After the exciting first day I had, the next few were a little bit of a let down. I get to the station at 5:00am, Iggy, the photog, leaves around 4:30. So, I just miss him. What do you do when you're not out with a photog? You sit. You sit at the news desk and observe. And that is only a slight exaggeration.
First, I make beat calls. This means calling the dispatcher's from all the surrounding counties.
This is what I say: "Good morning, this is News 4, just wondering if you have anything working you could let us know about?"
(The term "working" in the biz, means, "do you have anything going on?")
This is what they say" "No. Everything's pretty quiet."
They ALWAYS say no. Thus, beat calls, are not so cool.
Sometimes I get to write little blurbs from police affidavits. Sometimes (meaning once) I get to write for the Web.
But mostly I sit.
Switching my tense to past, I'll let you know that I changed this whole monotonous sitting around and observing. I couldn't take it anymore and I knew I wasn't getting anything out of it. Now, I text Iggy the night before, and at 4:30 the next morning, when I'm about half way to San Antonio, he texts me the address of wherever he's shooting. I put it into my GPS and I head to the story. So long, news desk. You will not be missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment