DEAN DOME DOOM AND CHOCOLATE CITY REDEMPTION "I am just wondering how fired I am? This was the second worst day of my career, when you get this message, please call me at home, page, whatever." I whined into the live truck cell phone to my boss's answering machine shortly after midnight Saturday night.

The plan was so simple (as it always is). From 2:30 to about 5:30 I was supposed to finish editing a February sweeps story on doggie daycare. Reporter Todd Hauer and I would then drive to Chapel Hill to the University of North Carolina's basketball arena: the Dean Smith Dome. We would touch base with our live truck engineer and then go eat dinner. From 7:30 until 8:30 we would shoot our story. I would edit it from 9:00 to 9:45, feed the story back to the station in Raleigh via microwave (not like cooking food, more like a cell phone signal for video). We would do a 10 PM live shot at the Dean Dome. At that time we would determine who was going to win the basketball game being played inside and head to the rioting grounds of the winning team with a different live truck and do our story for 11 PM there.

So what was the story that required such intricate strategy? The University of North Carolina versus Duke University basketball game. In many areas of the country, people would not consider a regional sporting event the most important news of the day. But I am in North Carolina. I am in the midst of multiple college basketball powerhouses, I am in a place where college basketball is not recreation, it is religion.

The day was doomed from the beginning. No sooner than I put the last edit into the doggie daycare story, my pager went off,

"COP STANDOFF IN CHAPEL HILL GO NOW".

As I rewound the doggie story, I noticed a few unpleasing edits, they were headed to air now. I loaded my equipment into the live truck named "Van 2". I had never actually been in Van 2. The few times I worked out of this particular live truck, an engineer took care of everything. All I had to do was plug my camera into the cables leading to the live truck and throw up some lights. I had worked several times out of another live truck, "Van 5", but it was already in Chapel Hill with an engineer for the sports department. Van 2 was kind of similar to a live truck I used in Albuquerque named "Unit 8". Where do these names come from? Live trucks vary in size, shape and ability. Most are large cargo vans with a big antenna on top that shoots 50 feet into the air. Inside is a transmitter, editing equipment, and lots of little TV sets. Long spools of cable connect the camera, reporter and photographer to the live truck. The cables carry the video from the camera, audio from the microphone and give the reporter and photographer "internal feed back" or IFB---like radio where the reporter can hear what they are saying back at the station. It is the little curly cord that hangs behind the reporter's ear.

We got to the police standoff rather quickly. A man had barricaded himself into his home, threatening officers with a gun. As we drove by the house the man was reportedly hiding in, we saw a competing television station shooting video right in front. I parked big Van 2 in the next block behind the competing station's live truck. It was not the nicest neighborhood in Chapel Hill and I figured there was safety in numbers. As I began hiking with my camera and tripod back to the man's house, an officer stopped me. "You can't go through here ma'am." I could feel my good humor fading quickly, "Why are you letting TVD shoot right in front of the man's house---wait, let me roll on this." As I put my camera on my shoulder and started rolling, I explained to the officer that I had to prove to my boss why they would see the man's house on the other station and not ours because I was denied access rather than being lazy. My boss had instructed us to do this when were denied access to public property or other stations were allowed to shoot something and we were not. I could tell the officer was not amused as I started questioning him, "First what is your name?" He would not answer, I shot his name tag. "Why is another television station allowed to shoot inside the scene and we are not?" He shrugged his shoulders, "I guess they snuck in there." I smirked, "And why are you allowing the general public to go into the scene, but not me?" He shrugged again. I took my camera off my shoulder and explained again that I understood he was doing his job, and I was doing mine. I could tell he was not a bad person, he just did not know the law and thought I was making it up. He then told me where I could shoot. At first I wanted to argue some more, but decided to choose my battles. I walked over to the area and set up. I grabbed some shots of SWAT guys marching through yards with rifles drawn. I shot the street signs and some other video to show the location. We sent that back to the station through the live truck for the 6 PM news and switched gears to our original story: the basketball game.

