This Blog's For You

Meet The Photog - a student of the moving image, a master of time management and a lover of snazzy shirts. Normally you'll find him darting around town in some garish vehicle, moving at the speed of broadcast while mere humans shuffle about in slow-motion. It's precisely this momentum that keeps our hero on-task, for without it, pulling off the improbable on a daily basis just wouldn't happen. That's why it's so hard for him to loiter by the curb as his over-coiffed partner pounds out a script in the back of that rolling billboard. Chances are he'll only get a few minutes to turn her words into a symphony of sight and sound. His reward for meeting such an unreasonable deadline? The opportunity to do it all again tomorrow. And credit? Forget it.

Sure, a camera-toting colleague may notice a particularly well-lit sit-down or comment on an intricate edit, but nine times out of ten his efforts will go unrewarded. At best, his reporter will receive an accolade or two for all her hard work - but the kudos usually stop there. Don't feel sorry for him, though. His shifts are rarely dull, his misadventures are many and his on-the-job anecdotes crush those of mortal men. Whatsmore, his breed has an undying fan in yours truly. It's these multi-tasking, singularly driven individuals who inspire me to write every night. In doing so, I hope to expose their noble plight to a larger audience - even if I do tire of pretending to be one of them. Now move along, showtime ain't for another fifteen minutes...

The Sore-Hand Companion

Should ever I perish in an unsavory way, there’s one item I’d like to avoid being judged on. It’s a burgundy, vaguely Bible-esque notebook - one I’ve spent the better part of a year filling with my own sacred text. That said, you’ll discover no revelations inside. Instead, you’ll find only bent prose, half-finished idioms and the occasional attempt at outright cartooning. I call it The Sore-Hand Companion. It is but the latest in a long line of tortured tablets. Bound in leather and of generic bookstore origin, it’s the grown-up version of the countless composition books I hoarded as a kid. Recently I unearthed a few of those adolescent tomes and, besides learning Lizard King lyrics seem most profound when locked in the throes of puberty, I realized I’d always been a writer.

Well, maybe not a writer, but at the very least a scribbler. From Hawkeye Pierce one-liners to the cleverest of half-finished paragraphs, I have practiced the art of scrapbook manifesto since I was knee-high to an adverb. Trouble was, I did little more than save these homemade diatribes. Convinced that everyone dictated their interior monologues, I gave little thought to my growing collection of tattered spirals - even if I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. Now, as a gregarious loner who’s embraced the voice in his head, I savor the chance to take my notebook lover out to lunch - to sit in a corner booth of some soul food palace and take my pen, and my mind, out for a spin. Just where all these aborted manifestos will take me remains unseen, but - wretched penmanship aside - all this chicken-scratch lyricism has made for a very interesting trip.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a Red Hot Chili Peppers song I simply must capture in print. How does one properly annotate 'No chump love sucker', anyway?

Truisms of Newsgathering

Sixteen years cranking out ninety second vignettes hasn't taught me everything, but this, this, I know...

The average sheriff deputy will hack through a mile and a half of heavy underbrush to chop down a half dozen spindly pot plants if enough TV cameras tag along.

When covering hurricanes, dry socks trump the fanciest of sat-truck gadgets.

A certain breed of reporter will build his or her entire story on the one sound bite that is visually jarring, completely out of focus or barely audible.

There is no convenient time for a plane crash.

Late, noisy entrances to packed press conferences are simply unavoidable and should be judged solely on style.

Some news stories are impossible to produce, but the mass majority of them can be successfully executed merely by showing up on scene.

People watching their every possession burn are infinitely more compelling to photograph than the fire itself.

Millions of dollars of intricate and sophisticated broadcasting equipment can be rendered inert by one neglected nine volt battery.

Photogs have three natural enemies: rent-a-cops, rookie reporters and revolving doors.

The best news anchors still consider themselves reporters.

Women who spend an inordinate amount of time on their appearance will readily shun the camera. That guy in the gravy-stained beefy-T will talk all day.

With the right sunlight, even shattered windows wrapped in crime tape are beautiful.

No one is more cocky, swaggering and cynical than the 20-something show producer who rarely ventures outside the newsroom.

