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In praise of Boston TV news crews
By adamg on Fri, 01/05/2018 - 9:14am
No, I haven't just spent too much time outside in the cold. But I think the local TV stations did a really good job with yesterday's storm.
Sure, the day started like any other New England nor'easter - we had reporters standing by interstates and on decks on Plum Island waiting to show us Mother Nature's Fury and Inch Count. So at first, yeah, just another day of reporting that, hey, it's snowing out and more warnings from reporters on beaches not to come down to those beaches.
But around 1 p.m., as the high tide came in, actual news broke: The tide was way higher than anybody'd seen and whole neighborhoods along the coast - including our gazillion-dollar Seaport - turned into icy bays. People were trapped in cars and houses. Ice rivers carried large trash dumpsters down streets. Why, it might have been worse than the flooding during, gasp, the Blizzard of '78!
And TV reporters and camera people were there to report it all - from the people being rescued on rafts from cars on Atlantic Avenue to people being taken out of houses in front-end loaders. In the newsrooms, producers, writers and anchorpeople compiled all the reports and alerted us to the enormity of what was happening across the region.
They informed us. They did their jobs and they did them well.
We now return to your normally grumpy writer, already in progress ...
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Comments
I didn't watch TV yesterday,
I didn't watch TV yesterday, but it's nice to see appreciation & thanks for a job that is wicked uncomfortable, at the least; I certainly don't want to smile when getting blasted with a 60 MPH wind.
ps: I think "gaps"="gasp"
Gasp, you're right!
I will win no kudos for my copy-editing skills. Fixed.
gasp....not gaps
One of your grumpy copy editors.
Why do I feel like I'm missing nothing by not having television? All I need is UHUB.
I feel better that none of my money is going to Comcast, etc.
BREAKING: {Anything Boston}
If you want the full firehouse, just look at Adams (Uhub's) twitter feed. If it's happening in Boston, you'd find it there within minutes.
Boston TV news, yes (what
Boston TV news, yes (what little I watched, anyway...)
Out-of-town outlets reporting from Boston, no. Watched a painful AP feed online - some anchor somewhere (Hartford, maybe?) and a field reporter in Copley Square (still trying to figure out if they were lazy/stupid or brilliantly countercultural for reporting from someplace dry instead standing in flood waters at any of a dozen waterfront locations like everyone else) talking about how there wasn't much wind in Copley Square because it was sheltered by the BosTix booth!
I may be grumpy today, but....
When I've seen reporters in action during less-than-ideal weather, they spend much more time in their idling vans than actually out on the street.
I also find news-people work pretty hard at patting themselves on the back for braving the storm. If anyone goes un-sung and should get more credit, it's the news crew drivers / cameramen who have to set up the equipment.
Humbug and all that.
Stay warm, everyone.
Oh, I get it
And if it hadn't been for the flooding, that's what we would have had - reporters doing silly stunts with snowballs, rulers and boxes of coffee (oh, wait, somebody did go on air with a Box o' Joe) for 15 hours. But this was more than just heavy snow, there was actual news happening, and I think the local channels rose to the occasion.
As for sitting in vans most of the time, I admit to some sympathy there, as somebody who has tried to do actual reporting in stupid weather, even if not doing live shots (once drove around Natick and Framingham in a hurricane and have tried to take notes during protests in sub-freezing weather more than once). It's actually hard work, so I can't begrudge them that. Plus, they're not just sitting there - they're doing other sorts of stuff like talking to the local PDs and what not, compiling their notes for their reports, etc.
In Praise of ...
TV/Radio news crews
Town/City Snow Plow drivers
Private Contractor
The non-news infrastructure separates 'us' from Houston.