Paradoxical day

This is the first chance I have had to sit down, take a deep breath, and recollect the events of Thursday, March 5, 2009.

Now, if I were a daily beat reporter for a paper....yea, my article would have been filed with minutes to spare!!

If you read my entry for last Monday, you know how my week began. Unfortunately, I must report it did not get much better.

Picture it, Cleveland, 2009. In the midst of a 'crappy week' (and remember, I am the glass totally full girl, so you know it must have been bad!).

I pull into work--the parking garage has cars triple parked in all directions. I go back out to the front lot, and our on-site manager says he has been told to save room for 30 clients. The lot only holds 15 or so. I double park out there, with his blessing.

What is happening?

I walk inside and feel like a stranger in a strange land. The green room has been transformed, cloaked and blocked off. I am being watched wherever I go and forbidden in some parts of the building.

Much to my surprise, Conan O'Brien is in the house.

Best kept secret. I had no clue. But I was not alone. Most night shift workers I asked were clueless as well as other fellow employees from various departments.

The standing joke in television, not just at Channel 3 and not just in Cleveland but all over America is, "for being in the communications business, television people are the WORST communicators" --and I just proved exhibit A!

It's really too bad all staffers were not informed. I work on a show that leads right into Conan's new gig and it would have been a thrill to meet him or at least get a glimpse of him.

Now, those fortunate to meet the man, the legend were walking on cloud nine. Good for them! But that jubilation would soon turn to horror.


I really did not have time for the bitterness to sink in and manifest itself.


Being the queen of 'spot news,' we hit the mother load Thursday night.

I've been doing this long enough to know when something is happening even if NOTHING is coming over the scanners. That's one of the biggest signs. When emergency personnel go over to their sneaky channel, you know it's big.

I heard one line--a 12-year-old child flagged down a passerby and told him what his step-father just did. The way it was said, the lack of other details, and a feeling in the pit of my stomach tipped off that I had a HUGE news story.

I will continue covering spot news--substantial spot news. Earlier in the week, a few staffers/producers did not think the Lorain County triple fatal accident was newsworthy. They said, fatal accidents happen every day. I'm not sure about that, but nonetheless, I'm sure glad we covered it and followed up on it for the 11pm news.

And now, more horrific spot news. I started mobilizing my crews. I initially sent a camera crew to the scene....I told Producer Dan what I "thought" had happened by the bits and pieces I was gleaning off the scanners....

My other crews and reporters were out but easily accessible and easily available to head out at a moments notice...

A plus on our side --great communication lines and coordination between me, the producer, our room 1 supervisor, sigac, and the web producer so we were all operating on the same page...

It was also great to know that we were first on scene. Simultaneously as my crew pulled up to the scene, a police dispatcher chimed on the scanners that 'the media had just arrived!'

From that moment on, non-stop, grueling work to not only get the story, win the story, and do the very best, but to keep emotions out of it for the time being.

One moment bringing levity to the situation is when my pal from the coroner's office called me to tell me they were rolling out to the scene.....and asked ME for the address! Now I know he had it, but we go way back and he knows I would never steer him wrong and my information is usually spot on!

It's good to be on a first name basis with my contacts. I instantly dialed up the chief's PIO, the coroner's PIO, and was able to touch base with the hospital's media relations supervisor.

Once I heard back from my initial guy, no brainer --EVERYONE on deck for this tragedy.

The next day, my news director and a reporter both said to me, 'great job scrambling last night.' I'm not quite sure why they used the term 'scrambling' because we did not scramble. We don't scramble at night. We know how to cover breaking news and do it very well. We may not have as many people but excel at breaking news and get the job done!


And that's what we did. All hands on deck. It was a well-oiled machine from the crews in the field back to the station. Even to the point where my live truck operator kept his live signal going and CNN and NewsChannel both cherry-picked the video we were feeding back and monitored our live pictures. I also emailed Tracy at Newschannel still pictures and the suspect's mug shot as soon as we received it. They were much appreciative!

In an instant like this, you can't get caught up at what has happened....though every update that another child had died was like getting sucker punched for all 5 of us sitting in the newsroom.

I believe we were first to report on our web that 6 people had been shot while others were still reporting 3 shot....and we were first with the suspect's mug shot and pictures from the scene. That's what we do!

The crews in the field all did a MARVELOUS job. At one point, Dave Summers and his truck operator Brian Johnson veered off the beaten path to the train tracks where the suspect may have been spotted......did not pan out, so they high-tailed it back to the the hospital. The gods were smiling on us because when their live slot came up on the show, they were ready (with much help from sigac operator Chris!!).

Watching the competition at 10pm, they both triple-teamed it, and ya know, they had nothing more than we had with less staffers. In fact, we had more. Dave Summers had background on the perp and Eric Mansfield spoke to family members.

At 11:35pm, the news was over but the story still very much alive. My crews were all raring to go to take this breaking news to higher levels for our morning show. We do have a no-overtime edict, but that was rescinded for this breaking news. This is a story you can not just walk away from in the midst. And we never did....

WHAT I thought happened at 8pm Thursday night IS what happened. We were on the mark all night long......and when all was said and done, all gave a great effort.