A Hostage, Swaps & Jay's Burger Shack

With my three days of sports behind me, Thursday dawned a real news day. To set this up, I need to take you back to Wednesday night. I walked out of Channel 19 at around 10:45. I then had a 25 min. drive home. I went to sleep at 12:30, only to be awakened periodically by heavy rain beating on the roof. Finally I woke at 3, not to go back to sleep until 4:30. Then the alarm at 6:30. I love these kind of no sleep days. But this isn't my complain page.

Anyway, as I was driving into work, our assignment manger Errol Davis called me. Cherokee County deputies were looking for a man who had taken a bail-bondsmen hostage overnight. We don't normally cover Cherokee County on a regular basis. It's not in the Huntsville DMA(designated market area.) In fact, I'm not sure who's DMA it's in. However, this was a story of a bit more unusual character.

I drove on to our office in Albertville. My photographer, Brad Hood, was already there. So we made the rainy trip to the middle of the Taft community, which believe it or not, isn't in the middle of nowhere. I'm told it's just on the outer edges of nowhere. The Cherokee County Sheriff's Department had set up a command post at a church. When we rolled up, NBC 13 out of Birmingham was there. Darrell Norman, a reporter for the Gadsden Times, who's a fellow New York Times employee, was also there. Shortly there after, every other station in Birmingham rolled up.

This is one of those stories that's the meaning of the phrase "hurry up and wait." We listened to the scanner and when police thought they had something, we all followed. Finally around 11am, word came that the hostage had been found down the road. Brad jumped in our Jeep to head there. I had a slight problem. I had let the reporter from Channel 13 borrow my cell phone so she could do a live report on their 11am news. (Pay attention, because this becomes very important later on.) I couldn't leave the church or I might never see my phone again. So Brad went without me. Time went by and our Satellite Truck operator Brian Covington showed up for us to do our noon live shot.

It was 15 minutes till 12. He hadn't booked any satellite time and the truck wasn't set up. So I grabbed the camera and tripod and got that all together. Then I ran the camplex cable from the truck to the camera. All this time, Brian is getting the dish up, time bought and satellite tuned in. We got it set up with just seconds to go before I was live in our pre-show for the noon.

Shortly after my noon live shot, Brad rolled back up. We called Huntsville and decided that since there was no longer a hostage, this story might not be the big news it was. So we had already decided to head back to Albertville. Then we changed our minds and decided to stay, since the guy was armed and running through the woods somewhere.

It was still quiet, everything except for my stomach. The decision was made that it was time to seek food. Problem, there is nothing in the area. We had our choices. One, getting something from a store that was also a bait shop. Two, a store that was also a plumbing store. We decided to keep driving. We drove to the town of Gaylesville. There on the corner, in a small trailer was Jay's Burger Shack. I'm not sure if it was Jay himself who took our order. At that point he could have served me a shoe with some fancy mustard on it and it would have been good. So after my lunch of a burger, fries, Pepsi and a pack of plain M&M's, (I saved the Peanuts M&M's for later) it was back to the scene.

Man this is taking a long time to write.

We get back to find that the suspect has been seen. I decided to stay back at the sat truck. I figured it would be another wild goose chase. Brian wanted to go with Brad. I sat outside our truck. Then walked around some. I began to think they weren't coming back. So I went over to Fox 6's truck. Christie del Amo, who used to work at 19, was there. I went in their truck and started working writing my two, count 'em two, packages.

This is where the swap part of my title starts. While we were busy setting up my noon live shot, a family member of the hostage came by. We didn't have a way to record it, but Fox 6 got it. We had let 6 use some of our Howell Heflin video a few days earlier. So they returned the favor and let us use their interview with the family member. That was Swap Number One.

Swap Number Two: Channel 13 had run across the step daughter of the hostage. She was with her when it all happened. Remember, I had let the 13 reporter use my cell phone. So it was time to return the favor. We had helped them with some video recently too. So they gave us their interview with the step daughter.

Swap Number Three: Brad and Brian finally had to come back from the area where they thought they had the suspect cornered. It was getting too late. A photographer from Channel 42 was there. So we worked out a deal with him. If he would stay and try to get as much video as he could, when he got back we would feed his video back to Birmingham for him. We in turn would get to use his video.

Swap Number Four: 33/40's sat truck was in Huntsville covering the Rudolph hearing. So we agreed to feed their video from the hostage scene back to Birmingham for them. That's a favor we didn't redeem today, but I'm sure someday they will help us out.

