First, the good news:  I just had my weekly weigh in and have officially lost 35 pounds in six weeks. You might remember from some of previous posts I’m not actually on a diet. I am deeply undercover researching diets, and because I’m a committed investigative reporter I packed on 40 extra pounds over the last ten years just because that’s how dedicated  I am.

Anyway, after losing 35 pounds I’ve come to the startling conclusion that eating less food is the key to weight loss. I know…radical, right? I plan to try out another outlandish theory that exercise can actually help with weight loss just as soon as I get the energy I lost when I stopped eating.

Now the bad news: Ollie, our family’s “spare” cat is missing. That accounts for the other 15 pounds I lost. I guess he’s not technically missing since my daughter knows roughly where he is. It’s just that Ollie shows no interest in coming inside the house.  I suppose this will take some explaining.

Sophie, my elder daughter, is in her second year of college at Western Michigan. Despite the fact that she can’t keep a houseplant alive Sophie wanted to take Ollie with her to her new house. There are like ten girls and a German Shepherd living in the house, what could go wrong? We had a family meeting where my younger daughter and I voted “no” and my wife voted “yes”. Being a democracy and all, my wife won and Ollie was on his way to Kalamazoo.

I have described Ollie in previous blogs where I used words like “buzzsaw”, “Feline Freddy Krueger” and “Ginsu knife with fur”… well, I wasn’t actually there in Kalamazoo last weekend when Sophie arrived with Ollie at her new house. But eyewitnesses used similar adjectives to describe Ollie as Sophie approached the front door. Needless to say Ollie never made it into the house.

For the last week or so there have been numerous “Ollie Sightings” in the neighborhood around Sophie’s house. Ollie, being a big-city cat, has apparently taken control of a mob of small-town Kalamazoo cats. They all spend the day sleeping under porches and all night avoiding Sophie’s house. My wife, feeling quite guilty about the whole thing, has launched “Operation Ollie” which includes fliers in the neighborhood, a notice on the animal control website and, according to my MasterCard bill, the Goodyear blimp. She has also rented a live animal trap from Kalamazoo Animal Control which sits on the front porch disguised as something that even the dumbest cat would recognize instantly as a live animal trap.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress of “Operation Ollie”.

In the meantime, the good news is I’ve lost 50 pounds…. but I’d kind of like to get 15 of them back.

Stephen


//

This self-reflection began last Friday night when I got a tweet from someone I hadn’t seen on the backchannel before. “@Missive” was complaining about a link I’d posted a few minutes earlier…a news item out of Arizona about a man so high on meth he put his baby in the freezer because “the kitchen floor was dirty”.

“Very impressed by backchannel.” @missive wrote, “But RT-ing news about meth-head idiots will take this project exactly where local news is–gutter.”

Now, as you all know, I agree that local news spends too much time in the “gutter”. We spend far too much time covering fires, shootings and murders and not enough time covering stories about “good people doing good things”. But I also believe you can’t just ignore the bad stuff. It’s not going to go away just because TV doesn’t talk about it. So in the interest of balance I use Twitter in general and the #backchannel specifically to present what I believe is a more “balanced” news source. I find a story about a meth addict tossing his baby in the freezer “instructive” if for no other reason than to answer the question about why the law chooses to prosecute “victimless” crimes. I think the baby might take issue with that position.

But along with that story I also tweeted the story about the Garden City family who started a salsa business that saved the family home and paid off the son’s college tuition. Balance.

But @missive was unswayed. ” How does that man’s story lift your city?” she tweeted, “How is it newsworthy? This space needs news that changes things. Not a tabloid.” What I found interesting about that comment is that @missive is telling me what the #backchannel is supposed to be and I’m the guy who invented it!

But @missive was so disappointed by my retweet of a story about a meth addict with bad parenting skills that she told me she was less likely to use the backchannel as an example of a “media paradigm shift” in the city. To her credit I believe @missive understood that just the fact we were discussing the issue was an example of a rather radical “media paradigm shift”. I mean, when was the last time a TV station actually listened to anybody’s complaint?

Now you’re old news with a new toy

I thought we were having a pretty civil discussion until she threw that bomb into my tweet stream. “Now you’re old news with a new toy,” @missive wrote. I admit, after 30 some years in TV I certainly qualify as “old news” but the suggestion that I think of Twitter and the backchannel as a “new toy” that, by implication, I will tire of and toss away is simply unfair.

But it does raise the question that is at the center of this blog. “What is the #backchannel?”

