Accentuating The Positive

Working in TV news can be a heavy, heavy job. Think about it -- if you're depressed by the doom and gloom you sometimes see on your nightly newscasts, think about how it must feel to report it!

I think a lot of stations are pushing hard these days to do a better job of telling people about positive things going on in their communities. Viewers need a break from the stories about crime and corruption. And so do reporters. I mean, everyone likes a reminder that there are indeed good things happening in the world around them.

But we still have to report on the shocking crimes and the stories that leave you shaking your head. Reporters learn pretty quickly that we have to detach ourselves from what we're reporting, especially when it's horrible, heartbreaking news.

To some extent, we have to desensitize ourselves in order to not become totally disillusioned by some of the stories we cover. However, I think truly great reporters also stay in touch with their humanity and never, ever lose sense of the gravity of the stories they cover -- and the impact these real-life events have on real-life people. Tapping into our own emotions helps us convey the raw, human condition in the stories we report.

That said, covering the Cody Richardson story a couple of weeks ago really got to me. I'm not sure why it bothered me so much. Perhaps it was the sheer fact that he was so upset (for whatever reason) that he thought the best resolution was to strangle his wife. Perhaps it was the fact that this couple was so young. Or perhaps it was his cool, calm demeanor when he called 911 two days after he killed his wife to confess. (Or perhaps even the fact that a source closely connected with the case tells me he slept in the same bed with her body for a couple of nights before calling the cops.)

Whatever the case may be, covering that story for three or four straight days really shook me and left me in a foul mood. Maybe I just lost a little faith in humanity.

But then come stories like today's that restore your faith in humanity, that remind you that there are great people doing great things in the world around us and that give you a true feeling of emotional blessing when you get to be a part of them.

I got to cover a homecoming at Cherry Point. I've probably covered a dozen of them by now, but they never get old. It's always refreshing to watch heroes come home -- and to see the reactions of their friends and families once they're reunited after months of worrying and waiting.

It's a cleansing experience -- a good time that washes away the negative energy from troubling stories. I'm glad that we cover these stories fairly often at WNCT, to give the men and women fighting for our country (and the families who also sacrifice so much) their due. They certainly deserve it.

And it gives all of us a chance to accentuate the positive going on in the world around us.

The Story Behind Story Selection

I really am thankful to everyone who stops by and reads my blog -- especially those who take the time to comment. I'm just sitting here rambling, so I appreciate it when other people throw their two cents in. On my last post, one commenter took me to task for not covering a story that was obviously quite important to them. The anonymous poster said:

"Beautiful Beaufort-by-the-Sea celebrated turning 300 years old. I should think that with THAT you had a new story. Were you guys in Beaufort this weekend? I know it was raining, but we had the Embers, Shrimp boats arrived at 6 pm. If you were there I missed it and I appreciate it if you were. If you were not there and you wonder why we are skeptical of the "local" news..this is why. We are fortuate to be alive while Beaufort was turning 300... I love Beaufort and wish that there were media truck lined up along Front Street to record this once in a lifetime event. Perhaps we should have scheduled a hurricane? Then it would have been newsworthy?"

Commenter, I wish you would have identified yourself, because I would love to have contacted you personally. But thanks again for commenting -- and for bringing up a good topic: just how do news organizations choose the stories they cover?

It's a question that is growing increasingly complicated in these economic times. To directly answer the commenter's concerns, I do not think anyone from WNCT was in Beaufort the Saturday in question. But, I know for a fact our station covered several of the 300th anniversary events. In particular, I remember watching a very well put together piece one of our photographers did the weekend "pyrates" invaded Beaufort and reenacted an assault on the town.

Beaufort is in the heart of my coverage area -- I am WNCT's coastal bureau reporter and primarily cover Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Jones, Onslow, Pamlico and Pender counties. I am committed to out-reporting, out-hustling and downright outperforming every reporter who covers the same area (though none in the market covers quite as wide a swath of ENC as I do). Just by looking at the list of my turf, it's easy to see that it's downright impossible for me to cover everything that happens in my own area. Being just one reporter, I have to choose to cover the one, two or three stories each day that will have the greatest impact or significance for the greatest number of viewers.

Imagine, then, coordinating the coverage of the largest designated market area in North Carolina -- nearly three dozen counties, all of which are filled with folks who want every event in their community covered. It's impossible! But the staff at WNCT strives to cover as much of it as possible and we have multiple editorial meetings each day to set our strategy for providing the best coverage we can.

