11-26-11

The scene of the killing.

Each morning, the Assistant Producer calls around to the local police and fire departments to see if anything is going on. In addition, when a major crime or arrest has occurred, the police will send out a news release. In the past, they faxed it, but now they just send an email. One weekend morning, we got an email from Christiansburg.

A three-year-old was dead; a man was under arrest for the killing. Typically, there weren't many more details than that. Reporter Holly Pietrzak and I drove down there all the same; sadly, this sort of thing is the very definition of "news." This is the address the police gave. There was no one at home. A child seat rested in the back of the car parked in front, as if waiting to take its tiny passenger on the next errand in just a moment. A big wheel sat abandoned out back.

The neighbors knew nothing of the death, and had little to offer about the people who lived there.

This seemed to me typical of our experience of this sort of story. We get the email and hurry down, gather what facts that we can, then drive on. Our view is nothing more than a brief glimpse from the inside of a news car...

Election day, 2011. Poll workers straighten out the paperwork and setup the electronic voting machines before things begin.

Reporter Joe Dashiell listens while a community group discusses the drawbacks of uranium mining in Virginia. We had been invited to listen in on the gathering at an apartment in Roanoke.

Assistant Producer Molly Binion digs into ice cream we brought back from the Homestead Creamery, while anchor Kimberly McBroom waits her turn.

Just inside the entrance to the Virginia Museum of Transportation, early on a day after I had shot some B-Roll of one of the train engines on display there. I couldn't resist the light spilling in from the front door...

The setup for a women's luncheon at the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke. I really like the scrambled patterns of light and shadow, chair and table...

Every time they play at Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium, the field must be painted. Lines and number, hash marks and logos, and perhaps most importantly: the words "Virginia Tech" in the end zones. Before one particularly big game, a game that induced our News Director to bring the whole show out in the field for the day under the banner "Hokie Hoopla," Bob did a "Do My Job" painting the letters. He did the R. It looked pretty good, really. This is the guy who normally does the job, continuing to work after we finished filming.

A presentation on a new theater at Center in the Square...

Just as the 11-o'clock news starts on Saturday. The anchors sit in their places, the lights up, the cameras in place. In the foreground, the network's program winds through the final credits ...