Trophies, awards and accolades past are great, but your immediate colleagues will only remember you for that piece of crap you put on air last week.

5 out of 10 PR people are downright delusional. Most of the rest are merely useless.

Dirty sheriffs, overdressed ghetto preachers and people with morning liquor on the breath deliver the best sound-bites.

The only folks more irrational than those who wave weaponry at police can be found ogling for face time at the County Commissioners meeting.

New city, new logo...same game.

Serge Brockman Reporting...

Okay, so maybe I never had the locutionary chops to succeed long-term as an on-air reporter, but as this 1991 self-shot stand-up proves, I damn sure had the hair. Weaker men have crafted whole careers out of lesser tresses...

Not Your Father's Press Conference

Hey, here’s something you’ve never heard me say before: "Mmm-Hmm. I’m sorry I missed that press conference.” Now, before you demand to know what I’ve done with the real Stewart Pittman, lemme 'splain...

Intrigue is afoot in Greensboro. At first, the bungled regime change of the city’s police department held little interest for me. I’m all for bureaucratic uproar, mind you - but the cries of racism and political wrongdoing in the Wray Case sounded an awful lot like the kinds of stories I’d covered before in other Southern cities. Happily, I avoided those assignments like the plague I believed them to be, training my lens on the happier side of the newscasts instead. But last week, as I slogged through a profile of an upscale clothier thirty miles away, news hawks of every description gathered around a podium at City Hall and a new media feeding frenzy ensued. Throw in coffee and donuts at the end and you may have the perfect presser…

But it wasn’t just the salacious source material. Sexual skylarking, dirty police and tracking devices - they’re the ingredients of a buddy cop blockbuster, all right. Just ask Jerry Bledsoe. Currently, the best selling author is doling out weekly morsels of the steamy controversy in his serialized investigation of the Wray matter - and moving lots of copies of a certain free weekly in the process. If that weren’t enough, the Gate City’s aggressive bloggeratti is also on the case, offering weekly synopsis, color commentary, and staggered jabs at satire. Whether you consider the whole affair to be proof positive of widespread corruption or a sordid witch hunt, even the most casual news consumer has to admit the coverage is cutting-edge. Take Friday’s microphone fiesta:

Alarmed at the weekly bombshells being lobbed by Bledsoe and the aftershock of blogger analysis, the city leaders called a news gathering to announce their answer to the swirl of cyber-chatter: their own website! Brilliant! Or so they thought. Truth is, the city only made it worse for themselves, for the gallery of rogues present at their podium were more than just the usual suspects. Sure the local newspaper and four TV news outlets showed up, but so did the citizenry - a plugged-in populace that make up for their lack of fancy lenses with their encyclopedic knowledge of the whole sensational mess. It’s that kind of acumen that can shame the professional chattering class come ‘question and answer time‘. Did the speakers squirm more at questions lobbed by the over-coiffed, or was it the insistent queries of the laptop press that made them fumble their attempted spin?

Hard to tell. But one thing’s for sure, the way this story is being unfurled is just as interesting as the myriad of misdeeds it chronicles. Whether you peruse the hard copy of each week’s installment, skim a local physician’s timely summations, admire the collation of a prophetic columnist, or chortle at a gadfly’s trenchant take - there are countless ways to absorb all this local shock and awe. As for me, I still check in with the lights and lenses crowd, surf my favorite aggregator and top it off with a local editor’s newspaper view. Maybe then I’ll be able to coherently dish the dirt with those linked above and many, many more - as Greensboro’s vibrant cyber-scene coalesces at that yearly summit known forever more as ConvergeSouth. It’s free, smart and perhaps a little hip. I’ll be there, ruining the cool ratio and looking for YOU.

VeeJays on NPR

Ever heard two friends debate an issue on NPR? I just did, thanks to a report on All Things Considered examining the hotly-contested V.J. model. For those not keeping score at home, it goes like this: Some TV stations are ditching the classic two-person news crew for multi-tasking one-man-bands, individuals who shoot, write, edit and front their own reports. As you might imagine, this move hasn't set well with the Photog Nation, who've for years honed their street-level cinematography skills while their over-coiffed partner sweats the details. Now, a debate that's burned up the industry message boards has hit critical mass, spilling over to the bucolic pastures of National Public Radio. I'll give 'em this though: the NPR people went to the source...

