Breaking News: A Story of the 5Th Estate

By Jim Boston

This is a journey of tragedy and redemption in the television news industry. It involves conflict between two departments at a facility in the television industry or Fifth Estate, and two souls pulled apart by life’s circumstances start their trek to come back together. While the story is a fictional account of conflict within the industry, all the anecdotal stories are true. From the jargon and lingo to the tension and conflict, the story rings true and sets the reader in the heat of the battle to crank out newscasts in today’s ever-shorter news cycle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546266655

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Another Bad Start

Out of Bed

Keith glanced at the clock. It was 6:28 a.m. He hesitated for an instant, knowing that the hardest part of his day was getting the first few steps away from the comfort of his bed and the sanctuary of sleep. Get moving, and momentum will take over, he said to himself.

After a trip to the john, he headed out to his combo kitchen, dining, and living area. Good morning, Oscar! he exclaimed as he added some fish food to the tank. I find it amazing how as I get older, some internal timing mechanism automatically wakes me up just before the alarm.

Oscar went to work sucking in morsels that were still expanding from where they had been dumped on top of the water.

Oscar, want to watch some TV? Let’s see what Channel 31 thinks is important in the world. You don’t drink coffee, do you? Keith continued over to his kitchen area near the front door. While the coffee brewed, he continued into the second bedroom, which served as his den, and woke up his laptop. Why do I always check my mail on my laptop when I have a smartphone? Must be a generational thing, he said loudly over his shoulder.

Plenty of emails, mostly from work complaining about some slight his department had imposed on another.

He opened the sliding glass door of his second-story apartment and found the Wall Street Journal on his patio deck. Delivery guy found his mark today. After walking back inside, he showed the paper to Oscar, who was now floating in the direction of the television. I swear you actually watch TV. Must be the motion.

Keith left the glass door open, with the screen closed, so he could listen to the rustle of the leaves. A nice late May day in northeast Ohio for a change. Looks like no rain today!

One saving grace of living in the area was the trees that abounded throughout the apartment complex. They were everywhere, even in Cleveland’s downtown. Ohio has no shortage of trees, Oscar. You know anywhere the land is not under man’s continuous dominion, trees sprout, thick and quickly, mind you, even with Ohio’s short growing season. The sad part for the tree, though, is that most will lose the competition for root space and sunlight. But the ones that survive do produce a dense canopy of overhead cover. For the trees, this place isn’t all bad.

Keith finally glanced at the TV. Oscar, hold on to your hat. The newscast is about to start. His wall clock said 6:38. He always set his clocks ahead by five to eight minutes. This habit evolved to allow Keith some chance of being on time in his daily affairs. And Keith had a job that worked on exact times. Yes, he knew his clocks—and his wristwatch—were ahead of everyone else’s, but this habit allowed him a virtual buffer that meshed with his time-space continuum. That was a term he used one time to try to explain the practice to his ex-wife.

He walked back to the kitchen area and poured some coffee. Bagel or cereal today?

Bad Start

His cell phone started to play its Guess Who strain of No Time Left for You. Calls at this time were never good—and seldom when from a small pool of coworkers. The phone’s display indicated that the rule would hold true that day. The name on it increased his heart rate more than three cups of coffee and provided the sensation of a kick to the stomach.

Kathryn Torrance!

Good morning, Kathryn, Keith said with as much serenity as he could muster.

No, it’s not! was her terse reply.

What’s wrong? he asked, knowing that his department had created some real or perceived affront to her newscast.

Once again, your department is destroying my newscast by flaunting their incompetence.

Keith wondered how long before her harsh conversational tone would be ratcheted up. How this time? He tried to sound as monotone as he could.

While he couldn’t always manage it, Keith knew that his best defense with her was to stay steady and let her engage in the histrionics.

Kathryn’s voice got louder. That new kid is fucking up my lead-off live shot. We’re less than two minutes from air, and he can’t establish the shot back here to the station.

Keith walked over to the TV and saw after a minute that the opening shot of the studio and the music intro had started. The opening graphics faded away, and the wide shot of the two anchors—as usual a male and female pair—became a two-shot as the camera zoomed in. After a few pleasantries between the two and some directed at the viewers, they moved in to the top story, which meant the top visual story.

