Most nights, the stories led the newscast, forcing me to set up a live shot in the tiny bureau office.

I remember many nights of frantic movements just before airtime, plugging in the microphone, leveling the tripod, framing up that same old shot If I was lucky I’d have a few spare seconds to run my fingers through my hair before the director back at the shop punched my camera on-air. There I’d appear in a relative tight shot, tape-filled shelves and crooked station logo in the background. Tapping my inner Brokaw, I’d deliver the words I made up a few minutes earlier into the unblinking lens. When I finished my intro, the director would roll the tape with my story on it. As my brilliance (or stupidity) of the day played out on the black and white screen across the room, I’d sit motionless for fear of bumping my shot, mumbling words to myself I’d soon speak to distracted viewers from the Capitol to the Coast.

When my outro was over and the anchor moved on, I’d break down my gear in my tiny office and think about my performance. Rarely was I satisfied with how I appeared on camera, but most days I was happy with the story at hand. However I felt, the one thing I knew for sure as I rolled up microphone cables into the tenth hour of my shift, was that I’d have the chance to improve my shtick the following day, when I’d start the whole exhausting process over again.

Even back then, working as a one-man-band wasn’t the preferred method of the day. It was however, simply the price of admission if you wanted to be a TV reporter in my hometown at the dawn of the 90’s. Did I ever. Over the years, my quest for microscopic fame subsided and I hung up my necktie and overcoat. But I kept shooting and writing and editing. As I honed this one-man three-act play, I surprised a lot of coworkers with my penchant for working alone. I can’t help it - it’s how the Newsroom Elders reared me. I started that way by means of necessity, I continue those methods because I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Which is why I can’t help but smirk a little when I hear others bemoan the death of the two-person news crew. Truth is, those double-headed monsters will always roam the news landscape - as well they should. But soaring technology and shrinking budgets will greatly reduce the herd, making way for a laptop-packing, zoom lens-swinging, new age journalist, who despite his (or her) high-tech moniker and mind-scrambling gadgets, looks an awful like their predecessor - the late eighties one-man-band. Many will play, some will suck - but most will flourish. In the process, a new form of television news will be forged - hopefully one solely authored by the tech-savvy auteur and devoid of the on-scene pomp of the overdressed talking hair-do.

Hey, a cameraman can dream, can’t he?

Landslides and Take-Out

As always, beFrank's on the edge of another big story, filing his latest report from the disastrous landslides at Laguna Beach. I've never covered a landslide (that big, anyway) but I can appreciate the culinary perils of being stranded in broken neighborhoods. I just wonder if beFrank will make it back to his post at the Michael Jackson trial in time for the floor show...

The Revolution WILL be televised

I was ratcheting through footage from the North Carolina Zoo when Weaver stuck his head into my edit booth.

“Hey ya know Sandy Carmany?”

“Not really - I think I‘ve seen her blog” I said, staring at the frolicking polar bear on the two screens before me.

“We interviewed her today for a piece on The Generals. Got some shots of her blog. Nice lady.”

I nodded absent-mindedly as the furry giants cavorted for the camera. Weaver walked off and found his own edit bay to get lost in. A few second later, a woman’s voice emanated from Weaver’s bay. I didn’t think much of it as I ejected my disc and closed down my timelines. Walking across the hall, I logged into another computer for a few stolen moments of web surfing. As is my habit, I started with the blogosphere, scanning post titles like I used to do newspaper headlines.

‘Additional benefits of blogging’ read a slug. Still thinking of the polar bear sequence I’d just crafted onscreen, I clicked on it and jumped aboard someone else’s train of thought.

"Local TV reporters are reading my blog these days and using it as a "source" for stories. I've done two TV interviews today as a result of my recent posts. "

It took a moment to realize I was reading a transcript of the encounter Weaver had just described to me. Councilwoman Carmany went on-line to describe how a local camera crew had insisted on shooting her blog for part of their story. From Weaver‘s bay I could hear Carmany’s voice listing the merits of the local hockey team. On the screen before me, I read her thoughts on the brief press visit, hoping the photojournalist wouldn’t show too much of her messy office.

Weaver stuck his head out of the bay.

“Check it out - she was all nervous about her messy office.”