Up first, my old mentor Andy Cordan. A swashbuckling cop-shop reporter, Andy's one-man-band roots and brash delivery makes him the perfect VJ candidate. But even he was skeptical when his bosses announced they were going solo."There was a genuine sense of fear in this building," says Cordan.

"People that have been doing this for 20 years, and suddenly, like, it's no longer doing that. You used to make pizzas. Now you are going to polish rocks! Enjoy yourself."

Next, we hear from Brad Ingram, award-winning photog and current co-worker of yours truly. Brad's the quintessential news shooter - a practicing master of lighting, editing and the lens. He sees little merit in truncating skill sets.

"It comes down to adding more responsibilities to everybody's everyday duties," Ingram says. "That is where it gets to be a problem. When you are trying to multitask everything, you lose that quality."

Brad's got a point. So does Andy. Fact is, I'd gladly watch both their on-air products, from Brad's pristine camera-work to Andy's in-your-face lenslinging. Which newsgathering method will prevail ten years from now? Too soon to tell, but I'm guessing an amalgamation of both approaches will infiltrate every newsroom. By then, I'll probably be locked away in some upper room by then, cranking out greeting card scripts and raving about the good ole days while Cordan and Ingram break new ground in their respective disciplines. I'm okay with that.

One March Morning...

When David changed from his bartender’s uniform into camouflage and ski mask, he had no idea how many lives he was about to change...his own, the friends he was about to take hostage, and to a lesser degree, mine. I don’t claim to know what was going through his mind as he slipped out of the supply room dressed like some kind of masked G.I. Joe, but I guarantee he wasn’t thinking about SWAT cops, TV cameras and police negotiators. No, he was most likely planning on simply taking the money and running. But as he skulked around the just-closed restaurant, his sweaty palm gripping the gun handle, it was already too late. He’d set in motion a series of events that would alter the way a lot of people saw their world, including one long-haired TV geek - who more than fourteen years later, still thinks about that chilly March morning...

By now, long-time readers of this site are familiar with, if not sick of, The Applebee's Incident - a 1992 botched robbery turned hostage standoff that among many other things, launched my newsgathering career. Even though I wasn't exactly a practicing writer back then, I knew I'd attempt to fully describe it one day - if only to gain some badly needed perspective. Over the years I've occasionally tried to do just that, with mixed results. Accurately chronicling such a convoluted tale requires more than a tumbler of Bourbon and wishful thinking, I've found. It takes research - the kind of hard work I've yet to pony up. Instead, I pour over my notes, my timeline, my memory. Now however, I have the video.

Credit Dustin Miller, a old buddy of mine whom I really wish lived closer. His recently unearthed gift of a DVD contained more than stupid bloopers and silly haircuts. It featured the Rescue 911 episode CBS crafted around the footage we shot that day. As a result, I've gleaned facts I'd forgotten and dusted off visual impressions that had grown hazy over the years. While I'm still a l-o-n-g way from completion, brother Dustin's contribution has brought new life to my abandoned manuscript. Why I'm so entranced with this distant episode isn't so easy to explain. To the veteran detective it was your typical stand-off - one in which no one got killed and the gunman ended up in cuffs. However, to the young production dork I was that day, it was a highly cinematic kick-off to a passion play I'm still living. Any writer-wannabe worth half his adverbs would clamor at the chance to tell this tale.

Trouble is, emotions get in the way. The young lady held hostage that morning is a friend of mine. We haven't chatted in years, but on that fateful day my heart stretched and nearly broke at the sight of her suffering - even if I was zooming in for the evening news at the time. As for the gunman David, I hold no real malice. He received a pretty stiff sentence for his stupidity that morning and no doubt regrets his actions more than anyone. I was merely a bystander, a peripheal player who did nothing more than press 'Record' and try to grasp the impossible scenes playing out in the camera's eye. I guess I should just let it go. But if I'm truly destined to document my adventures behind the lens, I can't forget it - for everything that followed still pales in comparison to the footage and feelings I gathered that fateful day.

To (eventually) be continued...