Covering the news of the day can sometimes provide a challenge even when a station has a full staff. But thanks to our jolly old friend "the economy," WNCT doesn't have a full complement of reporters, producers or photographers anymore. The same goes for countless news organizations across the globe. And like every other business, we're making do the best we can, because we want to provide the best news product to viewers and web users as we can.

As I mentioned earlier, though, that involves choosing the stories that impact the greatest amount of people. Our commenter made mention of a hurricane. Obviously, an imposing storm would call for a considerable amount of WNCT's resources if it poses a risk to people's lives or property. Oftentimes, stories about crime, the economy, education, health or scams also draw a good bit of our attention because they impact or draw the most interest from nearly all our viewers. But because we don't want our newscasts full of doom and gloom, we do our best to showcase the good things happening in communities all over the east (with our Community Builders segment, for example) because we know that matters greatly to our viewers, as well.

Unfortunately, though, we just can't be everywhere all the time. I don't work on the weekends, for example (I may be a news junkie, but I do need some time off!), so someone from Greenville has to cover our ENTIRE viewing area on the weekends. Sometimes they can get down here to the coast. Sometimes they can't.

Because I live and work along the coast, I want the best coverage possible for this area. I try to provide it when I'm working. When I'm not, I pitch the stories to our news staff as hard as I can, but recognize that other events or stories elsewhere will take priority over something happening here if it's of greater significance -- just as if a story here along the coast would take greater priority than something happening in Greenville when it's of greater significance or impacts more people.

That's not to say Beaufort's 300th anniversary isn't significant. It is -- and as our commenter said, we're all lucky to have witnessed this once-in-a-lifetime event. But instead of growing skeptical, please grow more understanding of our position. In fact, please grow more vocal in telling us the significance and impact of the events you want covered -- and then give us a few days' notice so we can try to organize our coverage to include it. Because we truly care about the communities we serve and we want to cover what's important to you.

And, from where I'm sitting, that's the story behind story selection.

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

It's been a long Monday. I suppose every Monday that follows a good weekend is long ... but this one felt extra-long. A lot of that probably was due to the fact that I left home about two hours earlier than normal to head to Duplin County on a wing and a prayer ... hoping to catch the first court appearance for a former DMV theft prevention supervisor who has now been accused of being part of a theft ring. Go figure.

Heading to the courthouse a few hours earlier than the DA's scheduled press conference was a risk because suspects don't always show at their first court appearances. Sometimes their lawyers show up and take care of business for them. And, depending on the judge, sometimes it can take hours upon hours for first appearances to happen.

When I got to the Duplin County courthouse, Chelsea Donovan from WITN was also there. Apparently, we'd both taken the same risk. Little did we know, it was about to pay off.

As she and I stood squarely in front of the yet-to-open district courtroom, Bill Toman Jr. and his lawyer walked up the stairs. Chelsea and I were caught off guard, so our cameras weren't rolling. We were getting prepared to get some shots ... and then Toman and his lawyer went into the bathroom.

And stayed.

For 30 minutes.

To hide.

From two TV cameras.

Every once in a while, you'd see a sliver of light appear when Toman's lawyer cracked the door to see if the courtroom had opened up yet.

It was so comical the cowardice went mostly unnoticed. When bailiffs finally unlocked the courtroom, Toman and his attorney had to emerge. Despite their best efforts to make a run for it, we managed to get some 20 seconds of video as he walked in to the courtroom ... the former veteran law enforcement officer, now accused of abusing his power and the public trust.

Avoiding us by fleeing into the loo is just plain silly. We weren't going to attack him. We already had his mug shot. And there was no way in to the courtroom without passing by us.

If anything, it made it look like Toman had something to hide.

But it sounds like he's learning (on several levels) that you can run, but you can't hide.

Check out the video player below for my story:

Memories Of Floyd

So ... unless you've been hiding under a rock and haven't watched any TV station or read any newspaper in the great state of North Carolina within the last seven days, you know that this week marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Floyd and the devastating flooding that followed it.

To be honest (and it's certainly a shame), my memories of Floyd aren't all that strong ... and certainly not as vivid as the memories of 9/11 that I blogged about over the weekend.

When Floyd rolled through, I was just a 15-year-old high school punk living at home in Wilson. I can remember sleeping in a downstairs bedroom the night the storm made landfall, though. My bedroom was upstairs, but since my childhood home has a TON of trees all around it, my family figured it'd be safer to stay in the downstairs bedrooms that were also a bit farther away from the trees.