You know, Oscar, TV news has evolved into a string of moments and sound bites. The more spectacular the moment and the more outrageous the sound bite, the better. Tragic and disaster moments caught on camera are best, you know, and sound bites that evoke terror, sorrow, or righteous indignation are what most producers hope for.

The lead-in story was a two-alarm fire. I think they said it was a furniture store, Keith directed at Oscar. I’m sure it is catastrophic to the store owners and employees and for anyone in harm’s way of the conflagration, but is this really the top situation affecting Cleveland viewers?

Keith could hear Kathryn screaming into the intercom, which fed a two-way radio in the live truck at the fire. I need the feed now! Over the phone, he could hear the director in the background telling Kathryn that they needed to abort and move on to the next story.

Let me give you a lesson in producing a newscast, Oscar. As the producer of the morning newscast, her job at that instant should be to let the talent know through the IFB to move on to the next story.

Oscar was not paying attention.

‘What’s an IFB?’ you ask. Fish don’t use them, do you? It stands for interrupted feedback system—or interrupted foldback, if you’re British. Now pay attention. It’s simply the system we use to cue the talent in the studio or field.

Keith looked over at the fish and was intrigued that Oscar was now pointed at him. Were you actually listening?

Through the phone, he said, Come on now, Kathryn. Move on to plan B. Drop the live shot, and just move on.

In the background, Keith could hear that she was still venting at him and the truck in the field. She knows that there isn’t really anything I can do or say to change the situation. I’ve learned just to keep quiet and wait for her to rant herself out. That’s the one thing you are good at, Oscar: staying quiet. Did you just emit a bubble? Hmmm. I’ll take that as a yes.

Finally, he heard the click. Oh yeah, final step. She slams the phone down.

After the line went dead, he watched the studio anchors sit in silence. After a few seconds, they stated that they were having technical difficulties and moved on.

You know, Oscar, they probably didn’t do that under direction of Kathryn but realized that they needed to recover on their own to end the awkwardness of dead air.

Why didn’t anyone call me sooner? He thought a moment. I know. They probably got sent to the scene at the last moment. Dah! That’s what breaking news is. But you knew that, Oscar. On many occasions, I’ve talked technicians out of technical problems over the phone. You’ve watched me do it. He turned to the fish.

The new kid? Must be Joey. Only been here a month, and since I’m the one who hired him, that gave the kid one black mark from the start. Seemed like a good hire. He’s only twenty-five, just out of Cuyahoga Community College with an electronic tech degree. He had no prior TV engineering experience but at least had some formal education, and he does have an eager-to-please disposition. He’s engaged to be married and determined to make it in television.

Keith bent over toward the fish. Joey’s main job is to drive, set up, and operate live shots—those live-on-scene videos from the field, you know, the ones that just didn’t happen? He’s also tasked with maintaining his truck. ‘What truck?’ you ask. His truck is a twenty-foot van that has a telescoping mast three-quarters of the way back through the roof. On top of the mast is a meter-sized microwave dish antenna. When the mast is fully extended, it puts the dish forty feet into the air. Pretty impressive, no?

The antenna sat on a steerable panhead that allowed the operator in the truck to point the antenna in any direction. A fat cable known as a Nycoil spiraled around and up the mast to the antenna. The Nycoil housed the cables to transmit audio and video via microwave and to control the dish antenna. When traveling, the mast collapsed down so that the dish rode only two to three feet above the roof of the truck.

Microwave Trucks

Inside the center of the truck was a seat for the operator. In this case, Joey would occupy the driver’s seat until they arrived, and then he became the truck’s operator. There were also a professional video server for editing stories in the field. Often, trucks sent to a story used what was known as doughnuts. The truck would show up at a story, a station videographer—usually just referred to as a photog—and reporter would shoot footage of the story, and then they would either edit it in the field or establish a microwave RF path and send it to the station for editing. During the live shot in a newscast, the reporter would do a standup, that is, stand in front of some scenery associated with the story (one hoped), introduce the recorded story (the hole of the doughnut), and then wrap the story up in another live shot after the story played.

