You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The saying: I’d rather be lucky than good. Whoever coined that phrase was probably a lazy ass complainer who needed to say something to someone who out performed him.
A rival news director said this to me once. It pissed me off.
He called me after I aired a story of a prisoner escaping. I was walking out of a building with my camera man. We were relaxed, but ready.
I look up and say, “hey look at that.”
There in the field across the street is a scruffy faced convict, wearing black and white stripes, running through high grass.
“He’s escaping,” I scream to my camera man who instantly tapes the fleeing man.
We are suddenly in the middle of a man hunt.
I remember the buzz of excitement, the hair on my neck standing straight up.
Long story short; The man is caught, we air the exclusive footage and I eventually win a local emmy for spot news coverage.
The day the story airs, the rival news director did something so out of character, it caught me off guard.
No news director calls another station’s reporter to say anything. He doesn’t call to say you messed up, or you suck, or that was a great story. It just doesn’t happen. Never.
It did this day. It was a first for me as the newsdirector gave me a back handed compliment.
“Cordan, you once again prove it’s better to be lucky than good.”
I didn’t take it well. I got pissed. I let him know that his words were not appreciated and that I would continue to use my anger toward him to kick his station’s ass every single day. I actually told him that he was as big an ass as all his crews in the field always said he was.
That’s pretty harsh, but that’s how I roll. Lucky or Good.
I love NEWS it’s a competitive blood sport. It’s a four letter word.
I’ve had a couple of days like this recently.
And Wednesday I was lucky and good.
My assignment: Find the Fieldstone Farms Flasher. This is the 22 year old accused of exposing himself to women in three different cities over the last 2 weeks. He had just been arrested and I learn he has bonded out of jail.
So I go to the address on his booking sheet.
The problem is; the address is a 250 unit apartment complex. I don’t know what apartment he lives in.
CRAP.
So I drive around for 15 minutes looking for a vehicle matching his.
Police say the car is a blue Scion. I find one in an open space. I am sure it is his, but I don’t know which apartment he lives in. There are 3 dozen doors around me.
I begin calling police sources trying to see if I can get an exact address. I have his mug shot nearby and the camera on the floor boards behind my seat.
Suddenly I look up and see a man walking to the Scion.
“That’s him,” I exclaim to the intern who is with me.
I grab the camera, turn it on, set it to outdoor brightness and leap out of the car.
“Mr.Tullis, hey there Mr. Tullis, stop and talk to me. There are two sides to every story. Stop and tell me yours.”
The young man, wearing no shoes is startled like a squirrel crossing a road in front of a UPS truck. He begins walking rapidly toward his apartment.
I chase behind him like a hunter stalking his prey.
“They say you have been exposing yourself, is that true. Come on Mr. Tullis talk to us.”
The man says nothing. He could tell me to go to hell or flip me the bird or turn around and kick my ass. He does none of the above. The man enters his apartment and slams the door.
My heart is racing. The adrenaline is pulsing through my veins like nitrous through a carburetor.
“That was awesome,” The intern says.
I laugh. The kid learned more on a 20 second walk down with me than he did in an entire semester of journalism class.
So I get the exclusive and it leads the 6pm news.
A buddy of mine at one of the other station calls me and says, “You chased down the flasher, that was awesome.”
He also tells me that other reporters are watching my story. He says everyone in their news room turns on my channel to watch. He says my face is on every monitor in their newsroom when one reporter in particular begins making fun of some of the graphics I edited into the piece. My friend tells me that his station owned this story while I was on vacation. He says they did a bunch of stories on who is the flasher and let’s catch the flasher blah blah blah.
Then he says, I come back and WHAM I take the story from them in one moment in time.
Lucky? Good? Whose to say?
My friend says his newsdirector came out of her office and said “what’s the commotion.”
“Did you see Cordan’s story” the assignment desk operator said.
“No,” she responded.
He says people derided the story for some of its visual production values.
Then my friend says, the newsdirector pauses, and says bluntly; “Yeah, but he got the flasher didn’t he?”
My friend said it was beautiful vindication that stopped the laughter immediately.
Just hearing this made me happy.
I love the game, I love the hunt. Few jobs exist where you can go out and you either win or lose every day, sometimes several times a day.
Sure it is good to be lucky, but I like to say that you have to make your luck.
I made it the day the prisoner escaped in front of me. I made my luck on this day.
I didn’t have to show up at his car when I did. He didn’t have to come out to his car when he did.
It was the fickle winds of journalistic fate blowing my way.
Lucky? Good? Hmmm?
Lesson learned: It’s better to be lucky than good. It’s also good to be good.
And that is crazy.