Media Hits Another Low Point
About 20 years ago, when I was a senior in college, in between the daytime when I was kicking Bluey's ass in Fireball and the nights I was spending at the bar, I had an intership in the newsroom of the only television station in a small city. We were in a mostly rural area that didn't have a lot of real news, and whatever real news happened was usually covered by the paid reporters. I spent a lot of time monitoring wire stories and transmissions of network news packages.
We had a police radio in the station. If something that sounded like it was news was happening, we would jump in a car and drive to the scene. One time a fire report came over, and it sounded promising so a cameraman and I drove to the scene.
When we got there, nothing was happening, but all the local yokels came out because we were in a car with the station's logo on it. The cameraman and I got separated, and one of the yokels asked me if I wanted to shoot video of a big pumpkin growing in his back yard.
I was a rookie, and I didn't want to go back to the station with nothing, so I found the cameraman and asked him if he wanted to shoot the footage.
He gave me an extremely pained look, one that immediately made me realize what a stupid question I was asking. What was the news value of a huge pumpkin? What was the compelling story, "Pumpkin grows, is ready to be harvested"? How was I going to shoot and edit 30 seconds of footage on that, let alone write the accompanying story that anybody would care about? In retrospect, this was probably the best lesson I learned during the internship; think about the news value of what you are doing, rather than do a story on anything that comes your way.
Today, I noticed that MSNBC.com (not some local one station town) posted a story (with video!) about a 330 pound pumpkin. (You can click on the title if you want to see the story, but you will have to sit through a PDA about ADHD (which no one with ADHD would sit through) and the story is every bit as exciting as I made it sound.)
So I guess the lesson was this. I wasn't wrong to question my judgment 20 years ago. Rather, I was a visionary who was ahead of his time, and the small minds around me couldn't see the superior skills I had in picking stories. I guess NBC will be calling me any day now. There's a really cool puddle near my house, maybe we can do an hour special on it.
We had a police radio in the station. If something that sounded like it was news was happening, we would jump in a car and drive to the scene. One time a fire report came over, and it sounded promising so a cameraman and I drove to the scene.
When we got there, nothing was happening, but all the local yokels came out because we were in a car with the station's logo on it. The cameraman and I got separated, and one of the yokels asked me if I wanted to shoot video of a big pumpkin growing in his back yard.
I was a rookie, and I didn't want to go back to the station with nothing, so I found the cameraman and asked him if he wanted to shoot the footage.
He gave me an extremely pained look, one that immediately made me realize what a stupid question I was asking. What was the news value of a huge pumpkin? What was the compelling story, "Pumpkin grows, is ready to be harvested"? How was I going to shoot and edit 30 seconds of footage on that, let alone write the accompanying story that anybody would care about? In retrospect, this was probably the best lesson I learned during the internship; think about the news value of what you are doing, rather than do a story on anything that comes your way.
Today, I noticed that MSNBC.com (not some local one station town) posted a story (with video!) about a 330 pound pumpkin. (You can click on the title if you want to see the story, but you will have to sit through a PDA about ADHD (which no one with ADHD would sit through) and the story is every bit as exciting as I made it sound.)
So I guess the lesson was this. I wasn't wrong to question my judgment 20 years ago. Rather, I was a visionary who was ahead of his time, and the small minds around me couldn't see the superior skills I had in picking stories. I guess NBC will be calling me any day now. There's a really cool puddle near my house, maybe we can do an hour special on it.
posted by Beukey @ 5:04 PM
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