The truck’s connection back to the station was the microwave part of a microwave truck. Keith had been asked several times where the microwave in the truck was mounted. He often sensed that the question was in jest. Microwave did not refer to a device for heating food but the band of frequencies used. These frequencies were so high, and thus their wavelength so short they were micro. They also behaved a lot like light. Take a light bulb, surround it by a reflector, and much like a flashlight, you could concentrate that light in a particular direction. The reflector for microwaves was the dish on top of the truck. The light bulb was a feed horn that stuck out from the dish and bent back 180 degrees to shoot microwaves at the dish, which was parabolic in shape and directed the microwaves in the direction it was pointed.

TV stations had one or more receive sites for signals from these vehicles. WCUY, Keith’s station, had five scattered around town and its outlying areas. The nice thing about microwaves, like light, was that they bounced, and all the antennas on the trucks were steerable at the truck; the received antennas were generally steerable remotely also from the television studio end. Often, the truck’s antenna was not pointed directly at the receive site, and the receive antenna was not pointed directly at the truck—especially when a truck was attempting a shot from the steel-and-concrete canyons of the downtown area.

WCUY had two downtown receive sites. One was on top of the city’s tallest structure, a bank building. The other downtown receive site, on a 708-foot building known as the Terminal Tower, was once Cleveland’s tallest building and originally housed a fair-size passenger train terminal in its lower environs during the heyday of train travel. These sites could experience microwave signals coming at them in many directions from a truck transmitting downtown. But bouncing the signal could be problematic as the sun rose or set and buildings slowly expanded or contracted or the winds blew foliage and a myriad of other subtle effects deflected the path. The shifting and thus unstable path invariably happened right before the shot was to be taken on air.

Well, Oscar, I know that today will be another struggle and that the lion’s den I will enter today will not be sleepy or kind. His appetite gone, he drank some coffee, showered, and grabbed a banana as an afterthought on the way out, as he didn’t need his stomach growling during the interrogations he would undergo when he got in. By 7:20, he was out the door.

CHAPTER 2

Mig Alley

He got on the freeway a couple of blocks from the apartment and headed west toward downtown. Many TV stations that signed on early in broadcast TV’s era—the late forties, early fifties—were in the center of town. Often, stations that signed on the air later were situated out from the center of town, some even out in the suburbs. WCUY first went on the air in 1964, which made it five years younger than Keith. It was the youngest Cleveland station to still have its studios downtown.

Keith’s phone, now dash mounted, rang again.

It just keeps getting better! he said, in response to seeing it was from his ex-wife. Hello, Nancy.

How you are holding up in that hellhole? she said.

Today is a bright spring morning, and this drive to work might be the pinnacle of my day. Thanks for asking, he said. Why are you up so early? Isn’t it four thirty in the morning there?

No, it’s six thirty. I’m in Chicago, she said.

What brings you to Chicago? he asked.

None of your fucking business! she replied.

What do you want? he asked.

Where’s your goddamn half of the money for Ted to take his California bar exam, or don’t you care about our son? she demanded.

You know the last few miles’ drive to the station I pass along the southern shore of Lake Erie. You know Cleveland’s downtown is along this shore, he said absentmindedly.

The lake was the second smallest of the Great Lakes in the area and the smallest in volume. It was generally shallow, with its deepest point only a little over two hundred feet. The western end of the lake was shallow, so it didn’t take much wind for the lake to become angry and perilous. The oceangoing ships that plied these lakes often found their maritime skills stressed, especially when colliding cold and warm air masses faced off over the lake in the months of October and November in the fall and April and May in the spring. But this day in May, it was almost serene.

I know that, so what? she said.

Just enamored by the beauty of the lake, he said.

Listen, I can see Lake Michigan from my hotel room. It’s just a goddamn lake. All the Great Lakes are nothing but polluted shitholes. Like the rest of the East, she said.

That’s right. You don’t like the East at all, he said.

Yeah, and you hauled me back there, and we had to raise the kids in Philadelphia and New Jersey! she almost shouted.

In a slightly more subdued tone, she repeated, Where is the goddamn money?

I sent it straight to Ted.

Well, he didn’t mention it to me when I talked to him last night. You were supposed to send it to me; that was the agreement, she demanded.

No, I never agreed to that; you requested it, Keith said.

Yeah, only so I knew you bothered to send it, Nancy said.

Okay, I’ll check with Ted later and confirm he received it, Keith said.

Do it! And then she disconnected.

Yes, I will have a nice day, he said out loud.

As he drove, Keith tried to find an antonym to what awaited him in a few minutes in the calm he saw out on the lake through his windshield. All he could muster was dark and dismal.

