Photo Finish Part VIII...Finished

This was a very busy day. It was the first time I'd worked with Reporter Rob Low, but not my first time with Photog Kyl. We were working on a story about rules the state of Kansas had about owning and operating a daycare. This was after a string of about 3 babies dying in 3 different daycares in the state in a very short period of time. The woman being interviewed in both pictures lost her child in a Kansas daycare, she's now an advocate for Lexie's law...a law cracking down on daycare restrictions.

Fox wasn't the only station with this idea and we had to share our subject and interview site with Bev Chapman from Channel 9. While we were waiting for our interview subject, Kim, to show up we talked with Bev and compared our stations. Both stations are seeing reporters being used for just more than telling stories and because of budget cuts they're being required to do more for the same or even in some cases, less pay.

This was a sobering realization for me. I had seen how things were at Fox, there had been layoffs for editors and managers that were low on the totem pole. I'd seen everyone at the station take, or prepare to take a furlough to avoid further pay cuts. I'd seen how short staffed that left us. But the talk with Bev truly made me realize that the trouble isn't localized...it's industry wide. And to get and keep a job in this market, you've got to stay on your toes.

I've got some work to do. But I know that with my Mizzou education, I'm more than capable of it.

Photo Finish Part VII

I took these pictures after another vo/sot I worked on. The man in the picture is another photog, David Stonebraker. We all called him Stoney. Something about this shoot in particular sticks in my mind, and I'm not sure why. The buildings are part of an old, abandoned hospital in Raytown, Mo. A pastor and his church group bought the building. And for quite a hefty chunk of change I might add. The building had been abandoned for ten years and had run down and been broken into, vandalized, and just all around forgotten. The group bought it to turn it into a homeless shelter for families stuck in slums and long term motels. There will be individual units for each family with multiple bedrooms, bathrooms, and even a kitchen. The family is allowed to stay in the unit as long as they adhere to the group's program...they have to find employment, and start a savings plan to provide for their family. They'll have meetings with financial advisers and have to show how much they're saving, and what they're saving up for. This is all in hopes to get them back on their feet. As long as they follow the program, they'll have a home with the church group until they can afford to be back out on their own again.

I'm still not sure why this vo/sot has stuck with me. I think it's the enormity of what that group was undertaking. And the hope that something good would come out of it.

Photo Finish Part VI

This picture isn't the best of quality, I had to do a lot of enhancing on it so you can see the wall behind the computer. But I think it's worth it because it's a fun story.

This is the inside of one of the edit/logging bays at the station. That colorful decoration you see on the wall...tape labels. FOX-4 was bought away from Fox network last September. That meant they didn't get the same tech updates network stations did, so they're still editing off of old tape decks. Each story when it's finished get put on its own tape and is assigned a label that's color specific to the show it's going in. That tape is then given to another editor who creates a master tape for the control room. Somebody before my time took those colored tape labels and gave the bay a very unique wallpaper.

When I first started at the station it was a running joke that "The Mizzou Intern doesn't know how to use a tape deck...yet." They just thought that was hilarious.

But now I do...and I told them if they ever wanted to come out of the stone age and learn capture card to give me a call.

Photo Finish Part V

I took this picture the first time I was sent out with my own photographer to pick up a Vo/Sot. I'm wanting to say this was taken on a Monday...the previous Saturday a man checks out of a KC Hospital and has no ride home...so...he decides to take one. After looking around he finds an empty MAST Ambulance sitting in a driveway with the keys in it...so he takes it. But, what he didn't know was that all emergency vehicles are equipped with an internal GPS so authorities were able to track his progress through the city. Police caught up with him and the man took off on a high speed chase down the highway. The chase ended in Independence where Police threw out stop sticks. When the man in the ambulance ran over them, he lost control and hit a very large tree. As you can see from the picture, it completely totaled the ambulance. After that...the man took his third ride in an ambulance in a period of less than 24 hours, just this time he was handcuffed to a gurney.

In this case the station was playing catch-up. Other stations in the area aired the piece when it happened, late Saturday night into Sunday morning. But because we were short staffed, we didn't have a Photog to go shoot it. The photographer I was working with that day, Pat Holloway, has more contacts with law enforcement than any reporter I dealt with this summer. She was able to get in touch with a supervisor at MAST who not only gave us an interview (that I got to conduct) but also let us into the back lot of the building to see the damaged ambulance.

Photo Finish Part IV

The day these pictures were taken started out innocent enough. I was sent out with Reporter Monica Evans and photog Ron on a story about new ADA Requirements and a conference discussing them going on at the Hyatt Regency. In the middle of our first interview we get an urgent call from our newsroom reassigning us to breaking news. A call came over the scanner about a shooting in Fairway, KS, just a short distance from our station. What made this more than your garden variety KC shooting (it's sad that I can say a shooting in KC is garden variety) is that Fairway is a sleepy, upscale neighborhood where nothing ever happens. We get there just as the police were starting a conference on what happened. A crew had been painting a house just a little ways down from where we were standing (we weren't allowed any closer) when a man drove up and started an argument with a female painter. He then proceeded to shoot her and flee the scene. We interviewed everybody humanly possible. We got talked to two police officers on the scene and a neighbor who was able to tell us who lived in the house that was being painted. While the other reporters were interviewing another person who lived nearby, Monica walked off a ways and was on the phone with our newsroom...she comes back a few minutes later as all of the news crews were packing up to leave. The police told us they wouldn't have anything more for us for a few hours. Monica used the info the first neighbor gave us, got someone at the station to run a track on the name and house number...and came up with a phone number. After the last news truck pulled away, the homeowners and one of the painters came out to give us an interview and tell us what happened.

