You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
A shots fired call at a school.
It abrupt. It’s upsetting. It’s unsettling. It gets your attention like throwing a mason jar of blood through a stain glass window.
It’s a Friday morning and suddenly the news room is buzzing.
Either a phone call comes in, or a face book post is delivered, perhaps both, but the energy rises ten fold.
I pop my head up from my cubicle and look around.
It’s early. The morning crew wearing hats and scarves and feety pajamas from an over night shift is beginning to percolate.
I’m the first reporter in the building. That can be a bad thing when there is breaking news and there is nobody else in sight.
Shots fired in a school is like snorting espresso in a hurricane.
My senses are energized, cartoon like. My nerve endings are a Batman episode.
BAM. POP. ZOWIE.
I sense the tension. I have heard this scanner call before. It is unmistakable.
It’s not a heart attack call. It’s not a rectal bleed. It’s not a drunk on a park bench.
It’s serious, it’s a deal breaker. It can change a Friday forever.
I hope there is nothing to it. I know that initial reports will be nebulous.
Dispatchers will either say they don’t know what’s happening or they can’t say what’s happening.
Either way, we will have to react.
I just arrived. I just turned everything on. Too bad. I’m about to become a paper air plane in the wind.
I start powering down my computer. I all ready know. It’s ground-hog day. I’ve been here before.
The morning producer comes to my cubicle.
“Did you hear?”
“I heard.”
“It could be B.S.” he says.
“But then again it could be real,” I say.
“Shelbyville is a long way to go,” His words trail off.
I know what he is saying. It’s an hour away. It’s one of those drive and drive and drive to the nearest cities and then take a four lane road and a cow pasture the rest of the way.
“Do you want to go?” he asks.
“No,” I say
“Ok,” he says starting to walk away
“Hey, come here.”
He returns.
“Do I want to go? No. Do I have to go? yes.”
I stand up. “I’ll start heading that way. If it is bogus, call and turn me around.”
I look at the news room. The assignment desk is a bee hive. The producers are on phones. The energy level is a rattle snake about to strike.
“If it’s for real,” I shout. “Send everyone.”
They nod.
I leave the news room.
The GPS says I have an hour drive.
I wish my GPS could tell me if this is real, if kids are shot, if parents are weeping in the parking lot.
I hate school shootings, I think as I head out of the parking lot.
I get on I-24 and head East. I’m doing 85 mph.
My mind is racing.
What will I do when I get there? How many ambulances are blocking the front entrance? Will police allow me in? Will parents be on the ground crying?
Just then, the newsroom calls.
The internet girl is on the line.
“The sheriff confirms that the facebook accounts are wrong. Nobody is shot. There has not been a shooting or even a gunman. It’s a hoax,” she says.
I’m relieved. I back off the gas pedal.
“It turns out a 15 year old made a crank call to 911,” she says.
“Do they want me to keep going?” I ask, all ready knowing the answer.
“Yes. Continue on. you’re live for 11 am”
I hang up and shake my head.
I’m conflicted. This is a hoax. It’s fake. It’s like a bomb threat, it’s like a suicide. In old school Journalism, that’s a story that you don’t cover. Could it be interesting? Yes. Could it upset lives? You bet. But should we report it? Conventional Old School Journalism has always said no.
But those days are gone. The internet changed everything. With the prevalence of social media and instant messaging, the wild west has returned to the broadcast journalism frontier.
So here I am on the interstate going 75 mph for the next hour, by myself, a one man band, to a story that Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite and Peter Jennings would tell you IS NOT A STORY.
An hour is a long time to mull a story in your head. Especially when that story is incredulous at best.
I think about the components. An entire high school on lock down. 1,250 students affected. Twice that many parents worrying. Teachers forced into the role of emergency responders. Emergency responders forced into the role of Rambo. A single 911 call has disrupted an entire tiny community.
I get it. But I’m old school. Classically trained. In the old days before the wild west of Facebook and Twitter, we didn’t cover hoaxes and suicides.
It was an easy rule to live by. The premise? Giving them air time just promotes the next nut job to do more nutty stuff.
But this new generation fueled by nescience and social media, isn’t so erudite.
Facebook is the new bible with disciples who are drawn to information even if it is wrong.
I arrive and there are hundreds of people outside the school.My adrenaline begins to percolate. I start to get that jam I always get.
Parents are lined up around the building. Students are filing through the parking lot. There are a few police cars left. I see uniformed officers milling about. There’s an energy here, but it is calm.