Once through the gate into the secured parking lot, he found his normal spot, and as he pulled into it, he looked over to the garage area and saw that all five of the microwave trucks—ENG (Electronic News Gathering) trucks in the industry—were back in their stalls. Keith climbed out of his car and muttered, Joey’s back from his failed mission.

As he walked toward the rear entrance to the building, he converged with Sally Tully. How’s business? Keith asked the sales rep.

Good! How’s the technical stuff going? she returned.

Not good at the moment. The new guy I hired lost a live shot this morning. He is most likely under siege by select members of the news department as we speak. As he said that, he concentrated on quickening his pace toward the door, getting there before Sally did. He held his access card up to a pad and opened the first of two doors to gain entrance to the interior. In his haste, he moved to the second door but then turned back to hold the door open for Sally. His manners regained, he opened the second door and let her go in first.

Like with many television stations, there were two doors to get through with a small vestibule in between. If one entrance had this feature, generally all ingress and egress paths did. If the station did newscasts and if they enjoyed any success in viewership, that meant they had anchors and reporters who often were frequently the largest personalities, at least from a television talent perspective, in their markets and there was always some sliver of the populous that had a message to get to them or a perceived grievance to deliver—some were just plain stalkers. At night, the station had off-duty Cleveland cops in attendance at the main front and rear entrances from before the afternoon news block until the high-value employees had left after the late evening newscasts.

Good luck, Keith, she said.

You too, he replied.

Then Sally said, It sounds like you might need both of our shares of luck today. She smiled, and their paths departed.

Sympathetic Face

Once in the corridor beyond the entrance, the next face he saw was a sympathetic one also, Bill Hampton’s. Usually, he had a smile for Keith, and while his expression was not a frown, it appeared taut, as Bill’s allegiance had to be his department—news.

He was what Keith considered a crusty reporter, maybe the only real old-school journalist left in the building. He was a journeyman reporter who could write and talk in front of a camera with authority and knew how to use all the skills involved with interviewing others. Distinguished and about the only field reporter who still wore a suit and tie, his walk—some took it almost as a shuffle—to Keith seemed deliberate, like his demeanor and reporting.

Bill sighed. I’d say a storm was a brewing, but it’s already blown in. He put on his best forced smile. The ops manager, along with your favorite producer, are all looking for a pound of flesh, as every other station had working live shots but us.

Is Joyce in? Keith asked.

Yes, she came through the door a few minutes before you, Bill said.

Did she say anything? Keith wondered.

No, but she didn’t look happy, Bill replied.

I hope they haven’t descended on Joey yet, Keith said.

I don’t think so. I saw the kid go straight into your shop when he got back, Bill said.

Are you the hall monitor today? Keith managed a weak smile.

I should be so lucky; that might be a promotion. No, I’m waiting on a photographer who’s late. We have a story to go shoot.

Good, I’m hoping that Kathryn and company would think they have bigger fish to fry, me, instead of him.

You know, Keith, if you need a sympathetic ear, I’m here. I just don’t have any power to help. Good luck!

Keith smiled, nodded, and headed into his domain.

He walked into the engineering department and briefly looked down the hall at his office, whose door was locked. He looked in his assistant’s cubical, and finding him not there, he went out into his department’s office area and walked about thirty feet and through the door into the electronic shop area. There sat Joey at one end of the bench, about as hunched as one could be on the stool he was on. He had an above-normal stature and was very bright. He could almost always deliver a good-natured and well-timed quip when the occasion warranted it. None of that was in evidence this morning. He simply stared at the floor.

While an inner-city kid, he grew up without carrying any of the baggage from that. Keith had recently met his parents and realized they might not have had much, but they molded their son into a responsible adult—something they were obviously quite proud of. Margaret Cramer, Maggi for short, was softly saying something to him when Keith entered, and her voice trailed off.

Maggi

Maggi was the assistant director of engineering for the main engineering department. Many large stations had an engineering support department, like Keith’s, that was devoted to the news department only and another that took care of everything else, from the main studios and master control to the high power over the air transmit sites, which with cable and satellite, few people watched. WCUY was still considered a fair-sized station, as it still had about 120 employees. When Maggi started eight years earlier as a technician, its head count was closer to 150.

