Screw it, they said it

Intensely personal stuff. Ever feel the unprofessional urge to grab someone by the shoulders, shake them and yell, STOP TALKING!? People who tell you waaaay too much and you know you’re absolutely going to use it and they're probably going to catch some crap -- you know this because you’ve read way too many online comments sections over the years.

But they said it. Case and point: Double murder suicide and this married couple’s priest tells me all about all the problems they were having, how the guy used to drink and be violent (duh), and how he went away for a few months and then came back and thought she was cheating on him but she wasn’t and…oh and they were here illegally and slept in separate bedrooms and...

Oh my god you realize you’re talking to a reporter, right? Right?

But he said it, so… in it goes. That's the job.

Still, sometimes I do feel that urge.

On your deathbed, will you Google yourself?

I was kinda wondering that lately. Everybody in America googles themselves. I myself am surprised by what comes up. Really random things. I play-tested a board game my brother published, and he gave me a credit. I can’t seem to shake that from the top ten.

It’s really surprising because even my top e-mailed stories, my Sunday centerpieces – and my paper has hundreds of thousands of readers – never seem to come up. Instead, I get an obituary for an old appliance salesman I wrote really late one night. I get a story from a paper I used to work for, years ago; a not so big story that took me a couple hours to write. It's not worth explaining: a no-comment reaction to a conviction.

So I just don’t know. How do you create a legacy in digitalville, when it all seems so random? Legacies are out of your control, and they should be. Should it all be up to an algorithm? Maybe.

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.

We're all a bit safer now. Maybe.

Kevin Costner is promoting "The BodyGuard" -- an idea "hatched on the back patio of my (Kevin's) house."  Hatched not by Kevin, but by a music video producer. So it might actually gross some money. 

It's kinda like a batman glove, with a stungun, camera, laser pointer and flashlight. 

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-05/2011-invention-awards-stunning-development


Slightly less painful than the movie, I'm sure.

Late Night Calls, Ch. 3

“This is Todd, your tipster… got a four-alarmer over in Cambridge!”

Tipster Todd refers to himself as just that. He listens to his scanner, every night, and calls with the goods.

I actually like Tipster Todd. At first I thought he was annoying as f---. But as one of the few regular callers who actually relays factual information, he’s gotten to be a relief. I mean, compare him to that other lady who calls up to recite some political talking points -- I mean, literally reading them off some print-out from her tiny church or action committee -- and Todd’s a Godsend. Despite my editors’ efforts, I’ve tried hard to stay in a job where I report on anything but politics -- and Todd’s my man.

I often wonder what Todd gets out of it. I mean, he’s not paid; he never stays on the line long enough to thank him. He gruffly gives his facts and moves on to the next scanner scrap.

Cops: the whiners and the pros

I always get a kick out of attending a press conference and listening to some sheriff or police chief complain about how cops are portrayed on television. What televisions shows do these guys watch?

Shows I’ve seen, they’re pretty much a combination of Clooney, Schwarzenegger, and Gandhi with a gun. Well maybe not the Gandhi part.  Across the river Styx, journalists are portrayed as scheming weasels that can't wait to butcher granny in the back so they can talk about how it changed the town forever. If anyone at a press conference should be complaining about how they’re portrayed in the media, it’s the media.

You know how helpful a ranking law enforcement official will be by how many words it takes them to answer a simple fucking question. There are some that reach for a manual when you ask if they have cream in their coffee.

The guys that have been sipping cold sludge for years know the world won’t end if you release the name of the suspect old Danno just booked -- like they're supposed to under the law. The folks that haven't, well, they’re the ones that are always talking about the media and how horrible it is.