Crashes

Crashes suck. In a big city they happen every day, and you try to care, but they’re like wallpaper. Lots of tragedy you’ve seen time and again.

So I’ll never stop being shocked that they’re the most e-mailed story of the day. For reporters, they’re a chore.

Online rubbernecking – never understood it. I mean, you can download the most perverted porn or violent videos. 

You could conclude that people are genuinely worried, wondering whether it’s somebody they knew. Seriously, what are the chances? – I can’t imagine online browsing as remotely pure. Maybe that says something about me.

It’s antithetical to the pathos of the Internet: you’ve seen it before, you can’t see anything. You want to read a couple sentences about a stranger in a car crash more than anything else that day.

Watching

Believe it or not, a lot of people suck at watching. Even reporters.

Especially the T.V. guys – they just kinda gaggle around, looking where people point. Talking to people that don’t know anything. Kinda lose-lose there.

Sometimes reporters get assigned to just stand in a spot. I remember going to a fire, and there were three reporters from a competing (crap) paper, each designated to a spot. News tip: their story sucked. I heard one dude on his phone, begging to go home.

So watching. You can’t do that talking. The little things are the only thing readers remember anyway.