Journalism: Call It an Inside Look or Reflection....

I haven’t thought about Rachel in awhile.

Rachel was just a teenager with a bright future. She was on a swim team. She was a great student. She was a loving daughter and sister.

But her life was cut short as she was pulled into a rapid one warm spring day while wading in the Chattooga River, drowned, and was swept away. It took months for her body to be recovered. Months of effort, challenges, and tears from her family and from local rescue squads went by.

It was a dangerous task. On more than one occasion, rescue personnel were nearly swept away in rapids themselves. They were putting their lives on the line so that her family could have closure and bring Rachel home.

Her father sought the help of a New Jersey company that made portable dams --- a series of those dams were what finally led to the retrieval of her body.

Months of being underwater took its toll. They first found her swimsuit.  A few days later, they retrieved her in pieces.

I was there they day they did that. Myself and a group of other reporters and photogs kept our distance out of respect. We didn’t push people to talk. We didn’t push cameras in people’s faces. We just took in the sad looks on the faces of those workers and of her family. Those told the story themselves.

Recently as I was moving some boxes around the house and putting up Christmas decorations, I found a box full of news clippings.

Save mundane city and county council meetings, and school board meetings, they were articles that I have kept from my time as a newspaper reporter.

I realized that it’s been 11 years this month since I worked as a full-time reporter.

Since then, I’ve done some freelancing here and there – nothing in about two years though. But I got to thinking about a lot of the experiences I had, the people I met, the stories I covered, and the ups and downs of being a small-town community reporter.

Many times it was horrible.

I stood by one day as first responders worked the scene of a multiple-car accident involving two fatalities. A drunken driver, who did not have the right of way and was killed in the accident, hit another car at excessive speed as it was pulling into an intersection.

In the other car, a mother sat in the driver’s seat, as workers cut parts of the car away to get her out. She kept talking to her son Zach, an 8-year-old boy, who was in the passenger seat, as the first responders worked.

I stood by, with a crowd of onlookers, our photog, and a reporter from another local newspaper, probably 25 feet or so from the vehicles, watching all this happen.

The rescue crews knew that Zach was gone. She didn’t. She kept saying to him as they worked, “It’s OK baby. Everything’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”

After they got her out, she stood by screaming “Get my son out, get my son out” as the crews retrieved him from the car.

They lifted his body out. The look on the responders' faces as they held the young boy said it all.

“No,” his mom yelled. “NO!” Then she started screaming as she ran to her son and picked up his body from the man. “NO! Not my son!,” she screamed.  It was the most  god-awful scream I have ever heard.

I can still hear it sometimes. I can’t imagine what she was feeling, the emotions going through her at the time.

Those are experiences I don’t miss.

Then, many times being a reporter was fun and exciting. Sometimes you get to meet people you never would otherwise.

Being filled with adrenaline as a presidential candidate gets off a bus, walks into a building and speaks to a crowd of people all screaming, “Bush! Bush! Bush!” Trying to get that money shot as he’s working the crowds, shaking hands. Being encouraged by an AP photog who has been in this business for years, who is telling you "Just push your way through. Get out there. You're not going to get any good shots by standing here."

Covering the announcement of a new head football coach at your college alma mater. Being up front in the media row, asking questions and taking photos. Watching him in person putting on that orange jacket.

Shaking hands with a former vice-president,  becoming friends with a governor (who is now one of your Facebook friends as well), meeting the Speaker of the U.S. House, interviewing a musician or an astronaut, getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the Statehouse while it’s under renovation.  Been there, done all that. 

Stuff like that is awesome.

Do I wish sometimes that I still was in the business, sure. Am I glad I’m out of it, more often than not.

Still, I’ve got a bit of it in me. I enjoy the writing I do for my job. I enjoy the interactions I have with our local media.

And I know how they often feel. That helps me do my job.