The story was, a man had pulled up to the house, jumped out, and started arguing with a female painter and a male painter (he was the one there to talk to us). The man shot the female and the male painter took off running. The man and female painter had just gone though a divorce. The male painter...was the female's new boyfriend. The woman died at the hospital a few hours later of a gunshot wound to the head. The man was later apprehended in another state. And we were the only station with the interview describing how it all happened.

Photo Finish Part III

Once again with Tess and Photographer Randy Davis, this story was about a new restaurant opening in the Crossroads District in Downtown KC. The woman being interviewed in the picture was upset because of rumors circulating about her business. People had been spreading rumors and circulating what she called false ads claiming it was going to be an "ethnic nightclub" when she was claiming it was a restaurant. Because of the rumors, her neighbors in the crossroads were blocking her application for a liquor license. The neighborhood didn't want a "hip hop club" and the most effective way of blocking it was to cut off their booze. The owner did the interview in hopes of convincing neighbors and the public that she wasn't opening a club. I just hope the giant dance floor and disco ball you can see above Randy didn't hurt her case any...

Photo Finish Part II

It's hard to see because the old version of the iPhone doesn't have s zoom function, but the guy standing in the middle in the photo on the left is KC Mayor Mark Funkhouser. This picture was taken in City Hall in the middle of a Council meeting where heated discussion was going on b/c of disputes on stimulus money going to a private housing project. It ended with a council member, city attorney, and Mayor Funk in a shouting match over policy and voting rules.
It was interesting to look around the room after the meeting had started. I grew up in Kansas City, watching Kansas City late night news. And as I scanned the rows it was pretty much a who's who in political reporting. I was there with Tess Koppelman, but also there was Michael Mahoney from Channel 9 and several others I recognized. After the meeting was over it was a short sprint to get a quick comment from a council person and then down to the live truck to do some fast editing to get the piece on the air. During the 5:00 show there was a line-up of reporters and live trucks alongside city hall because it was everybody's lead story of the night.

So you wanna see what I saw?

From my iPhone...



This was taken on either my second or third day on the job. The reporter is Tess Koppelman. Ron was our Photog. The woman in the middle of the frame is Regina Dinwiddie. Google her name...she has an...interesting story. Dinwiddie was a friend of Scott Roeder. Roder is the man in custody charge with the murder of Wichita, Ks. abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. This was just a day or two after the murder. Dinwiddie spoke about protesting with Roeder and things she had seen him do to try and get under abortion provider's skin. She told a story about him standing outside of a clinic (not Tiller's) all day one day, then walking in and asking to see the doctor. When he came out Roeder looked him up and down and said "Ok, now I know what you look like." and turned and left. Dinwidde spoke about how Roeder was both courageous and crazy. She even said she was glad Tiller was dead. That's the first time in my life I've ever heard a person say they were glad someone was dead...no matter the reason.

Looking Back

I've had a few days off now that my internship is over to sit and think about the experience...

And overall it was a good one. I accomplished exactly what I wanted to...I got a look inside a non-University operated station. And I saw EVERYTHING.

I saw how paid reporters go about contacting sources. I saw what an experienced Rolodex should look like...and wow. Soooo many contacts. I saw different preferences for both questioning subjects and writing stories. Every reporter does it differently...

I saw what it's like to work with a true union photog. And in some cases it was exactly what Greeley warned about. In others, it was fun. But ps...don't ever think about touching their cameras...even if they do still shoot entirely with tape.

I saw how easy it was for an experienced producer to sit down, stack an hour long show...sometimes two at once...and manage to write teases, vo/sots and extra pieces that came of the wire. All of the national news we did came down from our FOX, CNN, and AP wires and since FOX didn't have a nightly news report...a producer condensed it all to put it out on our show. Talk about an amazing feat of choreography...producers would also make amazing event planners.

I got to see how an independent web crew worked to put a website together. It's one thing to write print versions of all the stories and important vo/sots, and to post weather. But it's an entirely different thing to build a website that "works for you." Ours had so many helpful features from a gas tracker, to special recipes, to a job posting site. They even had a google map representation listing garage sales in the area with small blurbs people sent in on what they had to offer. Working with those guys let me see a different side of convergence. And they gave me a little inspiration for when it comes to starting a website of my own.

But that wasn't all I saw.

I saw the politics of the newsroom. The MU kU rivalry...rediculous. There was one person who refused to shake my hand when he found out I was attending Mizzou.

I saw furloughs, I saw layoffs, I saw people take pay cuts. I was there in the middle of their health insurance change over from one program, to a cheaper program. I saw contract negotiations. Everything I wouldn't have gotten to see at KOMU. And it was a sobering reality.

But I'm all the better for seeing it.

Because now I know what to expect from a real job. And that was my goal in this internship.