Lenslinger

Some of y’all have never worked all day to make a person you don’t like very much look like an expert on a subject neither of you know much about and it shows.

Some days, the constant exposure to clowns, marauders and charlatans is enough to wear this local TV journalist down… No doubt about it, I gotta get out of the newsroom more often.

I'm not saying the photog's the most important member of the team, but... Has a producer ever ridden out a hurricane on a fishing pier? Has an editor ever tasted tear gas? Has a weekend anchor ever loitered for hours outside a house of ill repute? Scratch that last one.

Remember, citizen: If a news crew approaches you outside a store wanting to ask some silly question on camera, you DON'T have to answer! But BE NICE about it. Studies show that any news crew forced to quiz rando's in some parking lot is already having a worse day than yours.

Happy Birthday to Hunter S. Thompson, the pill-swilling gun nut whose early work filled me with the burning urge to build sentences long before I ever started putting together local news stories. In case you were wondering who to blame…

Local TV News: one of the few professions in which, when it is nearly 5 o clock, you wish it was 4 o clock.

If you’ve never waited for a guy in shackles to be frog-marched into a prison van, chased a lady in a chicken suit through a children’s hospital or braced for impact as 5,000 football fans thrust foam fingers in your face, what are we gonna talk about while the jury deliberates?

DISCLAIMER: I’ve always billed this drivel as “Pithy Epistles from the Thinking Man’s Photog”. That remains mostly true, but technically, it should now read “Pithy Epistles from the Thinking Man’s Operations Manager.” In other words… I’m a house-cat. Thought you should know.

If you’ve ever ordered a pizza while waiting for a suspect to bond out, you might be a TV News photographer... who didn’t get breakfast... or lunch... and is about to become the most popular photog in the whole damn scrum. Hands off, you swine.

Every time someone bashes "the media" by quoting something from THEIR favorite media outlet, a photog finds a battery.

Looking back on this Father’s Day, I’d like to think I gave my own two girls the greatest gift of all: No desire to work in TV News.

If you’ve ever fumbled with your phone trying to take a video while a guy with a badge yells ‘get back!’, then you still don’t know what it’s like to be a TV News photog, ‘cause you weren’t also wondering at that exact moment if the Chili Hut is open this late. Just sayin'.

SUMMER IS HERE and to celebrate, we’re throwing the producers an ice cream party and giving at least one anchor the night off! Oh yeah, there’s a green smoke plume pouring out of that old reactor two towns over. Can you check it out?

If you’ve ever performed slim-jim ninjitsu on a news unit while yammering into a phone about why a camera two counties away doesn’t work all while thinking about the paperwork rotting on your desk, you’ll understand why I’ve been a bit distracted lately.

I'm old enough to remember when TV journalists were considered kinda cool. "Murphy Brown" ended all of that in the early 90's, of course, but in recent years, news crews are more often met with spite, derision and ridicule... Maybe it's my giant foam cowboy hat.

Things Heard in a TV Newsroom… “The stinky cheese people won’t play ball.” “FIRE! Let’s get as close to it as we can!” “Ed’s cutting llama boy!” “Highway‘s jammed! Why isn’t he there yet?” “Yvonne can’t do the homicide, she’s got a write day.” “Audio sucks… turn it up.”

“You go to crime scenes, stuff like that?” “Sure do,” I told the waitress, “Homicides, hurricanes, holiday parades….” “I don’t think I’d have the stomach for that.” “Yeah, some of those floats are pretty ridiculous.” Don’t think I’m getting those lemon wedges I asked for.

A large swath of the country is enduring triple digit temps. You know what that means. Photogs wearing floppy hats, reporters clutching big thermometers and anchors fighting heat exhaustion as they step out on the weather patio to close out the show. It’s a jungle out there.

Doc asked if I thought my job had left me emotionally scarred. Told him I’d coped with the drive by shootings and cadaver searches, but then I told him what it was like to get man on the street interviews outside shopping malls. He was shaking pretty badly by the time I left.

I just watched a local newscaster spend three minutes explaining how it gets hot in the summer. We’re writing our own eulogy.

In recognition of Pride Month, we here at the Lenslinger Institute would like to say that the only orientation we have any real problem with is vertical video - and we're working on that. As for the other thing, you do you.