First you have to answer a much bigger question. “What is Twitter”.

I think of Twitter as kind of like those ice skates in Tom Hanks’ “Castaway”. They were pretty useless on a tropical island as skates, but invaluable as a tool for everything from chopping wood to rope-making to dental procedures.

Twitter, for me, is kind of like those skates. It started as a fun way to reach out and meet people. But on my little TV “island” the skates seemed to have very limited value. I mean, I can “connect” with 200,000 people in one sitting…what’s the value of talking to one person at a time? So, like Tom Hanks I had to come up with a new way to use the skates…turn the toys into tools.

The tool turned out to be the #backchannel. A place for people to meet both during and between newscasts to socialize and to make connections. A place for everyone, not just me, to post news of interest and impact. From the fund raising cancer walk on Belle Isle to, yes, the meth addict who shuts his baby in the freezer. But in the incredible interaction that quickly evolved I saw another opportunity. One of the most pervasive comments in those early days mirrored @missive’s complaint that TV news was in the “gutter”. So I issued a challenge to help get us out of that gutter. Come up with those stories about “good people doing good things”. And just so you understand how TV news got to where it is I further challenged you to figure out how to take that good news story and make it visual and interesting. I think you’re beginning to understand that its not as easy as it seems.

But I believe this “crowd sourcing” will eventually turn the tide. Together we can show “old media” that there is a new game in town…and if you can find “good” stories why can’t we? Does that mean the “bad” news will go away?  No. I think there needs to be both…but a balance of both.

That’s what I think the backchannel is…. I want to know you think.

After all,  I may be steering this ship but you’re the motor.

Stephen

//

I’ll explain what I have in mind in a moment but first I want to update you on the progress of backchannel 2.0. As you know I put out a challenge last week to stop complaining that there’s never any “good news” on TV and find me some. But that challenge came with a few strings. Since talk is cheap (and Tweeting is even cheaper) I don’t want to just “hear” your suggestion. I want to see it. I asked you to grab your flip cam or cell phone and shoot video to show me compelling pictures. Interview that fascinating person you want Detroit to meet. I want you to edit your video and add a narration with some basic information and post it on YouTube. If the backchannel agrees that it’s an interesting story I’ll grab my gear and shoot the story for Channel 7.

I think it’s a brilliant idea that accomplishes three things. First it allows you to tell a story they way YOU want it told without that “left-wing” “right-wing” bias that I’m alternately accused of having. Secondly it allows you to discover, as I have over 30-some years, that it’s not enough to be a “good” story… it also has to be visual.  And three, it saves me a whole lot of legwork.

So far I’ve had a lot of people excited about backchannel 2.0  and suggesting stories. They apparently forgot to read the part about showing us the story. I’ve had several people who promise they’re working on a video (aren’t you glad I didn’t put you on the same deadline I have to work under?). And I had one bright-shining example of exactly what I’m talking about. PSCU_Amy submitted a story on an urban farm in Detroit. The story comes dangerously close to being ready to air just the way it is. But just to prove I’m not totally irrelevant I’m scheduling myself to cover the story by the end of this week. I’ve invited Amy along (mainly so I’ll have someone to carry my tripod).

@DaveMurr @bchesnutt @balanon @sclarkwxyz

Anyway, this brings me to our backchannel upgrade. It occurred to me that we have a sizable force of active and observant Tweeters on the backchannel. It came to me this past weekend as I hosted a few of our area’s more distinguished tweeters at my house for a few beers, barbecue and boat ride. @bchesnutt, @balanon, @davemurr and @techsocialite tweeted, twitpicd and foursquared virtually every moment of our excellent and epic evening. It got me thinking, what if all of us used the backchannel to keep each other informed of things happening around town? It would be just like having our own TV station without the suits, ties and that horrible pancake makeup!

So what I’d like to propose is that we all start thinking of ourselves as “digital correspondents” on the Backchannel. If you see a traffic jam, or construction delay….tweet it. Let us all know where to avoid. If that sudden thunderstorm knocks a tree across the road…take a TwitPic and post it on the backchannel. If there’s a building on fire… do what @ScottBettinger did Monday night. Take a little video, slap the #backchannel hashtag on it and tweet it.

And don’t stop at breaking news. If you’re at a community meeting, a rally, the school board. Keep us informed on the backchannel. You find a store giving away free ice cream…by all means Tweet us! Don’t wait for Roger Ebert to tell us whether he liked “Inception”… give us your review before the credits have even rolled. We can all use the backchannel to keep each other informed about what’s happening in our community…news, weather and sports. Just like a TV station…but with content that is relevant to all of us.

