Wednesday, June 10th/Friday, June 12th

Wednesday was actually pretty cool. I went to a couple weirdo stories. First, we went to a story about a guy who drove into a house. Twice. Same guy, same house, two different days. Needless to say, old guys on dialysis shouldn't drive. Then I went on a story about a lady whose car got shot during a driveby. She was taking her baby to the hospital. It was touching and she cried, and her neighbor had a nice cat. Plus the bullet hole was freaking HUGE. Woah.

Another day, another shift...today has been pretty much the norm, although the DTV transition shook things up a bit. I only went out on one story, though I had the choice to go out on another. More on that later - I saw my first murderers today! I spend an HOUR sitting in a hallway waiting for a trial to end in the county courthouse, and then followed some murderers down the hall...pretty gosh darn exciting!

And now for the real craziness: right now, my town is hosting a MAJOR sports event...one that causes things like 1) Calls from CNN 2) every single other story to be put on the back burner and 3) random celebrities to show up and have free concerts, etc. It's raining today and our reporter will be out in the rain till about 11pm, so when our assignment editor asked me if I wanted to go out to the event...I said, let the sports intern go. I'll be cool.

Things that interested/entertained me today:
-Wednesday...can't remember much. Uh, I went to my first "news meeting". That was cool.
-of all the places to NOT fix all their TVs...my station has a TV that isn't digital. HAHA.
-crazy lady coming up to us outside the courthouse, asking if we can help her with her problems (we have a "can help" phone number that she couldn't get through to)
-someone wrote a note and put it on one of our more "seasoned" reporters' desks. It reads "1960's Reference Desk"
-I accidentally tried to walk up a down escalator in a crowded courthouse today. Oops....don't judge me!
-TOTALLY got into the shot of another news station, and was almost bumped into by two murderers. Just another Friday :)
-Producer called someone in the newsroom to talk to them. I was not paying attention, heard the phone ring...and answered. The girl was sitting RIGHT next to me. Today was apparently my "Tara acts stupid day.

-Tara

Sunday, June 7th

Wow...it's been awhile! I have been working...I just have either been doing something else to bide my time, going on shoots, or...okay I'll admit it. I just haven't felt like updating :) Anyways, it's a slow day for anyone NOT in weather (aka tornado season is upon us) and I've got some time. In the past few days I have gone on shoots to places like...a food show, done exciting things like...clean out my boss's old paperwork (which was hilarious, actually), watch said boss catch her Starbucks cup on fire (not sure HOW that happened, since those paper cups are microwavable, but she managed to do it). Today I have just sat around, but that's mainly because crime/bad stuff/breaking news generally doesn't happen when the weather sucks. People don't really shoot people outside when it's raining. Interesting.

Funny/interesting things that I have seen:
-TOTALLY drunk guy calls, asks me "Where [Producer that doesn't work nights] at?" I said she wasn't there, then he proceeded to ask me where 2 other producers were (neither of them were producing the 10pm that night). Then he said "Are the storms over?" Well...no. The storms are supposed to be STARTING after 12am. I say this, then he says "They're probably ovr by now". Repeat three times...then he hangs up.
-one of my boss's old investigative files had a police codename of "Operation Papercut"...oooh, dangerous!
-a couple of days ago, a guy called me and said "Hi, where's [Male news anchor]?" I said "He's not here right now, he doesn't get in until later (it was like 10am)." He said "He gonna be on tonight" "Yes," I said. "Where's [Female news anchor]? Is she on tonight?" "Yes, [M.N.A.] and [F.N.A.] will be on tonight, but they don't get in until later--" and as I was going to ask if he would like to leave a message, he hung up. Guess what's all he wanted to know.
-today, a lady called and said (soundly slightly drunk), "Hi, can I speak to the news man?" to which I said "Um...who?" and she said "Uuuhhh...the news man...on the weather!" Oh. That "news man". Also known as a METEOROLOGIST. Or weather guy.
-Trike/motorcycle. Enough said.
-Today, the switchboard on our phones is messed up and all my calls are being sent to the sports desk. So, the sports guy keeps getting all the stupid calls about DTV/the weather/stupid things no one cares about/etc. and complaining about it :)
-Finally, my parents showed me a TERRIBLE news anchor on our competitor's newscast last night. Today, we laughed about her inability to do well.

-Tara