As we approached the University of North Carolina, the gridlock began. Todd and I crept through the campus with the thousands of basketball fans all headed for the Dean Dome. We topped a hill and could see miles and miles of cars backed up. People walking along the sidewalks were passing us. "The quest for the Dean Dome" rang in my head and I watched the faithful march to their round-ball sanctuary. I grinned at Todd, "Hey you want to drive this beast down to the other live truck and I will jump out here and follow the crowd down to the game?" Todd had not been very excited about the story to begin with and gladly agreed. I walked the two or so miles of the pilgrimage with the deeply committed fans. Most were college age kids, either students or recent graduates of the two rival schools. My favorite fans were the aristocratic elders in their mink coats and ascots going to the Ball---basketball. "Duke fans" I heard in my head. I soon came into scalper alley. "Two tickets, drove from Georgia, need two tickets", "Got a Gucci seat here, two c-notes", "Need a ticket, will pay fifty". Tip off was minutes away as I felt the crush of peole push toward the arena. I could hear the crowd inside erupt as the starting line up warmed up on the court. Todd soon found me and we were ready to put our story together.

It was a good little story about people's triumphs over time and space to get to a basketball game. Our 10 PM live shot went off without a hitch and Duke was wiping the floor with UNC. Todd and I hopped in Van 2 and headed to Durham, hoping to get ahead of the tidal wave of basketball fans that would gush from every open pore in the Dean Dome in the next few minutes. We made excellent time along 15-501. We got to the Duke University campus only to find the other two TV stations had crews waiting and had taken all the good parking. I had to park about 200 feet from where we wanted to do our live shot. 200 feet is equal to half the circumference of the Earth when you have to string cable from the live truck to the camera. But we had plenty of time and the crowd of rioters behind us were just getting started. These otherwise exceptionally intelligent children were burning all the park benches from inside the dorm compound and dancing a tribal ritual around the fire in little or no clothing. As I started my 200 foot cable run from the live truck to my camera, the reel froze up after about 75 feet. I ran back to inspect the problem and the spool had tangled into a giant pile of black spaghetti. I grabbed another reel and started running. I plugged into the camera, a microphone and IFB. I went back to the truck to announce my victory to engineering, but there was a problem. The IFB was not working. Todd could not hear the station, Todd could not hear me. I ran back to where Todd was and noticed the little green light on the box that controls the volume for IFB was not lit up like it should be. I ran back to the truck and tried plugging things in differently. I ran back to Todd, still no green light. I could feel panic building in my chest. The 11 PM news had already started, we had missed our slot. After a bizarre game of cell phone tag between me, the station, the engineer in Chapel Hill with Van 5 and Todd, they asked me why I was not using wireless IFB. My frustration was getting the best of me as I tried to explain I had never worked out of Van 2, I had never used wireless IFB and I did not realize it was an option. But the task at hand was getting this live shot on the air, not Lynn trying to save her butt. The wireless IFB is essentially a little walkman radio the size of a pager, Todd's worked great, mine had a dead battery, but I could live without it, we just needed to get this story on the air.

Seventeen minutes into the 11 PM news, we finally got the lead story on. As Todd talked about the party going on behind him and quickly interviewed hyped up fans, I could feel my skull imploding.

I had missed a lead story live shot during a ratings book. The other two stations had done their live shots and were packing up to go home when we were still trying to figure out why the green light would not come on. I had no excuse for missing the shot. I had done hundreds of live shots in Albuquerque. I only missed one while I was there. Of course, it was a really big one.

Bring up the Coors-Sequoia fire to anyone working in the Albuquerque television market in 1997, and they will either cringe or gloat. Two stations had live trucks and helicopters at the fire, doing live updates ever ten minutes as a huge strip mall on the west side of the city burned to the ground. One station did not get their live shot up until four minutes into the 10 PM news and even then it was a reporter standing in a black hole. That station was my station, and I was running that live truck and shooting that live shot. The way the brain forgets pain, my brain has forgotten that live shot. I just remember living in fear of my job for the rest of my days at KOAT. I had missed a lead story live shot during a ratings book and that is why the station sank to number two (not really, but they needed someone to blame).

Todd finished his live shot and we began to roll up the cable and put away the equipment. We were both silent as we could feel a heavy punishment waiting for me on Monday morning. We headed back to Raleigh and began to rationalize what happened. But I knew no excuse would be worthy of missing that lead story, especially when the other two stations had no problem getting their stories on the air.