I read articles and I can tell where the reporter is coming from. Journalism is supposed to be impartial. Trust me, it’s not in most cases. And the journalists who remain are often treated with a look of skepticism, sometimes a bit of distrust, sometimes with ambivalence. 

I often find myself watching the news (I worked in a TV newsroom for a few years also as an online editor) and am able to tell when certain people are trying to keep from laughing at things. You know what some of their expressions are about. You can tell when they think someone or something in a story is just stupid. It makes me miss working with them, but I still get to in other ways.

Journalism is a hard job. You make people mad. Sometimes you may have a school superintendent call you on a Saturday morning to bitch about something you wrote. Sometimes you get into arguments with county supervisors about the first amendment….. and the funny thing about that, is sometimes those supervisors later become friends and people you can laugh with about what is currently going on after they’ve left office.

But you work late hours. You get paid squat. You aren’t able to be there for you family at times when you may need to be. It has its downsides.

So to everyone reading, I say, whether you agree or disagree with a news report, even though you may or may not like them, just respect the reporter. Although I did meet and have worked with a few in my time that were pure jerks.

I recall this one time when I spent the day in Columbia with some legislator friends, interviewed both the lieutenant governor and the state superintendent of education, and participated in an executive press briefing with the aforementioned governor. Before he came into the room, during some banter amongst ourselves, one of the reporters (who I'm still not sure who they were) threw insult after insult after derogatory comment around about our governor, who could have walked in at any moment. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. But some people are like that, unfortunately.

Most journalists aren't like that though - at least the majority of the ones that I have worked with and encountered. 

Dealing with what you have to deal with as a journalist does often make you jaded. You become really cynical about a lot of things. That's a hazard of the job.

Still, journalism is a tough job, with often little reward. Journalists are people who have experienced many ups and downs in their workday and even spare time because of their job.  My hat's off to the folks who do that for a living.

An Open Letter To All Interested In Being On The News

I saw a story on one of our local news programs this morning in which a woman was being interviewed who, well, didn't graduate from Harvard University. She didn't exactly look like Cindy Crawford either. And she didn't exactly live in a mansion.

Not that there is anything wrong with not having graduated from Harvard, not looking like Cindy and not living in a mansion. On the contrary. People from all walks of life have many admirable qualities about them.

But some qualities that people exhibit can be quite humorous and, sometimes, even more so, quite embarrassing - especially when you put a TV camera on them.

You know what I'm talking about. Severe weather hits. A major local catasrophe happens. Someone dies. Someone is rescued. Someone wins the lottery. And the TV news just wants the first soundbite that really grabs people's attention.

So they seek.

It's kind of like Star Trek in a way. They seek out new life, and new civilizations - life and civilizations that you didn't realize lived just a few miles away until you see it on TV. Or maybe you know it does - and you either tend to ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist, and/or laugh at it.

Well, I've put together somwhat of a guide for people to use for when they are being interviewed for TV news or think there may be a chance that will happen to them at some point. This document is highly targeted too, specifically at an alarmingly high percentage of South Carolinians, but extending from parts of western Pennsylvania on down the eastern seaboard, around the gulf and down into Texas. So here goes:

Dear Interviewee:

Congratulations on being selected as an interview participant for a story on which we are reporting today. You may be scared or nervous at this point, but rest assured many and most people are in this situation. So we have put together a short guide that we hope will help you through this.

Please keep the following things in mind:

• Don't be nervous. Try not to be yourself. Just remember, probably at least half a million people are going to see this. Don't feel embarrassed - just yet. That hopefully will come after you watch this on the 6 o'clock show tonight.
  
• Unless it actually is, this is not an audition for America's Got Talent. So please don't play the Star Spangled Banner with your armpit or showcase your bottle-blowing abilities just for the sake of showing the reporter than you can do it.
  
