My American Hour: Listening to 'This American Life'

My goodness...first off...I cannot believe 'This American Life' could devote an hour long to a news story called 'Petty Tyrant.' I mean this in a good way. That seems like something only shows like '60 Minutes' or '20/20' could do on television. If only great television shows can do one news story and tell it for one hour, I'm sure only great radio shows can do the same thing. Think how much time that would take. It would have to take an incredible amount of work, and if only one reporter tells the story, he or she would have to devote large quantities of time to the piece each and every day. Hopefully he or she wouldn't have to edit the thing too!

I'll be honest. I had never listened to a podcast before on 'This American Life.' Off the bat, you can see how a television story and a radio story differ. First, you usually hear more music as nat sound in your radio story than in your T.V. story. Television has the luxury of using nat sound to help describe a situation without necessarily saying something about it. In radio, you don't have the television there to make it easier for the viewer to understand. You have to describe the scene right before if you want to use nats. At one point during the piece, I heard the reporter say "That's Carl Stroc." It sounded like she described the person as if we could see them. I wonder whether or not she meant to do that. I also noticed a little bit more music in this piece than I'd probably here if somebody decided to do an hour long television story on it. Because radio journalists don't use as much nat sound, they need music to balance that out. After her lead, the reporter put in a five second music nat pop. I loved it.

If anyone knows why NPR reporters speak in such a monotone voice to where a story can put you to sleep, please let me know. I've wondered this before...why people doing stories for this station have no inflection or anything else. Then again, anybody who does public radio never really speaks with much inflection. I find that interesting more than anything else. Also, I know this piece goes on for an entire hour, but the anchor intro goes on for five minutes!!!! Holy cow. I'm not sure a television show could ever get away with an anchor intro that lasted that long. The anchor intro also sounded so informal, so conversational. It reminded me of my best friend standing five feet away from me telling me something.

I also did see some similarities between it and television. I heard a soundbite where the reporter followed it up with a couple more questions. I know this would definitely happen in a television story as well, and I know if this were, it would have been a shot with both the reporter and the source in it. You can tell because you can hear the reporter's voice. If a photographer would just do a closeup on the man telling the reporter something, you'd be hearing a constant voice from somewhere else but not being able to see it would be weird.

I also feel like I can tell where the commercials start in this piece. The reporter often ended with some nat sound and faded it out. I'm sure in radio fading out music and fading it back in has to be much more important than doing that in television. One final note with the music, it also seemed very 'light hearted' for such a serious story. I don't think a television reporter would ever use such 'cheery music' about a boss who pretends to have sex with his secretaries. All in all, you can see how a piece in radio transitions and flows differently than a piece in television. Hearing these challenges gives me a greater amount of respect for those that do radio.

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Steve Raucci: the man that ridiculed his coworkers.
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Another ethical issue

As I sit here writing about another personal news situation where I found myself questioning my ethics afterwards, I think about my past Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, when I covered the state auditor race in Missouri and Republican challenger Tom Schweich's party. I got to Clayton, a St. Louis suburb, where he held his watch party, and I stayed there until about 12:30 Wednesday morning. Tom only talked at a couple of points during the night, and each of them didn't last very long. He came out at one point and told the crowd he and his men were still in the back 'crunching the numbers' and that he appreciated everyone coming out. Later on in the night, he came out a second time to tell the smaller crowd that he didn't see how Democratic incumbent Susan Montee could come back. The sticky situation of the night came next.

After he came out a second time, I got in position for him to address the crowd for a third time and to tell them he'd won. We kept waiting and waiting, and he didn't want to say anything before the official results were in. Keep in mind, the restaurant where his party took place didn't have any huge barriers between the 'war room' in the back and all the people drinking in front. So after about five minutes, I decided to go back to the room where Schweich and his men had been the entire night. Sure enough, by the time I got back there, Schweich and Montee were talking over the phone. Montee had called to concede the race.

I started recording as soon as possible and once he hung up the phone, he jumped up in the air and flailed both his arms upward in celebration. It looked rather funny to the outsider because you don't see that type of reaction every day. After coming out the door, he told me not to use that shot. He said he hadn't seen the camera. I laughed because he seemed so excited right after he hung up the phone. By no means did he seem vicious when he told me this. Now though, came decision time. 

