Goin' solo

Today was my first try working as a solo MMJ. One of my KPIX colleagues, Mike Sugerman, recommends MMJs only go to two places for a story because time is so limited. When MMJs are driving, shooting video and editing, they’re not reporting, so the day goes by quickly.

Today’s story idea was ideal for MMJ work following Mike’s theory; it was the debate in the small town of Belvedere over increasing the police force from four officers to five. My video and interviews were all within the town, which sits just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge. To get:

1. A resident who wants to increase the force to increase the safety;
2. A member of the police department to explain why not increasing the force doesn’t put residents in danger;
3. Video of police cars and nice houses (this is a really ritzy place).

So that was the plan, and MMJs should always establish a plan so they know where they’re going. Executing the plan is another matter. Before leaving the station, I made several calls, but had to leave messages. So I hopped in the car, hoping to track someone down. After a 40-minute drive, I ended up knocking on doors, to no avail. Now the pressure started to increase, as the minutes ticked away, with no one to interview.

In the end, my messages were heard and I got the interviews I needed. Still, the stress of the unknown is something everyone in TV, and especially MMJs, needs to expect, deal with and truly thrive upon.

As I shot the story as an MMJ, I recalled some of the positives of being in total control of the story. When MMJs think of lines they want to include in their voice tracks, they’re able to shoot them right away – cutaways, broll, standups, whatever. And sometimes, the line comes to you as you're looking through the viewfinder.

Writing the story has proven to be the most difficult part of jumping back into the TV business after two years away. The thoughts don’t flow as easily as they do when one writes stories every day for weeks, months, years on end. The solution is to get back to basics and focus on what beginning reporters should turn to: What’s new? What’s different? What’s the latest? What surprised or impressed you? Those are all basic questions whose answers can help a writer reaching for a way to organize a story.

What does come back quickly is the technology. If you’ve gotten the shooting and non-linear editing down once, you can do it again. Yes, it is like riding a bike.

Takeaways:

1. Uncertainty is stressful and also to be expected. There’s no changing that.
2. You can’t go wrong by focusing on what’s new, what’s different, what’s surprising. These are elementary principles that stand no matter which market you’re in.
3. Get good at the technology. The better you are at pushing the buttons, the better your journalism will be because you’ll have more time to focus on storytelling.

"Show me, don't tell me."

On my first day back on the air I got to work with a photographer, and good thing, too. The assignment was to drive an hour north from San Francisco to Sonoma County to track down a teenager accused of using stolen credit cards to rent a sports car for $13,000 and a luxury home for $28,000.

With a photographer driving, I was able to make calls to the swindled rental car company and to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. Both calls helped me build a solid understanding of the background to the story and also allowed me to set up an on-camera interview with the sheriff’s investigator. Had I been working as an MMJ on my own, none of those calls would have been made ahead of time, and the interviews might have been missed.

While the elements to the story were intriguing – a high-rolling teenager who deputies say faked his way into some pretty nice stuff – there was a problem: hardly any video. The basic elements were interviews with the authorities and still photos of the car. No houses, no credit cards, no arrest, no court appearance.

In the end, we fleshed out the package with a little Ferris Buehler movie video (kid bluffs his way into driving a killer car) and broll at the suspect’s neighborhood. But the lesson I was reminded of is a key element to working in local TV news: you must have video to cover everything you say. In other words: “show me, don’t’ tell me.”

I found writing the story a little trying as many of the lines I wanted to use didn’t work because there was no video. Video is the beauty of TV that often allows you to be really creative, but it's also limiting. Without video you just cannot say certain things.

Takeaways:

1. “Show me, don’t tell me” is an inviolable tenet of TV reporting. No video? Figure out another way to say it or leave it for the live shot or leave it out.
2. Use drive time to your advantage when you’re with a photographer by fleshing out potential leads. As a solo MMJ, you don’t have that luxury.

Getting started early

 

The idea was to spend four days practicing with the camera and editing software to get up to speed for a Monday, June 9th start date. But sitting in the morning meeting today, I re-discovered one of the tenets of local television news: be prepared for anything. 

Instead of get up to speed, it was get out the door to track down a story.

In the end this story fell through, but I was reminded of how simple the formula is for making TV; it really isn’t rocket science. The way you make TV is to find people and talk to them. Finding people isn’t always easy. Sometimes they come to you served on a platter in the form of a press conference, but other times you have to hunt for them, using the internet and guile and persistence.

In this case I tried to track down someone who had recently moved from Hawaii to the Bay Area, but whose moving company had “lost” some of her possessions. Someone new to the area is a little difficult to track, because there’s no current address or phone number. But still, there are options, none of which are all that complicated:

1.    Go to the police department to get the missing/stolen property report. First clerk: “call the media line.” Wait two hours, go back, and the second clerk was much more helpful. She searched the report database, but still, no luck.

2.    Call a bunch of Hawaii-to-mainland moving companies, both in the Bay Area and Honolulu. This didn’t turn up much, but I did learn it can take anywhere from two to five weeks to move from Hawaii to California, and it’s best to put all your stuff in a single container – don’t share it with another mover. That’s how stuff gets “lost.”

3.    See if any of her relatives live in the Bay Area. Here the station assignment desk had some luck with internet and database searches – two siblings, with phone numbers and addresses. No answers on the phones. No answer at a knock on the brother’s apartment door.

On to the sister’s house – no answer to a knock on the door, but there was a car in the neighbor’s driveway. This guy turned out to be really friendly, and told me my potential interview had moved away. Darn. BUT (and there’s often a “but” if you keep asking), the current occupants were good friends with the people who’d moved out and he’d be happy to pass along my phone number.

Because there was still time in the day, back to the first house, and this time someone answered, but not the guy I was looking for – he’d moved away, too.

After about 6 hours of driving and calling and internet searching and cajoling and knocking the doors of people I didn’t know – nothing. But that’s the way you do it – and, so often, it works.

Takeaways:

1.    Embrace the unpredictability of TV news. That’s the way it is, so roll with it. Don’t try to organize it or limit it or change it. You can’t. Decide you enjoy it.

2.    Don’t give up. Finding elements to your story is just a matter of effort; a little more difficult than searching for the next coffee shop on Google maps or asking the person next to you on the bus where’s a good place to eat, but not a whole lot different.

KPIX redux

I'm headed back to San Francisco tomorrow for a two-week stint as a reporter at KPIX, the CBS station where I worked for nearly 10 years. It's been two years since the last time I was there, out on the streets reporting, shooting editing and telling stories. This is where I'll tell you about what's happening - the interesting people, the demanding deadlines and the technological juggling act that is being a multi-media journalist. I hope to show you a few of the stories here, too. #backinthesaddle