• Until you have had an actual freight train come through your living room, you have no basis for comparison as to what that actually sounds or feels like. So don't use that as a basis for comparison until you actually have that happen to you. This rule also applies to describing an experience in terms of a tornado, whether it felt or sounded like one came through the room also - whether before or after the train, or on its own.
• Not everyone knows where Joe Don or Ray Ray's houses are so please don't use them as reference points for establishing directionality or location
• Not every adjective needs to be modified. And please don't speak in metaphor. Ever. It will make you sound like a redneck, although you may already be one. Examples relating directly to this include:
  • "Worser" - This is not a word. Generally speaking things can't get much more worse than they already are.
    
  • "Stupider" - Something or someone can not be any more "stupid" than they already are. There are no degrees of stupid. Stupid just is as stupid does. Dumb, however, is an entirely different case. You, people, things, what have you, can be varying degrees of dumb.
  • "Deader (than a doornail, than roadkill, than.. well, you get the drift)" - When something is dead, it's just dead. Case closed.
    
  • Generally speaking, people will know something was loud when you say it was loud. You don't say it was "louder than en elephant tearing through a buncha trees." Yes there are varying degrees of volume and those are generally covered by "slightly," "moderately," "very," and "extremely." It stands to reason that this rule can also be applied to describing the degree of something's or someone's smell
    
  • When something is gross, you don't say it's "nastier than a diaper fulla poop" - just say that it's gross.
  • "Smarter than the average bear" - Do not say this. The only way this is ever pulled off is if you are Dave Coulier or are a cartoon bear named Yogi.
• The only type of grammatically acceptable usage of the word "dang" is as an exclamation of surprise, i.e. "Dang. I actually just said that."
• I wouldn't recommend referring to past illegal activities or infractions that you and/or somebody you know have committed or participated in and not yet been charged and/or prosecuted for if I were you , even in a comparative sense to the main subject at hand. There are statutes of limitations on many crimes that don't run out after a week.
• Only certain people can pull off wearing a smiley-face t-shirt. You're probably not one of them.
• Not everyone knows what burnt woodchuck smells or tastes like, so don't use it as a comparative reference.
  
• Keep any friends or relatives out of the immediate vicinity from where you are being interviewed who are prone to shout things out like "Hey, watch this!" or "Check this out!"
• Ice is what you get out of the freezer. Ass is what is at the top of your legs. The two are not the same and are not pronounced the same. Please do not say that you are getting some ass cream or people are going to wonder if you have a hemorrhoid issue. And unless someone drove the car over your ass, your car did not just slide on ass. It slid on ice.
• Our television transmissions are sent into outer space. Please don't let the human race down. What you say on TV could convince a highly advanced race of extraterrestrial life that has many technologies that would be usable for eliminating famine, disease, hunger, and war on Earth that it would be unwise for them to make contact with us. Why help out such a backwards race of beings? That shirt you were wearing on TV that says "I love my dog" could make or break that deal for us. They and we don't want to know that you love your dog - especially if you love your dog in unnatural ways.
  
• The reporter generally does not care to be covering this story. They want to go out and cover real news. But while they have to do this assignment, they're looking for someone entertaining, who looks or acts or says things that are totally off-the-wall. Don't give in to the stereotype and act the way they want you to act which you are naturally inclined to anyway. People do judge. It's human nature. It's something we don't want to admit we do, but we do. So try to act like you have some common sense and use your brain.

And please do the following things:

• If you're being interviewed at home, people are going to see your living room or yard (and I do understand sometimes that the two are one in the same) - so take a few minutes to tidy up beforehand. We don't need to see your arsenal of spray cheese or collection of Elvis lawn ornaments.
• Brush your teeth (at least the ones you have left)
• Comb/brush your hair (and please remember the take the rollers out first)
• Guys, please put on a shirt. This also applies to some women. Scary.
• Please put out the cigarette and/or get rid of the chewing tobacco in your mouth.
• Pull up your pants. Nobody wants to see it. This applies to men and women.
  