Maggi’s mothering instinct was in action. You’re not the first one to lose a shot. And you will lose more. The important thing is what have we learned? We’ll help you learn the lesson that was presented here.

Maggi tended to dress in the uniform of any other tech in the building—jeans and, depending on the weather, even flannel shirts. But Keith had seen her at functions outside the station, and it was apparent that she knew how to be attractive. Her time in the navy taught her to be matter of fact and stay on task when on duty. But Keith had seen her playful side away from WCUY. He knew she had a two-year associate’s degree and wanted to go back to complete her bachelor’s.

Keith had known her the five years he had been at WCUY. It wasn’t until about a year ago that he found himself thinking about her, often not even realizing it. It was usually triggered by something they had in common—a chance meeting in the hallway, a place they had been together—up to now always business related or about food or a place. She had straight, shoulder-blade-length hair and a round face. As he watched her invoke her feminine side to soothe Joey, he thought that maybe, no, there was no attraction toward her, and even if there was, she surely wouldn’t have any interest in him.

The thought made him think that at forty-five, her desire to finish her four-year degree was nothing more than an empty wish, but then her mantra was always, If you’re not learning and evolving, you’re headed for obsolescence in life, not only mentally but physically. In the moment he had a glimpse, for an instant, that the bouquet of talent, personality, and depth of feeling that was the sum of Maggi was much more alluring than he was prepared to face.

That instance quickly passed, as he concluded it was momentary flight from the situation at hand, broken by the sound of conversation from the person he dreaded the most at the station heading into the shop. While he couldn’t or wouldn’t discern the context of their riled conversation, he and another familiar face promptly strode into the room, and both stopped and glared at Keith and Joey. They never appeared to look directly at Maggi.

The Powers That Be

Herb Stocklin, the station manager, dressed and with the posture of a salesman who knew he was always able to close the deal, and Joyce Milligan, the news director, as usual was dressed to the nines—in her case, not flamboyantly but smartly. She was confident and had the intellect to sustain it. Her whole focus was news. Everything within her gravitational pull existed to make her news product, that is, all her news shows, the best in the market. In her mind, news was the station’s main product, and all the programming between her morning, noon, evening, and late-night news programs were nothing more than interstitial space to give her department time to produce their next performance.

Herb was the second highest ranking manger in the building, eclipsed only by the station’s general manager. The operations manager, whom some stations called the station manager, was charged with the day-to-day operation of the station. He was the tactical leader. The GM, or general manager, was concerned with advertising sales, or spot sales, as the industry called it, and the strategic direction of the station, and thus the station manager supplied the tactical input to help the GM craft the overall scope and direction of the station’s business effort. The GM reported to their handlers at the corporate parent.

While Herb was of ordinary height, his demeanor and confidence made the mind think he was a few inches taller. His roots were modest, but every inside track that came his way he astutely applied to his advantage. He started as a video photographer, or photog in the industry. He shot news stories. He graduated to a news producer. Then he had the foresight to get involved with the production department. A station’s production department organized the logistics and produced all programming that wasn’t news. He managed to become a director in production. While a producer organizes and arranges for the necessary equipment, personnel, and talent to produce a show, the director calls the shots during the actual production. Again, the whole strategic-tactical yin and yang. The producer handles the strategic part and the director the tactical part of a show.

From there, Herb did and said the right things with enough consistency to make station manager.

In looking at Herb, Keith thought that as a man, Herb was probably attractive to many women, not only from a prestige standpoint but also from a physical standpoint. This made Keith think about the rumors—no, actual urban legends—about Herb’s sexual prowess. There were no concrete details ever, just insinuation of trysts in conference rooms, even in a microwave truck once, and in the various offices he had over the years. There always seemed to be fables about photogs and female reporters out on faraway assignments. While Keith was sure they happened, their frequency seemed to be seeped in wishful thinking.

Keith glanced at Joyce. He knew her from New York. He had had a crush on her for several years, and he felt that she had one on him too. But they were both in relationships with other people. Now neither were in a relationship—at least he believed she wasn’t, as she seemed absolutely married to her job. While he imagined her as romantically and sexually a force of nature, he thought her much more measured and deliberate in any relationship she entered. While Herb had lots of innuendo swirling around him, Joyce had none, but in the realm she resided in, he was sure she was a hot topic and a prize to be pursued. In Cleveland, she never seemed interested in