News

Last week two of our colleagues were killed while doing their job.  Alison Parker and Adam Ward were doing what they do every morning, a simple live shot.  It wasn't in a bad area of town, it wasn't at a crime scene, it was at a tourist attraction.  Needless to say, this has hit every newsroom hard the past week.  News is a small business.  I knew it wouldn't take long before I knew someone who knew either Parker, Ward, or the nutjob who killed them.  That took about an hour before I knew someone who worked with the killer. 

This shooting only happened about 3 hours from Raleigh.  So, when I got to to work they sent us up to cover it.  As you would expect, there was more media there than cops.  In a way though, I think it did me good to go up there and see where it happened....I guess that's the 15 years in news in me. 

The only silver lining in this situation was the killer was a disgruntled employee, the definition of a nut job.  Part of me thought terrorists when I heard about it.  In a small way, I now know how teachers must feel when there is yet another school shooting.  In the end though, that last thing the photographer shot, the last thing of his that made air, was a freeze frame of his killer. 

So, what did news stations learn from this....probably nothing. We are our own worst enemies.  We will still do pointless live shots in front of empty buildings, where some group's meeting ended hours ago.  Why? Because consultants have made management think that the viewer expects us to be live, it adds to the story, it gives it a sense of importance or urgency.  And today, as I did my pointless live shot an hour away from Raleigh, I looked over my back, because today, I want to go home and not be the next Adam Ward.