• Take a minute to break out your handy, dandy Roget's pocket thesaurus to find some new adjectives you've never thought of using. We pretty much went over this one in Bullet #5 in the previous list.
  
• Please don' t talk to someone with food in your mouth. We don't want to see it. Especially partially-devoured pork rinds. Throw out the bubble gum too. We really don't need to see your cow imitation
• Keep your rugrats in check, but don't discipline them on camera. Make sure they know there will be consequences if they act up on camera or in the background, either way. And please put a shirt on them, comb their hair, and take away their toy guns.
  
• Don't be judgmental on camera. Keep your opinions to yourself about other people. You don't want to be considered rude, discriminatory or intolerant whether you are or not.
• Do not refer to the photog and/or reporter as "dude" or "hey man"
  
• And, again, act like you have some common sense and use your brain.

Don't worry. The interview will be over before you know it. We thank you for your participation and look forward to making you look like a fool on TV.

Sincerely,

Your local news team

A Consumate Journalist

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press via FoxNews.com

Over the course of the weekend since Tim Russert passed away on Friday, I've been reading and watching a lot of news articles about Mr. Russert.

I was a big Tim Russert fan. One of the things about him that I really was impressed with was his impartiality -- he went after Democrats and Republican alike, with the same vigor. He wanted to make sure Americans had all of the facts about the issue(s) at hand.

One person, I can't recall who, said in an interview that Tim ran "Meet the Press" like how a football game should be run. It was meat and potatoes. It was in your face journalism. These are the facts. These are how the facts affect ordinary Americans. Now how are you going to address these facts?

I'm sure some people were shaking their head in puzzled amazement at his whiteboard presentations during the 2000 election coverage, when he kept saying "Everything is going to come down to Florida." You may have been thinking "Wow, this guy really knows his stuff" or "I've never quite seen this approach before." I was thinking a little of both.

I remember talking with Congressman Graham after his first appearance on "Meet the Press" in the late 90s. He told me that he felt that he had to be more on his game when being interviewed by Mr. Russert than with any journalist. I'm sure over time, Lindsey and his fellow politicians who had developed a professional rapport with Tim still felt some anxiety before going on his show.

Despite how aggressively he would press someone on an issue, he always did it with a smile. And he and that person would usually end up laughing over something before the interview was over. He had a visible energy about his work.

Tim was a consumate journalist, from humble beginnings.

If you read or listen to his colleagues that have commented on his life over the last three days, they're saying things like, "He remained true to his beliefs, his family, and his roots his entire life," "He never backed down from a challenge," "He valued hard work," or "He was a family man."

I haven't had a chance to read Tim's books "Big Russ & Me," written about his father, or "Wisdom of Our Fathers." But I've heard both being talked about extensively over the last few days and seen some footage of Tim discussing them. I need to go pick up copies of both.

You could tell he had a great love of family and an amazing repsect for and admiration of his father. In one of the interviews I watched, he says something to the effect of, "I wrote Big Russ to show how we each stand on the shoulders of our fathers. I stand on his. My son stands on mine."

It doesn't get any more truthful than that.

Godspeed Tim Russert. We will all miss you. Rest in peace.

To Vote or Not to Vote

I hadn't planned on voting today in the primary.

There were 14 people running in primaries today for county level positions in Greenville County. Our local U.S. House district had three candidates on the Democratic side and two on the Republican.

There were four positions on my Republican primary ballot -- county sheriff, state senator, U.S. House representative, and U.S. senator. I voted for all four incumbents -- I personally know two of them. Aside from the fact that I honestly know my one puny vote doesn't really mean squat when it comes down to the final numbers and I don't totally agree with everything they've done, I feel both of them have done pretty good jobs and wanted to show them my support, so I voted Bob Inglis for U.S. House and Lindsey Graham for U.S. Senate.

I didn't know hardly anything about the incumbents' challengers -- or any of the people running for our county council (although my county council district did not have anyone on the ballot today anyway).