As a journalist, what do I do in a situation like this? I just got my best shot of the night. The scene seemed very light hearted. Do I persuade Tom into letting me use it? Not say anything and just laugh it off? Or do I not use the video at all? I went with option number two. I decided to use the video because I felt like I hadn't defamed him. Also, I knew Schweich would never see the video. He lives outside St. Louis. I knew my consequences would probably be fairly slim.

Also, my teacher told me in class, if a source does something and then tells you not to use it, it still counts as 'on the record.' However, if I had to do it again, I would have told Schweich what he did still counted as 'on the record.' I never did that. Our teacher told us you can use everything a person says or does unless they tell you 'off the record' before they do the action or give the sound bite. He told me not to use it after I had shot the video. However, I made it sound like I planned on not using it. As I said before, I would have done things differently if I had to do it all over again, and I feel like I would have been able to persuade an easy going guy like Schweich into using it if I just talked to him. I also know there could be repercussions on more serious issues like this in the near future if I don't take the right precautions.

Tell me what you would have done in this situation
Check out the new Missouri State Auditor's Website

The journalist I strive to be

After watching the piece Diane Sawyer did called 'Prostitution in America,' I wonder myself how many prostitutes live in Columbia. I know the middle of Missouri doesn't seem like a very populated area compared to other parts of America, but cities like Jefferson City and Columbia do have a decent urban population.   

While watching the video, I felt very sorry for Jessie who feels like people stop on her in the business, and she seems like she'd rather be doing something else. I tried though throughout it to think more along the lines of how hard it would be to do a story like this. I tried to think of this as if I sat in Sawyer's position. I first thought to myself, how in the world do you find Jessie? She seemed so open to talk about her job? I guess it would have to take a very long time to do. After all, if you listen to Sawyer's anchor intro, she says she's been working on the story for over two years. This piece has 'HFR' written all over it just like every other piece '20/20' does.

I wonder if Sawyer found Jessie online, if she had to call Reno Police before to see if they had any tips on her. Jessie seems like she acts very professional in her job and seems relatable to a woman that works in an office building. Regardless, another question comes to my mind as I write this piece. Would I ever be able to find a story like that and a woman who'd be that willing to talk to me about it? Would only a Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters be able to do this piece because they have been two of the best woman journalists on the planet over the last 30 years?

This question reminds me so much of the first topic I wrote about, a story HBO's Bryant Gumbel did on president Barrack Obama. Could I have ever done as good a story as he did because I'm white? Would my news director have given the story to somebody else instead of me? I find it hard to believe that Jessie would open up to me as much as she did to Sawyer, but then again, I could be wrong. The only thing I do know for sure, I'd love to have my news director come up to me and tell me that they want me to do a story like this. I'd feel honored that they'd have that much trust in me in such a 'sticky situation', especially if I'm not of the same race or gender as the source. 



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How do you tell somebody no?

My latest news gathering blog deals with something I ran into while finishing up my latest class story. It dealt with the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA and how some believe the city of Centralia, Mo. hasn't represented people well enough that have disabilities.  My blog for this week has nothing to do with the way I covered the story. I think I covered it fairly well. I certainly got both sides of this story. For those of you who don't know, according to the Great Plains ADA in Columbia, Mo., the city of Centralia, Mo. does not meet 39 ADA requirements for people with disabilities. I feel like I didn't make Mayor Tim Grenke look like an idiot and a discriminator of the disabled, which by the way, he does not intentionally discriminate against them. I did have a problem with something I did afterwards, though.

My central compelling character for this story involved a 50 year old Centralia man who has been in a wheelchair since 2004. He says he has fought the city for a long time about getting more accessible sidewalks, streets, and doorways at public buildings for the disabled. He says the city really didn't listen to him until the ADA report came out, and now that it has, some of those city employees think they've gotten a "bad rep."

