Once upon a time I couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of a news unit - not to just burn someone else’s gas, but to roll up on scene with a purpose. It’s the same strand of DNA that drove my older brother to become a career firefighter - then later, a kick-ass paramedic. But whereas Richard helps people, I just put ‘em on tee-vee, and rarely in the way they envisioned. But this post is less about straining for nobility and more about my growing disdain for all that mobility. It’s not that I want to drive a desk - far from it . I’d just like to know where all these mad dashes, fruitless pursuits and exasperating excursions are taking me. I’m guessing, it ain’t easy street. Most likely, I’ll end up a stooped old man with chronic pain in one shoulder and a bad attitude in every other extremity. If that sounds overly bleak, you obviously ain’t logged enough miles in the name of news. Tearful goodbyes and gauzy retrospectives are reserved for the anchor set. We road warriors are lucky to end our careers with new logo-wear and our vision intact. Oh yeah, we also get stories.
Those stories, along with the access to other people’s lives, fueled my desire to chase deadlines for far longer than logic dictated. But an un-funny thing happened on the way to newsgathering glory. I got bored. Lulled to complacency by the numbing repetition of a thousand newscasts, I began looking around a few years ago for a different way to spend my day. Alas, the world did not beat a path to my feet. Instead, I continued my drudgery, shuffling from one semi-scintillating news scene to another, with lots of windshield meditation in between. Stand-offs, sit-downs, stalemates: assignments that used to render me breathless now strike me as monumentally inconvenient. So I did the only thing I knew to do; I began to scribble about the job I used to find so damned interesting. And it worked! Nowadays I’d much rather write about electronic newsgathering than actually saddle up and do it. Too bad my station won’t pay me cash money for half-baked diatribes. Yet.
So now that we’ve established my overall dislike for the nature of the chase, know that I regularly find myself crisscrossing the region for the oddest of reasons. Ribbon-cuttings, racial slurs, reality shows, I’ve raced to and zeroed in on more than I even pretend to remember. But just as I grow comfortable in my lifelong role as a calloused burnout, someone catches my attention through the open window of my own bored existence. Sometimes it’s a kid impressed by the logos, other times it’s a full grown adult enamored with my call letters. Yesterday, it was three happy cats on a nearby bench, who felt it necessary to cheer when I passed by their lunchtime post. Their enthusiasm washed over me from across midtown traffic. Gripping the wheel with a vigor renewed, I smiled to myself and once again felt proud of my profession - even if I was on a three hour quest for all the storm damage I could cram into thirty seconds of air-time. Now if only I could convince my bosses to let me scrub these logos off the doors. Then perhaps, I’d get some peace in the cockpit. On second thought, I’d have to park like a mere mortal again.Forget what I said...
In an area where TV stations lived and died by the police blotter, the walk-down was king . Every night, the cops paraded a new defendant through the region's living rooms, but only after they marched through my lens. Back-pedaling with a face full of viewfinder, I learned to navigate every pebble of the Detective Building’s gravel parking lot as shackled strangers cursed my camera or most often, hung their heads in blame . To astute viewers it was little more than cop-shop filler. But to my buddies and me, every walk-down was an athletic event and we threw out our shoulders and contorted our souls to document them in proper cinematic style. From low slung 'Darth Vader entrance' shots to the extreme tights of the suspect's eyes to the obligatory cuffed-hands close-up, my pals and I learned to bag a dozen different shots in the half as many yards between the idling police car and the battered back entrance of the Detective's Building. When the cops really want their bad guy to make the news, they's park as far away from the door as possible, giving me and lenslinging hoods plenty of time to swarm. Many a newscast opened with footage from that very lot and the slow-motion highlights still loop endlessly in the edit bay in my head. I suppose therapy would help.
But who needs an overpriced analyst when I can pour it all out to you good people? Don't answer that, just keep your eyeballs moving and we'll get through this. Next, I wanna talk about round-ups, that time honored tradition of following law enforcers as they serve warrants based on all those proverbial 'six month investigations'. Operation: Street Sweep, Code Name: Fishnet, the cops always came up with some loopy name for their planned apprehension of street level drug dealers. I didn't care what they called it; I was just stoked to be along for the ride (in the front seat, no less!). I remember hiding behind scraggly trees as beefy undercover detectives who didn't want to be on TV banged on trailer doors in the middle of my viewfinder. I recall squinting through a lens at a groggy crackhead as he blinked repeatedly at the men in blue windbreakers standing over his head. Looking over at me, he gave an acknowledging nod, much like he would if we'd passed each other outside a convenience store. And I remember the prison yard death stares of countless shackled strangers as men in clip-on ties and flattop haircuts high-fived each other around them. Good times.
But my interaction with the PO-lice wasn't always on foot. I've ridden shotgun in more marked cars than some rookie cops. Sometimes I've tagged along with a particular officer just to get footage of him or her behind the wheel, but the fun doesn't usually start until I join them for patrol. Seatbelt enforcement, impaired driver watch, speed limit crackdown; I've tagged along with Johnny Law on almost every kind of mission there is. Not only did it throw my shoulder out of whack but it changed the way I drive. Take speeding for example. I used to race fifteen miles over the posted limit no matter where I was going, but finally the ride-alongs (and expensive tickets) finally slowed me down. Why? Karma, baby. Hovering over a police officer as they issue some poor schlub a citation isn't just awkward, it's wrong. God knows the last thing I want to see when I'm diggin' my liscense out of my wallet is some loser with a lens pushin' in for a better shot of the veins bulging on my forehead. No, with my luck, Geraldo Rivera himself would pop out of the squad car and demand to know why my sordid floorboard is the gore-splattered bone-yard of a thousand doomed ketchup packets.
We TV news cameramen (and women) pride ourselves on our aim, our eyesight, our stark acknowledgement of the otherwise unnoticed. Be it a hostile crime scene or a crowded farmer’s market, we train our vision on the periphery and bag points of view like hunting trophies. But we don’t draw blood; we draw interest. Though they rarely ever think about it, all those slobs on the couch watch the world through the crosshairs of a master craftsman. Unless I’m having an off-day, of course. Then they’re lucky if the pictures ain’t all shaky and blue.
Okay, we don’t save lives or property. We merely fill in the black between commercials. But to ask a young scanner-geek to drive cautiously to a breaking news scene is like asking a drunk to take it easy on the sauce. I alone have surpassed speed limits by twenty miles per hour just so I wouldn’t have to fight for a spot at a Rotarian luncheon. Of course time and the approach of a middle age have a way of easing the lead foot syndrome. God knows I don’t jump curbs to get to ribbon-cuttings anymore. But if there’s a smoldering bus wreck on the horizon, I still reserve the right to hog the breakdown lane for miles at a stretch.
Amid all the high speed pursuits and press conference cat-napping, we photogs like to keep it casual I’m not sure why, exactly. Certainly the humble task of lugging and deploying clumsy TV gear requires a certain utilitarian approach, but we shooters take it to another level. Tropical shirts, hiking boots, trousers with a criminal amount of pockets - we can’t get enough of them. Perhaps we’re just trying to compensate for the sartorial splendor of our overdressed, on-air partners. After all, what looks more natural than a reporter going live from a burning cornfield in a magnificently tailored suit? No, those of us behind the lens are just trying to keep it real. Me personally, I’m just channeling my inner Magnum P.I.