Baseball Champions

I have to sneak in this non job-related, non tv-related post.

Big, Huge, Enormous kudos to my Oldest Stepson, and BOTH of my own boys for their respective baseball championships. The older 2 played on the same 14-U team and my little one played on the 10-U team.

All three boys have come alive with their baseball prowess this year and all three were great team players and very intstrumental in their teams' successes.

Both games were pretty close games with the 10-U game going 2 extra innings.

It was exciting baseball.

And Guess What....I took pictures....



14-U team pictures (I took mostly video at this game)

10-U Game pix

Weather Woody

OK, I admit it, I like chasing weather. It's one of the biggest unknowns in spot news chasing.

Last week I walked in the station after a 6 o'clock live shot and I saw the radar and new it wasn't good. Our weatherman was on the verge of talking about a possible tornado and I wanted in on the action.

I planned my route to get behind the storm and follow it through. Using my GPS and following scanner reports of wind and trees down I wove my way through northern Davidson County. I was headed toward a report of trees on a house when I spoted the summation of an evening storm passed.



The money shot, or I guess, the pot o' gold shot.



I was able to get great video for the newscast and pop off a couple of great stills.



I got this video and then headed south and west to end up getting video of firefighters cutting trees from roadways and driveways and people talking about the roar (they spared me the freight train quotes) of the storm and the force of the wind.

Nifong Who? Paris Has a Rival

I spent the day 90 some odd miles out of the confines of my designated home TV market covering the begining of the Mike Nifong ethics hearings in Raleigh NC.



"Nifong who?" you ask? Mike Nifong is the District Attorney (the head prosecutor for the state in a given district) in Durham, NC who was all gabby about the details of the alleged rape of a stripper at a party held at the home of some Duke Lacrosse Players.



Now that the State Attorney General has declared all the Duke Lacrosse players innocent of the allegations the state bar wants to determine if the oft labeled rouge prosecutor breeched prosecutorial ethics in his handling of the Duke Lacrosse Stripper Rape Case.



Today was the first day of the hearing and, as one old lady walking down the street said so plainly, "Paris has some competition!"



No less than 9 mobile news studios, a mix of Satellite trucks microwave trucks, from local, regional and national news outlets lined Fayetteville Street around the corner from the NC Court of Appeals building where the hearing is being held.



Short of the photos of the news trucks and crews this hearing is pretty dry and bland. It's certainly no 'Boston Legal' or 'Law and Order'.



And since Court TV is manning the cameras and providing the pool feed most of our work was done outside, chasing down Nifong and company as they made there way into court. And that was over in a matter of minutes just after 9am.



(I can be seen in the background video on several of the onlinve versions of the media scrum walkdowns.)

CBS Evening News Video HERE



The rest of the day I gathered beauty shots and watched these guys scale the Wachovia tower we were parked in front of.



Long story short....Live at Noon, 5 and 6....rinse and repeat. We may or may not be back tommorrow. Probably depends on what Dale Junior says 'cause here in NASCAR counrty Dale Jr. trumps Nifong and Paris.

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Blog Comments - Thick Skin WKRN Blogger Quits

I was recently pondering whether or not to bring up a string of recent anonymous flames I had received in the comments of a few of my blog postings.

Then, when I read that WKRN TVs blogger Britney Gilbert has quit amid the firestorm of negative comments that she says she just wasn't prepared to handle, I thought I should say a little something.

In my case, the negative comments I recieved recently were pretty random but pointed, all seemingly from one person, meant to bash TV, photojournalists, and I guess, me. I could really care less. I'm just happy people are looking and I'm open to good conversation.

The comments said things like....(full text and links at end of post)

"Apparently there is very little news going on in the Triad because you all have time to BLOG all day long."

"I bet you're one of those "photojournalists" who try so hard, they produce themselves right out of a job because nobody can stand to be around you!"

"In a few years a college graduate who will be an intern at your station will take YOUR job using one of these cameras."

"Just think you started in 1993 and by 2013 you won't even clear 50 grand a year working 60plus hours a week making some ad. exec's BMW payment with your hide!"

I think it's funny that it's started out by proclaiming that I'd be out of a job in a few years by a college student with a handycam, yet, on the other hand, I'd be struggling in 2013 to clear 50 grand a year while working 60 hours a week. That cracks me up!

The anonymous nature of the internet, blog comments and back and forth banter and sharing of thoughts and ideas, people are bound to disagree or even bash. The anonymity of people at keyboards in the privacy of their own homes or offices give these anonymous, or even some non-anonymous, writers the feeling of power to say things that would never be uttered vocaly to an opponent in thought.

Some people just like to be mean, stupid, contridictary or just ignorant. And it's not as easy to use psycology on the internet like you can against the school yard bully, who, if you stand up to him, will back down and play nice.

What it boils down to is that if you are going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. Thick skin is mandatory. Brittney Gilbert realizes, and says in her final post, she knew this going in, but her skin just wouldn't toughen.

That's too bad.

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http://tvphotogblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/fire-in-neigborhood.html

At 9:48 PM, June 02, 2007, Anonymous said...
Yes you saved the day!! barf, barf,barf

At 10:24 PM, June 02, 2007, Anonymous said...
Great even your fuzzy friend has a blog. Apparently there is very little news going on in the Triad because you all have time to BLOG all day long. TV news sucks soon you will figure it out! Why do you try to glorify it? Get a real job you losers

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http://tvphotogblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/jerry-falwell-dies.html

At 9:55 PM, June 02, 2007, Anonymous said...
Thanks for helping with the live shots you loser! Just think for for $21,000 you lost sleep making your company rich!! Barf,barf barf. I bet you're one of those "photojournalists" who try so hard, they produce themselves right out of a job because nobody can stand to be around you!

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http://tvphotogblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/playing-with-handycam.html

At 10:07 PM, June 02, 2007, Anonymous said...
In a few years a college graduate who will be an intern at your station will take YOUR job using one of these cameras. Then she will edit her video on her laptop and send it to the station while the whole time she is having cocktails with your news director trying to get the Anchor position.

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http://tvphotogblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/when-i-grow-up7th-grade-school.html

At 10:17 PM, June 02, 2007, Anonymous said...
By the time your stepson gets into TV News, McDonalds will be the place to work because idiots like you try to glorify the job and are willing to do it for peanuts. Just think you started in 1993 and by 2013 you won't even clear 50 grand a year working 60plus hours a week making some ad. exec's BMW payment with your hide!

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