I told the man I planned on talking to the mayor about the subject, and he asked me if I could get a copy of the interview afterwards. Without thinking about it too much, I said sure. This piece never aired on real television, so who did I really need to protect right? Wrong. I feel like I kind of "hung the mayor out to dry" a little bit because I decided to give my source the interview I did with his "nemesis." I'm not sure if because he had been very helpful to me and that he had a disability made me want to give him the copy of the interview even more or not. I guess I didn't want to disappoint him.

In retrospect though, I totally regret doing this. As I said before, I don't feel like I portrayed my mayor very well after letting my other source see this. Not that the mayor said anything bad about the disabled man, but I didn't give the mayor the copy of the interviews I did with the man in the wheelchair. Why should I give the disabled man copies of the mayor's interviews? In fact, as I wrote this, I got a text from the man in the wheelchair asking me about a question I had asked him that he never saw the mayor talk about. I just don't want to get into a sticky situation because of this and have the mayor find out about it. Then, it could really come back to haunt me.

Besides, do journalists really have time to go back and get copies of any stories people may do about them? No. We've got deadlines we have to meet. If every source we talked to wanted a copy of the story we did about them, journalists would never get anything else done. Even though I have not started reporting for KOMU yet, I should have told the man, "The Missouri Journalism School's policy states we can't give copies of stories to sources...sorry," even though I don't think they do have a policy. If I had given a source an interview I did for them and the story had aired for KOMU, I could get in big big trouble. I probably never would have done that for him though if the story had aired for KOMU. I'm a little bit smarter than that. From now on, I'll just tell my sources, "KOMU's policy states you can only retrieve video that the station puts on their website...sorry." Why can I say "KOMU" now? Because I got cleared to go to the station!!

See the story KOMU did: http://www.komu.com/KOMU/d7e2017e-80ce-18b5-00fa-0004d8d229cb/a1b3819c-80ce-18b5-0152-e88fbb4ba297.html

See what the city of Centralia said about their city a year ago: http://www.centraliamo.org/files/administration/forms/ADA_Notice.pdf


Mayor Tim Grenke

Really Morley Safer? Really???

So, I sat down in my business management class a couple days ago, and our teacher told us about a story 60 Minutes did on the Generation Y's about to hit the workforce. I'd first like to say this "piece of journalism" represents my generation as an absolutely lazy and worthless group of people that does nothing at work but sit around on "bean bags." This piece of journalism trashes Generation Y's. It absolutely trashes "us." To me, this piece of garbage should never have made it on air. This story aired to sell spots, to make money, and to please the people that watch 60 Minutes, not people 20-30 years old.

You can tell right off the bat how horribly this story represents "us" by listening to the anchor intro. "Stand back all bosses. A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred, from giving orders to your starched white shirt and tie."

I'm sorry Morley, but the last time I checked, I haven't heard of many millennials going into the workplace with machine guns and tanks to gun down their bosses. To be honest, this piece absolutely pissed me off when I watched it. I heard absolutely no factual information in the anchor intro, just a man who poorly explained the new generation up and coming. Morley wrote that anchor intro just to please the older generation that mainly watches the show. The piece shows the generation I'm a part of as cocky, brash, lazy, ignorant, and stupid. It sounds to me like somebody has some bitter feelings to the new journalists about to follow you. Times change man. A new generation will overtake mine someday as well. Hopefully, I won't feel as bitter about it as you apparently do.

But Morley, let me leave you with this thought. If the younger generation has ignorant and cocky characteristics and we know nothing about how the real world works, then you have many more ignorant and narcissistic traits yourself than any of "the new generation" kids will ever have. I think any person who writes a story like this needs to take a good hard look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, "Did I really just portray both sides of the story equally?" Come interview me on a topic like this. I'll give you a piece of my mind.


Take a look at part of the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owwM6FpWWoQ
Apparently, we've never failed before either because our parents coddled us so much growing up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7iK__Z_Lw0


Morley Safer

Post Number Four: My latest attempt at bothering people while out with friends

My latest story for my broadcast class involves Jefferson City, Missouri trying to pass an ordinance that would ban smoking inside public places within the city limits, and what better video could I have than people inside a bar and trying to make my central compelling character a person that would be affected if this ordinance went into effect. After talking to bar owners in the city, I decided to try a place called TG's Lounge. I went to the lounge at the busiest time of the night.