I grab my gear and head into the mouth of the lion.
I am excited, and angry.
Why am I excited? Because I am first on the scene and I about to do what I do.
Why am I angry? Because I am alone. I am a one man band on the biggest story of the day. I am in market 29 and I am carrying my own camera and microphone wearing a white collar shirt and french cuff links. It just feels wrong. Like I’m a truck driver wearing a tuxedo.
I walk up to the first group moving toward me.
“What happened here?” I ask the first adult I see.
“A hoax 911 call,” the woman says not stopping.
I go up to more parents in line. They are waiting to get their children and bring them home.
“What are they telling you?”
“Not much,” one man says.
“What happened?” I probe further.
He turns his head and folds his arms. He clearly wants no part of me.
Suddenly a man with a stern look crosses through the crowd.
“Who are you with?” he says.
“I’m with the news. Who are you?” I retort in kind, showing him as much love as an al qaeda terrorist for an American girly magazine.
“Come with me,” he says rather sternly.
He puts his hand on my shoulder. I don’t like it.
I turn the camera toward him.
“Who are you?”
“I’m with the school,” he responds sharply, trying to direct me away from the line of parents.
“What’s going on here?” I ask.
He never gives me a name, just says he is with the school.
“We have a protocol,” he says like that’s the magic phrase that will calm this hungry news wolf.
I go with him. I am not so much obeying him, as using him as a way to get to the front of the school for new and unique pictures.
I shoot the parents in line and the front of the school as we walk forward.
“So what’s going on here,” I say turning the camera on him. “Last we heard there was a school gunman and then I heard it was a hoax?”
His demeanor relaxes.
“It was a hoax. Thank God.”
He suddenly relaxes. He seems like a pretty good guy. He’s understandably tense from a nightmare morning.
As we enter the foyer of the school, I have flashbacks of going to the principal’s office.
I won’t have to go that far.
The principal and a horde of law men are feverishly coordinating the post hoax.
The school representative introduces me to the principal. I say hello. He says hello.
I look around the foyer. There are parents and law men and kids reuniting with loved ones. Before I can establish a dialogue, I’m suddenly escorted out of the lobby.
Suddenly I am asked to wait outside.
What was the purpose of that, I wonder.
I move outside, a little perturbed and begin talking to other parents.
A uniformed deputy approaches me and tells me I have to get off the campus.
All this ridiculousness to tell me that, I think.
“Where to?,” I say pointing the camera in his face.
He doesn’t like the camera. I don’t care. He doesn’t like my tone. He hasn’t even seen tone yet.
“The superintendent will talk to you when he’s ready, ” he says pointing to the public street 100 yards away.
I focus on his southern boy’s jaw. “So a 1000 citizens of the United States of America can be all over this place and you’re gonna move me back because I have a camera?”
He looks at me angrily.
It’s like two old school bulls squaring off.
He says nothing.
I’m not so quiet.
“I think you had better go up the chain of command and find me someone I can talk to about that. Why don’t you go get me the superintendent.”
He stares at me, then walks away. I will not see him again.
I stay on the outside of the school and get great interviews with parents and students.
A woman tells me she was in the school when SWAT units hit the door informing school staff that there was a threat. She said she was hustled into parking lot and surrounded by troopers and arriving law men.
I will talk to the year book editor who will tell me about shooting video of arriving officers clutching their weapons. She will take pictures of students huddled in the theater, talking in hushed whispers.
By this time 2 of my fellow co-workers arrive.
Most of the heavy lifting is done and we start gearing up for the 11 am live shot.
Though we all work at the same station, my equipment and their equipment doesn’t seem compatible.
I don’t care.
I don’t even have an ear piece. I stand in front of the camera and I day dream.
“One minute,” My camera man says, taking cues from the production booth.
I can’t hear any of this confusion. I look around at the scene. It’s been more than an hour since I arrived. Most of the parents and law enforcement officers are gone.
I think about the drive here at 90 mph. I think about how Facebook fanned the flames and made a thousand people nervous based on no substantiated information. I think about the reasons for going and then all the reasons we should have turned around.
“30 seconds,” my camera man says.
I am strangely relaxed. Nobody shot. Nobody hurt. No gunman. No gun. It’s a non story. What’s to be nervous about.
My camera man points at me signaling I’m on.
“Good afternoon. The scene is calm now, but that wasn’t the case at 7:45 this morning….”
I pause knowing I am about to tell a story that perhaps shouldn’t be told, but at least it will have a happy ending.
Life’s Crazy™