If there is one thing I learned at KOAT, it is the art of damage control. I called the newsroom to talk with the producer of the 11 PM show, everyone had already went home. Oh what a bad, bad sign. It was such a horrible night, no one wanted to even stay and discuss it, they were too disgusted with the show to even remain in the building. I then called my boss, or my boss's answering machine as it were. Not home, good, maybe he did not see the show. But for me that was worse. It gave the situation time to smolder and if you do not take accountability upfront for bad things, they only become worse with time. It was the Coors-Sequoia feeling all over again. I had only been at this station for four months and I was already going to spend my days waiting for the ax to fall. At least at KOAT, I had four years under my belt when Coors-Sequoia happened.

We crawled into the the station sometime around 12:30am. I checked my e-mail out of habit. The bold letters of a new message dominated the screen. The message was from the producer of the 11PM show. I hoped she would let me have it, tell me how I ruined the last Saturday show of the February book and that she would be meeting with the news director first thing Monday. I double clicked on the message. Theresa Avery: "Great hustle, thanks for your hard work tonight!"

HELLO! Did she not watch the show? Was this a joke? How can she thank me for hard work when I destroyed the newscast? And then the keg began to dry up at the pity party. As the common sense cops showed up and shut down my personal "I suck" fest, reality set in. Guess what? We were covering a basketball game. We made it on the air. It is the gamble of live TV. This was far from the second worst day of my career. Coors-Sequoia was not the worst. The worst was the day I had to cover the murder of a good friend of mine. The second worst was the day KOAT fired everyone in the Roswell bureau. In terms of broken lives, broken promises and broken hearts, tonight did not even make the top ten. Tonight was a learning experience, the hard way.

The funny thing about television news is today's catastrophe can feel like the world is going to split open and swallow you whole. The next day it is not even worth mentioning around the coffee pot because another disaster is looming and it will leave your personal tragedy to shame.

SUNDAY NIGHT 11:30PM

Broken wire. That is all it was. There was a broken wire in the cable reel and that is why the IFB would not work.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT 1:00AM (NOW THURSDAY) ADRENALINE RUSH!!!!

It was like the last ten minutes of a cheezy movie. For the last two hours the center figure has been written into corners. The sub plots and personal issues have overshadowed the intent of climax. The theatre patrons are shifting in their seats, knowing it can't drag on much longer, debating whether to just skip the end of the movie and catch it on video in a few months. With the squelch of the scanner, all the characters must depend on one another to survive to the end and overcome their moutains. The scanner beeped and blurted something about a fire on US 1 near Franklinton. Someone quipped, "Todd and Greg were just there at Chocolate City". Chocolate City is not as appealing as it sounds. It is a modern version of a speak easy. It is a quasi-night club randomly set up inside the equipment shack of an abandoned baseball field on a dirt road. There have been several murders and violent attacks at the club and the cops are trying to catch them in the act of being a night club and shut down the illegal operation.

Last night, Todd Hauer and Photographer Greg Clark went on a raid of the club with sheriff's deputies and talked to neighbors who have to deal with the disruptive night spot. Earlier this evening they were at the club again to follow up on charges in a stabbing that happened there during the weekend and see if police have any leads as to who runs Chocolate City. As several other people listened to the scanner, the name Chocolate City came up several times. The irony of what was about to be asked of me was far too great not to be planned in the grand comic scheme of the universe. Before someone else was given the satisfaction of bringing Lynn's live truck saga full circle, I asked, "Do I need to load up in Van 2---the devil van?" Assignment editor Julia Lewis also saw the literary conflict developing: is this man vs. machine or man vs. himself? No, this is Lynn vs. the Van.

Strangely enough, much like Coors-Sequoia, I don't remember much about the live shot other than the feeling afterward. But this time the feeling was great. I had slayed a dragon. I would no longer live in fear of doing live shots out of Van 2. I felt a deep redemption in my core from Saturday night. But the best part was the adreniline rush of live TV.

When I worked assignment desk at KVIA in El Paso, Texas, I used to analyze my day as I drove north on I-10 back to Las Cruces. Everyday I would either walk out of the building as the star of the show or the scum of the earth. For every dozen scummy days, I would have one star day if I was lucky. But It was those star days that made it all worth it. Tonight I am going to go home shining.

Behind the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism
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