Dispatch from Inside CBS News
(Heck, being "The Mole" worked for Anderson Cooper …)
Bob Schieffer started off the meeting in his standard folksy manner, informing the crowd that he's nearing his 50-year anniversary in the news business. Then he shared the story of the interview that led to his career, when he applied for work at a radio station. The man running the station pointed across the street and said "tell me what's over there." Schieffer observed "it's the football field." The interviewer responded "Yeah, but tell me what you see over there, describe it." Apparently, given this second chance, Schieffer did well enough to earn a spot on the staff and … the rest is history.
After that, a lot of the seminar was spent deconstructing a four minute segment put together in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. Cameramen, producers and correspondents discussed the logistical difficulties of trying to wrap their heads around the story in order to condense it to a comprehensive report. "CBS Evening News" producer Andy Triay spelled out the difference between the live cable reporting of the story and the CBS segment analyzed. "A cable reporter's job is to say here is what I can see from this vantage point, but network reporters have to say here is what happened today" when faced with putting together a taped segment tying together all the day's developments.** Also, overlooked logistical issues were discussed, from the four-hour trip down to Blacksburg, to the difficulties of finding set-up shots and witnesses to the task of trying to identify, you know, tracking down what happened in the midst of confusion and chaos.
Also in attendance was CBS "Early Show" correspondent Joie Chen, who told the interns "When you start out in local news, you keep thinking to yourself 'I could do so much better with a little help.' Then you get to the network level, and you've got 17 people coming at you with ideas and help and all you can think is 'Leave me alone. I need to get this done.' You're always learning how to do the job better."
She also shared her frustration about stories that never see the light of day. "The best piece I've ever done will never run on the air," said Chen. "It had every key element you want a story to have, but it was about Katrina and it never ran then and it's never going to be aired now."
CBS cameraman Don Lee told a few stories about what happens behind the scenes of a news segment from the guy directly responsible for the visual images, most notably: "Don't ever let a producer bully you into bad work. Just remember that it may be his story, but it's your pictures. There's never a caption at the bottom that says 'the cameraman was extremely rushed.' One time I was working with a producer and time was tight and we had to get an interview, and he said 'Just put him up against that brick wall and let's talk to him." And I told him 'There's nothing you can do that will make me do that shot.'"
Another observation from CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante for those in attendance was "We're talking about live shots and logistics and everything, but don't forget the journalism. Particularly if you get your start with local news. There will be plenty of people out there telling you 'what the story is' and they're not used to having people push back. But keep questioning the story and decide for yourself."
The second on-air segment the seminar focused on was about police car chases, and how innocent bystanders are hurt and sometimes killed in the process. Andy Triay told a story about how the concept was pitched: he received a small-town newspaper article story from CBS Correspondent Mark Strassman on how deaths related to police chases were on the rise. Though the article ended up being off-base about the statistic, Triay was still able to make a multi-part segment based on how the police chief of Orlando had enacted a ban against high-speed chases for his department. The resulting piece ended up being a unique take on the police chases that the media likes to fixate on.
And while the news industry lapses into a battle of personalities vying for the attentions and imaginations of the viewing public, the cameraman Lee's advice to the student journalists in attendance seemed the most crucial – and hopefully not anachronistic – when he said, "Remember, you're not the story."
** Clarification: When differentiating between cable and broadcast reporting of the Virginia Tech shooting story, Public Eye – in an earlier version of this piece – did not make clear that "CBS Evening News" producer Andy Triay was referring to the specific challenges faced in doing live minute-to-minute spot reporting versus constructing a taped story summarizing many elements from that day's events.