You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The variety of news at any given time.
Hard and soft and poignant and lame.
News comes in every flavor of the rainbow. It’s a grab bag, a box of chocolates.
On this night, I’m working assidulously on a story about baby organ donation.
My co-workers are covering a fallen soldier remembered. A 3rd comrade in news ends up working an officer involved shooting where the good guys kill the bad guy.
Organ Donation. Fallen Soldier. Police shootout. It’s not quite Baskin Robins but it’s pretty random.
That’s diverse. Can you imagine doing that at your work? For my tax accountant that would be like adding underwater, in a hail storm and at a strip club.
Some jobs involve an easy chair and a pencil.
News is combat with a camera.
I am wearing head phones and staring at my editing screen. My world is somewhat insulated. In my headphones I hear words like gift and organs and life saving. I see images of a child smiling and a creep walking into the courthouse wearing a bullet proof vest and handcuffs.
Though my headphones are loud, I am not in a sound proof box. I sense the energy going on around me. It is blowing like a storm front, pushing molecules of electrified energy across my skin.
Breaking news is like this. It’s a that new car smell. It’s a cold shower in the morning. It’s a slap in the face.
A police involved shooting is not a leaf slowly falling from a tree. It is not soft or silent or magically charming.
It is a marching band inside a closet. It is a branch crashing down on a stained glass window.
I never hear the call on the scanner, but I sense something is going on.
Years of experience tell me there is breaking news.
I can feel a change in the air. It’s like a man with bad knees knows when the cold weather is coming.
The assignment editor walks around the photog pit twice with a deliberate walk. She is anxious, like an expectant father, like a performer about to walk a tight rope over Niagra Falls.
She doesn’t say anything, but she is determined, focused, moving with purpose. She is looking for something, someone.
She never looks at me. It’s as if I am off limits. I’m a journalistic China Doll behind a velvet rope.
It’s strange. Usually, a scanner call like this results in anyone in the line of sight being sent out the door. Shots fired, officer involved shooting? These are no holds barred kind of scanner calls.
But there is a bubble of calm around me. I hear words like officer involved and possible fatal.
I keep waiting for the yo yo of news to jerk me out of my seat.
New news almost always trumps old news.
I am working on old news. It should get washed away like chalk on a sidewalk.
My story is sad and poignant and lead many a news cast over the last news cycle. An 8 month old child killed by a monster.
It’s the same story – different verse.
I find out the child is on life support long enough to provide organs for other recipients.
It is a positive end to an otherwise awful story.
I had to fight for this story.
When I 1st pitch it, newsroom leaders keep saying “well, what’s different about it?”
What’s different about a child about to die?
That question is harsh. It assaults the senses like AC/DC at a wake.
But they are right. What is new about it? Why tell it? It’s sadly, a rather ubiquitous topic.
If it was a dog thrown against a wall, everyone would be sad. Everyone would boo hoo and people in Autstralia and Germany would join forces on line and try and run the man out of town on a rail.
But a child?
The animal fanatics are busy trying to save a squirel with a nose bleed. Where is PETA when a child dies a senseless death?
News leaders tell me the ecstasy story I found is a better story. It involves a school employee.
I am a little surprised.
I hold up the picture of the child. She is beautiful. She is on a photographer’s perch, wearing a set of wings.
It’s so symbolic, it’s almost hard to look at.
“Well you better get someone from the family,” the assistant news director says with a poisonous scowl.
She doesn’t like my journalistic challenge. She dares me to find a relative and put some emotion in the story.
“It’s only 2pm,” I say looking at my watch. “we have 8 hours to find someone.”
I know that’s not exactly true. I also know this story could be a big fat bust.
A child close to death? Families don’t always roll out the red carpet for tragedies like this.
I head out the door with a chip on my shoulder. I have something to prove.
After 25 years, why in the world do I still need to prove myself to these dolts.
They sit on their rears, they wait for news to come to them on cell phones and tweets and through their computer monitors.
They experience the world through electronics. I touch lives. I feel the pain.
I am like a country doctor sticking my arm up a cow’s butt, pulling the breeched news story into the new world.
The difference between inside and outside people is staggering.
To make a long story short, I get a relative’s number. I call. The great aunt says OK.
It could have been brain surgery. Instead this story is add water and stir.
Beautiful pictures of a baby, coupled with sad relative, add in some cop sound and bam; lead story.
“Nice job,” they will all say when I get back. “We never doubted you.”
I smile, but they doubted me. News always doubts you. You have to prove it every single day. Sometimes you only get one news cast before you have to prove it to the doubting thomases.
So I finish editing the story. The story dies. She will be an organ donor helping as many as 8 other people around the country.
I go home feeling good about my story.
I turn on the news and see my colleague live at a downtown street filled with blue lights.
He talks about the gunman holding the weapon to his head and police blowing him away.
It is clearly the lead story. It is breaking and wild and happening now.
My story is after the 1st commercial break.
That’s a good place for it.
I did the family a service by telling the little girl’s story.
She lived a short time on this Earth, but she touched more lives than many of us ever will.
The family is sad, but they should also be proud.
A new angel has her wings.
News can also bring solace to those wallowing in despair.
Life’s crazy™