Swap Number Five: About two months ago, I was working by myself in Guntersville. I needed a stand up shot. A fellow reporter helped me out and shot it. Today, I returned that favor and shot his stand up.

Strange how all this comes together isn't it? I wrote two packages, a vo and a vo/sot. We were live at noon, 4:30, Five and Six. People at home had no idea what all went on to get those few moments on TV. Normally I would say, "and tomorrow we get to do it all again", but I'm off tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by.

Two Deaths

Today is Wednesday and I'm doing sports again tonight. Jay is taking the day off, so I get another day on duty. I will be a reporter again on Thursday and then I'm off on Friday.

Yesterday both Howell Heflin and Johnnie Cochran died. I had the chance to meet both of those men.

I met Johnnie Cochran when he was at Alabama A&M doing a speech I believe. I was reporting on the weekends at that time, so it would have been sometime during 2000. He was very nice and didn't mind being interviewed at all.

I only met Howell Heflin once. It was in November of 1994. I was in Washington on a senior trip. We ran into him on the subway system that runs under the capitol building. We bascially stormed the old man when we saw him. I think he was a little scared of us at first. He also was very nice to us. I have a picture of him with all of us standing around him.

Thanks for stopping by .

Me at the age of 2. Caps wouldn't fit my head then either. 

Sports Guy

From looking at the picture above, it would seem that I've always been a sports guy. I actually enjoy doing sports. Of course I only do it two days a week. Still, it's a nice change of pace. The tough part is working Tuesday night at ten and then doing the quick turn around to work days on Wednesday. I'm not sure if people actually enjoy watching me do sports, or just kind of tolerate me.

Short post today.

Thanks for stopping by.

George Goober Lindsey 

My Run-in with Goober

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm doing sports today. Monday is always a tough one. There's really not much going on in sports on Mondays. Sure there's some NBA, but people in North Alabama don't put much of their time into covering professional basketball. So it always comes down to a recap day of things that went on during the weekend. I'll probably update Jerry, Amy, Jay, Jason Marks and my standings in our NCAA brackets. Not too good I would imagine.

So in my posting yesterday I promised to tell a sports related story, that involved George "Goober" Lindsey. It was back in the fall of 1995. I was working for the University of Alabama Football team. My job pretty much required me to shoot practice during the week, then just help some on gamedays. During the game itself, I would just stand on the sidelines and watch the game.

Well, I believe it was homecoming. George Lindsey was making an appearance before the game as Goober. During the game, he was standing on the sidelines, just like me, watching. Well I decided it was my chance to go up and just hello to the man. So I walk up, stick out my hand and do just that. He gives me this annoyed look, but does reach out and shake my hand. I'll tell you, it's one of those moments when you instantly realize that was a mistake.

A couple of years later, George Lindsey writes his autobiography called "Goober in a Nutshell." I'm reading through it and come to a section where he talks about people coming up to him and saying hello. He says in the book it really annoys me when I'm at some sort of an event and someone comes up and sticks out their hand an interrupts what I'm doing. I don't remember the exact way in which he said it. But I just have this feeling that while he was writing that, he was picturing a 19-year-old kid in a white University of Alabama shirt, khaki shorts and a UA baseball cap sticking their hand out.

Although, if you're wearing the Goober costume, complete with a tire pressure gauge in your pocket, doesn't' that kind of open you up to people saying hello?

Easter

I've been sitting here for the past half hour, I guess, waiting to see what happens with the weather. I went to my aunt's house this afternoon for lunch. While I was there, I noticed that we(channel 19) ran a weather crawl at the bottom of the screen in Spanish. If we've ever done that before, I'm not aware of it. It was a nice touch though. I'm sure there are a good number of people out there, who really have no idea what's headed their way. Sand Mountain especially has a large Spanish Speaking population.

I've also been sending instant messages back and forth with Chris Davis. He's in the weather office back at the station. He and Dan have been using this weather situation, while no storms are severe, to kind of put the new radar through its paces.

Tomorrow is a sports day. I'll be doing sports at 6 and 10. Maybe I'll use that opportunity to tell you a sports story. Maybe one that involves George "Goober" Lindsey and how I think I ended up in his book, "Goober in a Nutshell." I bet you can't wait.....