I foresaw a problem of having dark video. I knew that if I wanted to see anything at all at TG's, I'd have to have a light on my camera there. That didn't go over too well with many of the customers inside, not to mention the fact that many of them were intoxicated at the time. I got many, 'what the hell are you doing?' stares in my vicinity and 'get that damn light out of my face' looks as well. I'll be honest, the light shined very brightly, but I needed some video, so I decided to forge on anyways.  

People thought I looked so weird shooting video of people at a bar that one group actually decided to start taking pictures of me shooting video. The restaurant had a couple of specials that night which really made it crowded, so besides the fact I looked like a stalker, it had very lots of people there. After a good five or ten minutes of shooting as many cigarettes I could find and getting evil stares from across the bar, I decided to leave. I didn't know whether I should risk making anybody else more mad at me. Before leaving the entire city though, I decided to stop by another place in town, Spectators, and talk to an owner I spoke to on the phone earlier.

He had a much more mellow crowd this night. He didn't have any specials going on or anything, so he had a smaller number of people heavily drinking. This restaurant had good lights too!!!! Ahh yes, what I had been looking for the entire night! This way, I didn't have to shine a really really bright light into a person's face and have them give me dirty looks the rest of the night. Perfect. While at this second bar, I got great shots of cigarettes on the table, smoke coming from them, and shots at different levels. It turned out very good. I have plans on going back to the city today to talk to another bar, C Dub's Pub and Grub. Their business might get hurt even more than Spectators.

With a story like this, I feel like I didn't give up. I could have 'thrown in the towell' so to speak after leaving TG's, but I saw this other bar as I drove to my first destination and thought to myself, the people inside here might be willing to 'play ball.' I left feeling much better about myself, which always helps me mentally after trying to shoot a piece. Now I need more sound bites.  

                                                              
                                                      Check out TG's Lounge at: http://www.alexandrosandtgs.com/index.html

Post #3: Writing to video that happened many years ago

My third post not just of the year...but ever. I decided to watch a piece ESPN reporter John Barr did on Denver Bronco's receiver Brandon Marshall's troubled past with the law. What a story that was and how interesting as well. That piece was 13 minutes long. I know that a minute and thirty seconds for us to tell a story is not long, but I'm not sure if I could do 11 1/2 more minutes.

It's hard to think about some of the technical things behind a piece like this because you're so in tune to what she's saying as she gives her experiences. Some of the most riveting pieces of information though are the phone calls that ESPN recovered from the days Marshall allegedly went looking for someone to hurt.
  
Really being able to listen to Rasheedah screaming in the first 911 call and then her friend in the second one as well help tell this person's story. Translating what each person said made a whole lot of sense as well because sometimes you couldn't understand what they were saying. John did a great job at visually showing a piece that happened as early as the mid 2000's. A lot of this footage is also video from documents (graphics) ESPN made and pictures Rasheedah showed them.  Because ESPN is ESPN, and they can make those kinds of graphics, I feel like every bit of video was written to itself. John really had proof of everything he was showing. That was pretty amazing. The zoom ins on the words in each of the police reports showing what the accusations were along with a very interesting email Rasheedah apparently received from Brandon is basically all the evidence she needed. The photos of her bruises don't go against her either.

The facts from this article all make sense and all go together. Does the fact that the Broncos and Marshall each wouldn't talk about this situation on camera shed them in even more of a false light? I think so. And again, if Barr couldn't even show a document saying the team and Marshall decided to decline an interview, he included that in his standup, which is what we've been told you're supposed to do. Say in your standup what you can't visually show.

I can learn a lot from a reporter like this. I had a situation last week where I felt like I was somewhat video poor doing a story on a trash referendum bill. If only now, I knew how to make amazing graphics that exceed my budget range as a journalism student at MU and can only be funded by big companies like ESPN and CNN, I'd be in great shape!

Watch John Barr's story now at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4A756xTC0s

A picture of Brandon Marshall and former girlfriend Rasheedah Watley during an off and on part of their relationship.