I know that I myself am to blame to a large degree for my own ignorance of those candidates' platforms. I haven't really taken the time this election cycle to research them - which is something each voter is obligated to do.

Can ignorance really be bliss? When it comes to who we put in public office, I don't think so.

Frankly, I also put a great deal of blame on the candidates themselves, the media, and the party leaders for not getting adequate information out to the public.

The daily newspaper I used to work for several years ago would always make it a point to do side-by-side profiles of all the candidates, whether for city council or U.S. Senate, on the local ballots. I can remember several times putting those together. We did that because we felt it was our responsibility to our readers.

Both the local Democratic party and Republican party in the primary county that newspaper served are very active and make it a point to support all of their candidates and educate the local voters through a variety of methods.

Having moved to Greenville County a little less than three years ago and not really knowing any of the local players, it's a different ball-game now. I really feel out of the loop.

From what I've seen, the Greenville County parties and the major local daily have a lot to learn about educating the public.

I've been a political junkie pretty much since I got into college.

From being in the Clemson University College Republicans; to volunteering on Lindsey Graham's first congressional campaign; to writing a weekly point-counterpoint column against a very tree-hugging, liberal fellow reporter; to actively working on getting a good friend elected to Congress (including long sweaty days of driving through five counties, digging holes and putting up 8' x 4' campaign sides and even carrying campaign materials to rallies that he wasn't able to attend), I've gotten to work with and know some people who are now in some pretty powerful positions.

But that's just me.... then there's the general public.

There are a lot of people that don't know a thing about the people who are deciding trash pickup fees or property zoning issues -and in turn don't feel right about going out to the polls and making an uniformed decision.

Admittedly, that was my pseudo-dilemma today.

Registered voters have at least made the conscious decision at some point that voting is somewhat important to them. If you are registered to vote, there is no excuse for you not to - unless you have an emergency come up that prevents you from getting to the polls.

I had to tell myself that today on my way home. I know I would have been guilt-tripping myself until November unless I voted today in the primary.

Of course there are a lot of people who don't feel it necessary to vote at all (or even register to vote). Voter dissatisfaction or apathy can be very powerful forces. But there are people in those groups who then turn around and bitch about what's going on when their city council, county council, school board, or their state and federal legislators do something they don't like.

If you don't like what your elected officials are doing, then get off your ass, fill out your registration (you can do it online now) and go to the polls.

I really can't wrap my mind around why people wouldn't want to take advantage of their right to vote.

I've voted in every election that in which I have been able to since turning 18. I've cast most of my votes based on my knowledge of the candidates' platforms. There have been a few instances in which I have voted against someone based on interaction with them. And I have voted for a few Democrats: case and point, in 2006 I voted for incumbent Grady Patterson over Thomas Ravenel in the SC Treasurer's race. We saw how well having Ravenel as treasurer turned out.

They're saying that the turnout in some of our county's precincts today was as low as 10 percent. That is truly pathetic.

We as voters may not always put people in office who in the long run are good for our city, county, state, or country. But we do have that right and responsibility to vote. Voting is the cornerstone of a viable democracy. It is the duty of each and every American citizen to register to vote, educate themselves about the candidates and go press that button on election day. We owe it to the people who fought for us to have that liberty.

So I'm making it a point between now and November to become as knowledgeable about each and every candidate that will be on my ballot as possible.

The Other Side Of The Coin

One of my co-workers is no longer one of my co-workers.

Just in case some random media person stumbles across this blog, I'm not going to go into any specific details about one of my co-workers no longer being a co-worker.

Today was my first experience being on the other side of the coin -- by that I mean from when I used to be the reporter asking the public relations/information representative why a particular person is no longer working at a particular place.

I used to hate getting the standard "I cannot discuss personnel matters" line. It drove me nuts -because you know there's more to it.

Then there's the 'knowing more to it' side. Despite the fact that I hated saying it because I did hate hearing it so much, I had to use the "I cannot discuss personnel matters" line today when talking to a reporter who called me to ask some questions about why one of my co-workers was no longer one of my co-workers.