Looking back at the screen, the word ‘MESSY’ shouted above the alphabet din in all caps. I glanced over at Weaver. He’d returned to his footage at hand, reeling through clips like the edit junkie he is. Drumming his fingers on the edge of the keyboard, he tapped out an imaginary tune as the effects on screen began to render.

As the computer whirred and ciphered, I tried to follow the new media ping pong match I’d just witnessed. A reporter reads a politician’s blog and schedules an interview. Shortly afterwards, the politician blogs about the interview - commenting on the process and plugging the upcoming airtime, all before the photog involved - a blogger himself - can finish putting the report together. I was wrapping my brain around the chronology when Weaver stuck his head out of the edit bay and complicated matters entirely with the cheerful proclamation,

“I’m gonna blog about it tonight!”

I shook my head slowly to absorb the hit. Citizen journos, plugged-in politicians and an army of laptop-spondents are changing the face of media even quicker than the out-of-town experts predicted. From my street-level perspective I see it every day, age old barriers crumbling to dust, dissolving the chattering classes into the multi-tasking masses. Even in my modest mid-market, what used to be a one-way flow of information is now a churning sea of give and take. I’m not sure where all this is taking us, but the trip certainly won’t lack for documentation. The dawn of the Information Age is truly upon us. As a compulsive communicator, caffeine addict and chewer of thought, I couldn’t be more stoked, or more exhausted.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about thirty websites to scan. After that, I may even turn on the TV...Naaaah!

Hurtling Towards Burn-Out

Maybe it’s the relentless pace as of late, or the wicked summer cold my youngest gave me yesterday, or perhaps it’s the fact that I got some vacation looming in the near distance. Whatever the reason, your friendly neighborhood lenslinger is hurtling toward terminal burnout. Sadly, it’s a career stage I’m all too familiar with. Despite my ongoing attempts at maintaining a sunny disposition, my crusty photog shell solidifies about every nine months or so. When it does, I lose what little patience I have for the puffed-up import of the fruitless pursuit. Tiny details I contend with every day fire up my synapses and send me into an O.J.-like fury. No, I don’t chop people’s heads-off and then practice my golf swing. I just moan and grumble like the verbose curmudgeon I’ve reluctantly come to be. I try not to let it affect my work. Years behind the glass have taught me how to whine like a shrew while still producing top-shelf local television, thank you very much. (It’s not like I’m launching space shuttles for a living or anything.)

Still, my job is important to me - as is my hard-earned reputation as a low-maintenance, high-output employee. Besides, my business is littered with the hollowed-out corpses of once vibrant photogs. Chalk it up to the thankless nature of our work: long hours, lousy conditions, ever-demanding deadline cycles - all of which wears on the average lens-man (or woman) after enough time in the saddle. I’m not asking for pity. I signed up for this gig long ago, with full knowledge of what it is and what it ain’t. Now, fifteen years and three newsrooms later, I’m fully infected with incurable journalism. While I’d someday like to change the format from the moving image to the written word, I realize I am an insatiable communicator. This very blog is evidence of that. Just, please - understand the nature of my exhortations - for I am far from an unsatisfied soul, but a battle-weary warrior overdue for a little stateside R and R. Luckily I have that very thing planned - a yearly retreat to an undisclosed beach, where press conferences, murder scenes and live shots wash away with the incoming tide.

So if you run across my shell-shocked visage in the coming days, do not be alarmed. The bearded, frazzled expression, the inexplicable mangling of ten dollar words, the wrinkled yet festive tropical shirt - they’re all just signs that Stewie needs a break from the madness, a temporary reprieve from the desperate foot chase that is your average day behind the newscast. It’s nothing a week of body-surfing, freshly burned Delta Blues and the occasional tumbler of Maker’s Mark won’t cure. From my days as a uniformed sailor, I harbor a great love for the sea. Just being in its presence restores my soul. Before you know it I’ll be back on the job, cranking out TV news at it’s early-evening finest, complaining about how God-Awful-Hot Summertime in the Carolinas is - all while finding a way to blog about it in the process. But until then, BACK OFF! This camera is loaded, the disc is empty and the battery springtime fresh. So help me, I’ll use it...