Another Day

Seems like I'm hearing about blogs all the time now. Makes me wonder if blogs are the CB radios of the 21st Century.

Just in case.... Breaker, Breaker, this is C squared. You got your ears on out there good buddy?

So what happened in the reporter life of Carson Clark today? Well, it was a quiet day. Nothing shook Sand Mountain. We ended up with two good stories. On top of that we were able to shoot them both at the same location. One Stop Shopping. Wish there were some wonderful insights I could shed on them, but they were pretty much what you saw on TV. I also took a few minutes to just sit outside the bureau this afternoon and enjoy the sun. Too bad we all can't do that, more often. Thought seriously about taking my laptop computer out there and just working from all outdoors. Too much trouble.

Something else. This site is set up specifically for blogs right? So why does the spell checker always pull up the word blog and say it's misspelled?

Day Two

The blog is now up and running. It's been linked on the homepage at WHNT.com. So today I will try to give a little more insite into what it is we do everyday. Most people wonder how it could possibly take the whole day to come up with two minutes of news. I've often wondered that myself.

Actually putting together those few minutes of news can somedays be very fast. Boom Boom it's done. But then again, other stories take the whole day.

So what do I do all day? Well my day normally begins at 6:30. That's when the alarm clock goes off. From my house to our Albertville office takes me about 40 minutes. I get to the office around 8:15 everyday. I come in, check email(actually try to check email. The spam is so bad, I'm sure I miss a great deal) then I call the police. Actually I call police across Marshall, DeKalb and Jackson Counties. That's a big part of how we find out what's going on and how I come up with a story everyday.

I have to come up with the story ideas. Most of the time that's how it works. I have to come up with one main story, we call it the package, and several smaller stories. The main story is the one you'll see me delivering live on TV. The other smaller stories, I will write, but the anchors will just read those.

Around 9:15, I will call into the morning meeting. The meeting is held at the station in Huntsville. The news director, assignment manager and our news producers sit around a big table and figure out what our newscasts will have in them for that day. I call in, they put me on speaker phone and I tell them what stories I have for the day. Somedays they will say that's great, and others they will say go look for something else. You have days when it's very tough to come up with anything. After I call the meeting, our Shoals reporter, Jeff Butera will do the same thing.

Once our stories are approved, we then have to start getting them to tape. Normally it will mean calling people and asking if you can come to them and stick a mic in their face. I however am not a big fan of calling ahead. Calling ahead gives them to much of a chance to "be out of the office" or "he can't come to the phone right now." So I prefer to just show up. It seems to work much better that way.

So we go shoot some interviews and the Albertville photographer Brad Hood, shoots video to go along with our story.

We then come back to our office. I will sit down and watch our interviews. I will write down everything the person said. That way when I start to write the story, I can see what they said right in front of me. Next, I start writing the story. Brad will start loading video into the computer for editing. Once the story is written, it has to be approved. So I usually call a producer in Huntsville. They will open up the story on their end, read it and make any changes they feel need to be made.

After that's done, I will voice the package. What that means, is that we will record the part of the story you'll hear me read. Once that's done, Brad will start putting all of the pieces of the story together. That usually takes about an hour.

While he's doing that, I will write the other stories. I also have to write a story for our website. Once he's done, he will call Huntsville on our Southern Link radio. Engineers will make sure they are getting our signal good. Next stop is the editor back in Huntsville. We will feed all of our video to the editor and he will in turn put it on tape.

Next, it's time to get ready to be live in one of the newscast or sometimes all of them. The anchor will come to me live in the Albertville newsroom. I will give a quick introduction to my story and then in Huntsville they will roll the story we sent over earlier.

It ends with about two minutes on TV, but it actually does take us all day to get it together.


More to come.....

Day One

Let me just say that my first posting, just magically disappeared. Not sure where it went, but I'm a little suspicious of the spell check now.......

Anyway, I'm Carson Clark. I'm a reporter at WHNT-TV in Huntsville, Alabama. In this space I will be writing about my experiences as a reporter and fill-in sports guy.

I will write more later, but just wanted to get this first one up and on my blog. Maybe this one won't disappear.

Update on day one: At the end of the 10pm news, we aired a story about alligator mating season. I mentioned to Amy and Dan that we do have alligators in this area. That wasn't a joke. There are a number of alligators along the Tennessee River, especially in the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge area. Although my dad did see an alligator on the Flint River about two years ago.