There was a lot of rain and wind that night, but otherwise I remember sleeping pretty well ... and waking up thinking that the storm seemed rather unremarkable. I think a section of the fence in our backyard was knocked down ... and in one of the hurricanes of the late 90s, a fallen tree demolished the house across the street from ours (can't remember if it was Floyd, though).

I also remember some of the flooding in Wilson, especially around Toisnot Park. There aren't any major rivers in Wilson County, so we were better off than some ... but I know that things sure were bad in some parts of the county and the town. There was a lot of flooding over near the Rec, too.

I think there was some flooding at my house, as well ... but incredibly, it was nothing compared to the flooding that comes these days at the hands of even an hours-long rainfall.

As you can tell, this is where my memory starts to get fuzzy. No doubt all of the aforementioned TV stations and newspapers have been running stories involving people's recollections of the storm all week ... and I wanted to share one with you guys that I just happened to read.

It interests me because it's from someone who was working at WNCT at the time ... and I always enjoy hearing how folks in TV recount their experiences covering the events that change people's lives.

As you'll read, covering the storm also changed Chad Tucker's life. Chad now works at WGHP in the Triad and I've had the good fortune of getting to know him lately. Like me, his TV career started at Channel 9 ... and it sounds like Floyd may have affected the trajectory of his career.

Read his thoughts (which he has allowed me to share with you) and then leave me your recollections of Hurricane Floyd!

"I Can Still Hear the Storm," by Chad Tucker ...

In September of 1999 I was finishing my senior year studying journalism at East Carolina University in Greenville. Outside the classroom my part-time job as a news producer for CBS affiliate WNCT-TV put me in the middle of one of North Carolina’s biggest news events of the 20th century. It was the perfect classroom. It was the point I learned the truth behind my calling.

Hurricane Floyd, born off the coast of Africa made its way to North Carolina on September 16, 1999. It’s a day I will never forget. It’s a day that changed me.

The night the storm came I went to work helping the TV station produce 24-7 hurricane coverage. Late in the evening I went home to my apartment with rain so thick the typical 10 minute drive became an hour. To this day, I can still hear the storm. The constant rain and roar of Hurricane Floyd created an unsettling feeling inside of me as it passed in the night. While the rain found its way through the modern windows of my apartment, the constant wind – in an odd way – helped put me at rest. I found some sleep that night. But with dawn light and the storm still howling -- to this day I can still see the trees outside my bedroom window – bent by the constant wind. Hurricane Floyd was about to end, but hell was just beginning.

By mid morning – the water began to rise. My phone rang with my boss saying people are clinging to their roofs. I went to work.

The monster made landfall near Cape Fear as a category 2 hurricane, passing north over Eastern North Carolina dumping nearly 17 inches of rain. That’s 17 inches of rain on top of 15 inches Hurricane Dennis dumped just weeks before. It was just too much rain for the rivers of Eastern North Carolina, including the Tar River that flowed through Greenville.

For more than a week classrooms at ECU sat empty while students around campus fought to save what they owned. The Tar River came out of its banks, cresting 24 feet above flood stage. The river flooded thousands of student apartments, homes and their cars. Greenville became an island with no way in or out. Water was everywhere. Highways now rivers...

I worked all day in the newsroom gathering information. Our station became a lifeline. For those without power and could not see us, radio stations broadcasted our signal. I worked many hours making calls on where roads were out, where shelters were open and answering the back door. The first time I opened the back door a family stood soak and wet. The family lost everything and just wanted to know where to go. The moment was raw and real.

I never took time to stop and take it all in. I heard the reports and passed them along; “a woman found dead floating in her home, dead cattle, hogs everywhere, – a couple trapped on their roof waiting for the coast guard helicopter.” But the moment that captured my soul – making me stop – was a call from a crying EMS worker in Pinetops. I answered the phone and I can still hear his broken voice. “Yaw need to report this… (As he paused, I could hear him wiping the tears) we just found an entire family dead, – yes – an entire family.” The family of six members died when their boat capsized while trying to leave their flooded home. I wrote down the information and walked to the studio giving it to the anchor on the air. He read it, looked at me and shook his head before turning to the camera to repeat what I had written.

For days I worked the newsroom phones, helped with food drives and fundraisers. I had no water or power at my apartment for a week, but I had my life. I had a lot to be thankful for. 52 people died including one ECU student caught in the creek-turned-river at the bottom of College Hill. I and my classmates returned to class a week after the storm passed. We all sat in class silent, except for a girl in the back weeping. She lost everything including her text book.