From knowing at least some details about the situation involving this now-former co-worker, I now fully understand and empathize with my fellow public relations colleagues about why this line has become so standard and why it is the safest thing to say. You have to protect all the people involved, regardless of what side of the situation they are on, and who thinks what of whom or who allegedly did whatever, whenever. You have to protect the image of the institution. And you have to convey your message with personal and professional integrity.

So I apologize ahead of time to any of the reporters in the local newsrooms if I ever have to give you the standard "I cannot discuss personnel matters" line. But I'm on the other side of the coin now.

Still a Journalist

One of my job duties for the college I work at is to produce our semi-annual alumni magazine. When I started in this job, I decided I wanted to take the magazine into a bit of a different direction and write some substantial articles for it. I'm in the midst of the next issue right now.

Yesterday I was talking with our new VP about his background, etc. for both a press release and an article to run in the magazine. He looks at me at one point in the conversation and says "You're good at this. Most people don't get this much information out of me. Have you ever been a reporter?"

I laughed. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I have," I responded. (Those of you reading this who know me from when I worked at that newspaper or for Internet Broadcasting Systems at WYFF obviously know this already)

So I shared a little bit of my background. Then he asked if I miss it.

I really have mixed feelings on that. There are days that I do and there are days that I don't, both for various reasons. Admittedly, I often enjoyed the byline. You won't find a journalist who doesn't to some degree.

I miss the adrenaline of it. I miss getting the scoop. I miss knowing things about situations or things about people that they don't want other people to know, whether you have found this out by them telling you or through other means; free food at various functions; or getting to talk one-on-one with Dan Quayle after a politcal rally. I miss the confrontation -- again, to a degree. I miss, although I did find this a little shocking to take in the first time, hearing other reporters talk smack about the governor, minutes before he walks into an executive press briefing.

There's a certain part of me that really enjoyed sticking the First Amendment in people's faces -- working your way into a county council, city council or school board meeting that they had no intention of letting anyone else into, only for them to realize they're against the wall, you're not leaving, and they can face some serious repurcussions both from a legal and publicity standpoint.

One of the elementary schools in our coverage area lost a student (Kindergartener, he accidentally became hung on a shoestring he was playing with when it became wrapped around a clothesline and died) and a teacher (died from from a burst brain aneurysm while she was giving birth) over the course of a school year. At the end of the year, I was sitting down with the principal talking about the year and what the school (it was new that year) had accomplished. He started crying as he was talking about these two individuals and how difficult their deaths had been on the school. I don't miss situations like that. That's one of the those situations where you can almost never find what you feel are the right words to say. I don't miss being in that kind of position.

I don't miss getting to the scene of a car accident before they've gotten the white sheet out. I don't miss being called at 8 am in the morning on a Saturday by an angry school superintendent.

I was at a professional development conference in Wilmington, NC a few weeks ago with colleagues from several dozen other colleges and universities. During one of the sessions, on new media and new techniques for news delivery, the speaker, Doug Fisher, a journalism prof from the University of South Carolina advanced to a slide saying:

You are a journalist

Whether you're writing a press release or an article for a magazine, working in public information for a college basically means you're a journalist - if you were brought up in journalism or not.

The big difference is you don't have to write about bad stuff all the time. Occasionally, yes, you have to do a press release or talk about something not real pleasant like a crime on campus, or the passing of a former faculty member. But it's enjoyable for a change to tell the stories about these kids and of the faculty and staff or the school's growth and plans for the future.

The students love seeing their photos or having their names appear in the newspaper or on TV; faculty and staff enjoy it just the same. It is so rewarding to see these kids' faces light up when they know that you're there to tell the world something about them or take their photo and put it on the website or in one of our publications.

So, yeah, I used to be a reporter. But I'm still a journalist. At least according to Mr. Fisher.