By the time Sunday evening rolled around and I arrived at Reidsville High School for Bill Clinton's 8th or 9th stop on the middle North Carolina Campaign trail for Hillary, several hundred of the fine citizens of Reidsville had spent the better part of their day in line to squeeze into the small gym to see the 42nd president give his pitch to be first man.
Being the last stop of the day I didn't expect it to start on time. The schedule said 9-15PM...he didn't leave the previous stop until after 10...an hour drive for most...he arrived at 10-45PM.
For roughly 45 minutes with several pre-announcments of summary, Billary outlined Gas Tax, Hybrids on Steroids and Green Initiatives that could possibly create millions of non-outsourcable jobs.
He hyped Reidsville up on money savings efforts in the name of hiring Green-Consultants to retrofit the school with Green...Green...Green.
He talked to the gearheads in the crowd about 100 mile per gallon hybrids "On Steroids" that Hillary will give a $10,000 tax credit for if elected.
He talked about sticking it to the oil companies by launching an investigation into possible corruption causing the spike in gas prices.
Enough about that though. This is a TV Photog Blog by George. Check out the press row. No site of any competition. You know what I mean....mine is the only man camera. (not that I haven't used a baby cam in a pinch or a squeeze.)
The women running the two near small cameras were BackPack Journos from ABC and NBC. They travel with this part of Hillary's campaign... to every stop...and do a running web play by play for their respective employers website. When something interesting happens they get to escape the portals of the World Wide Web for a little time on broadcast TV.
I'm all for new media...and I have lots of ideas for the future of TV, News and the Internet, but while I was working (too hard probably) at getting good video of a former president, the B-J duo locked down their handycams on one medium-wide shot and buried their heads in their broadband equipped laptops and let their fingers to the talking. Of course it could have just been that it was the LAST STOP OF THE DAY, and they'd been to all of them.
That's said they're probably better than this guy....an old-school home-video enthusiast, or something. I think he's seen 'Up Close and Personal', 'The Chase' and 'Groundhog Day' one too many times.
1 comment:
The BJ duo is the direct outcome of people who are willing to do the job for nothing,and their tv stations/networks who don't care about the quality of the product. this is why you need to think twice about being so gangbusters about tv news. It is just a job! BJ Duo thinks this is a working vacation,until the next election when they try to get a raise and their bosses say,"well, you did it last year for x amount now you want this?" "No way! we'll get another college graduate to shoot it this year"! This is how these companies work, especially in hard times!
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