After graduation I turned to the other side of the camera, reporting for a few years the news of Eastern North Carolina for WNCT. Many of those reports dealt with the human spirit rising above it all as people rebuilt their lives and their communities.

On this day – I look back more appreciative of life, living and a part of our great state that lives perseverance – becoming better and stronger from a storm. A storm, I can still hear.

The Surreal World

(Fair warning ... this is a long post, but I think it's a worthwhile read. Enjoy!)

Friday felt surreal right from the get-go. First of all, it marked the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. As I drove to Jacksonville to cover the Patriot Day ceremony there, I thought about what I was doing when the world changed eight years ago.

I remember it vividly. I was a senior in high school, sitting in the library doing work for my independent study Spanish class. Along with another student (her name was Tamika White), I hit the library every day for first period. We'd gone through all five levels of Spanish our county's school system offered in high school -- but our teacher managed to create an independent study course/project for us to undertake.

We got to know the librarians pretty well since we saw them every day. And right around 9a, one of them stepped out of her office and in a flustered tone said, "Turn on the TV. My husband just called and said a plane hit the World Trade Center." So we tuned the tube to CBS and watched as smoke poured out of one of the towers. We theorized about how it happened and only began to allow ourselves to think it may have been intentional when word came that a couple of jetliners had gone missing.

Then we watched aghast as the second plane plowed into the second tower. At this point, our minds were made up ... America was under attack.

Things were happening so fast and yet it felt like time was standing still. Somehow the bell managed to ring and first period ended. I left my belongings in the library and waded into the halls, where 1,100 other students had little clue as to what was happening. I met my second period teacher in the hall (Mrs. Hinnant) and told her what was going on. She taught AP English but didn't want us to miss watching history unfold and took our entire class into the library.

There we watched the attack on the Pentagon happen. Bryant Gumble was in the anchor chair for CBS that morning ... and when the director took the shot of the smoldering Pentagon (without telling Gumble), I can remember hearing him say "This is the Pentagon -- Oh, my God."

That's exactly what we were all thinking. And though we were only a bunch of teenagers, we prayed. We worried. Some cried. We all felt numb.

Flash forward to Friday. The memories of what came eight years earlier flashed in front of me again as I stood near Jacksonville's 9/11 Memorial, watching pictures of the victims flash in front of me while an emcee told their stories.

That was surreal enough. But it was only 9a and I still had to shoot another story.

So I ran to my office, sent in some video for the noon newscast and shuffled off to the Onslow County Sheriff's Office ... where the three other TV stations, the newspaper and I were set to interview Sheriff Brown about 54 marijuana plants and 51 pit bulls deputies found the day before.

We chatted with the sheriff for a while, saw pictures of the weed and the dogs. We learned a lot about dog fighting and the instruments used there-in. Deputies say the man they arrested was breeding dogs to fight. Judging by the graphic, gruesome pictures we saw, it's hard to argue.

We wanted the whole story, though. So me, Andrea Pacetti from News14, Chelsea Donovan from WITN and Lindell Kay from The Daily News headed out to the man's house.

The man, Lethen Pollock, was still in jail ... but his mom was at the scene. Chelsea and I shot video through the woods of the dogs chained to the ground while Lindell worked to convince Pollock's mom to talk to us. I'm usually pretty good at getting unwilling (and yet crucial) folks to talk ... but Lindell expertly convinced Mrs. Pollock to talk after Chelsea and I underscored the importance of getting her son's side of the story out there.

She talked to us and staunchly defended her son. She also let us see hundreds of pounds worth of dog food she said her son feeds the dogs, attempting to counter the sheriff's claims of malnutrition.

Then another family member took us in to the backyard to some kennels. They were filled with moms and puppies, empty water bowls and lots of dog waste. The smell was overwhelming. Think hog lagoon.

I also got a couple of shots of the dogs hidden in the woods, shackled with inch-thick chains around their necks. Pollock's mom insisted her son is a dog lover. She said he doesn't fight the dogs. She claimed he takes good care of them.

It's not my job to second-guess or judge. Pollock is in jail on drug charges but hasn't yet been charged in connection with the dogs. Animal Control hasn't returned my calls to tell me whether he will be charged in connection with the dogs.

Read Lindell's blog about it here or watch my story below.

After you check them both out, I think you'll agree ... sometimes it's a surreal world out there.

Update (9/13, 9:15p): Despite me dogging Onslow County Animal Control for info, I haven't heard back from them. However, the Onslow County Magistrate's Office has just confirmed to me that Lethen Pollock has been charged with cruelty to animals and mistreatment of animals. I'll work to get even more information on Monday.