This is in addition to the project I outlined in backchannel 2.0. I don’t want you to stop thinking about the special stories and people that make our community better. I still want to see the compelling video tape and interesting personalities like the one submitted by PSCU_Amy. And we will continue to share those on the backchannel and on Channel 7… like featured “special reports”. But in the meantime, we’re all a part of the backchannel so lets use it to keep each other informed, enlightened and entertained. For our backchannel friends from out of town, you can skip the traffic reports, but keep us up to date on the big stories in your town.

I know inevitably there will be some who see this as an opportunity to spam us and try to sell us some kind of garbage. I propose we police our own neighborhood. When someone tries to scam or spam us… if we all reply with a #backchannelgong I think the abuse will stop pretty quickly…plus it might be kinda fun to gong a few of the idiots.

As always I want to know what you think about this. I think it’s exactly what Twitter is meant to be…the very definition of “social media”.

I look forward to our first #backchannel news update.

s


//

Actually what I was handed wasn’t a baby… but it still promises to mature into something of great beauty and power. What I was handed… or more acurately “Tweeted” was our fist official submission to the #backchannel  and it is a thing of beauty.

@PSCU Amy

Here is the link to the video from @PSCU_Amy I would like for you to watch this video and take note of several things.  First of all, Amy has followed the #backchannel v 2.0 instructions to a “T”. She shot compelling video of an urban garden, which she unnecessarily apologized for, she shows us how that beautiful greenery fits into the surrounding urban landscape. She interviews, quite deftly by the way, two gentlemen in charge of that garden. Her interview shines a light on their passion. She went several extra steps by superimposing the names of her interview subjects and telephone numbers. She even included a standup with the ‘outcue’ “For Channel 7′s Backchannel I’m PSCU AMY”, which I believe we ought to adopt as our standard “out” on all our submissions (except for the PSCUAmy part…feel free to use your own handle).

In short Amy has handed us a story that will educated and inspire. And she has handed me a story that will serve as a blueprint for a story that I will cover. Because of PSCUAmy, the twitterverse will become measurably better…and so will the Channel 7 viewing area… the greater Detroit area. People will see something good happening in their community because of something good happening here on the #backchannel.

I know you haven’t even voted on this story yet, whether you think it’s a worthy story. But I’m going to exercise my right as the guy who thought this up and go cover the story anyway. I hope PSCUAmy will go with me and infect me with the passion that motivated her to submit this video.

If I smoked, I’d be passing out cigars right now.

We have our first child… and she’s beautiful.

Stephen

//

Okay, I’ll have the big announcement in a minute or two. First of all I just want to tell you how amazed/pleased/excited/energized I am over what the #Backchannel has become in a relatively short time. As you know when we embarked down this path I only had a vague idea where it might lead. My immediate goal had been just to open some line of communication between us…to remove the glass screen that has blocked my view of you through my entire career.

So I tweeted. And like some lonesome cry in the night wind a few of you heard me and tweeted back. It was like that moment in “Castaway” when Tom Hanks finally made fire. You “early adopters” will remember what started happening pretty quickly. A few more joined in. I tweeted…you tweeted back. You asked questions about the stories we were running on the air. You made comments. You wondered abut the process of making television. I lifted the curtain and gave you a peek…like Dorothy getting her first look at the Wizard. That was pretty cool in itself… but then a really cool thing started happening. You stopped talking to just me and started talking to each other. Like new arrivals to a new subdivision you realized there were people on the other side of that fence. And the #backchannel community was born.

That leads me to where we go next. What is #backchannel v 2.0? I got a glimpse Friday night. We ran a story about a couple whose wheelchair ramp was stolen and sold for scrap. Before the story was done we had backchannelers volunteering to get together and build them a new ramp. That is a peek into the combined power of “old media” and “new media”… of TV and Twitter. The ability to put out a message and amplify it with action.

So this leads me to the big announcement. At least I hope that’s the way you see it…I do.

Starting immediately I want you to find the stories that I will cover on Channel 7. I want you to find the good people doing good things in your community. I want you to tell me about the interesting characters and fascinating sights that make your communities special. I want you to stop complaining that all you see on TV is bad news and give me some good news.

That’s it…pretty simple. Oh, there is one little catch. I don’t want you just to tell me about it. I want you so show me. I want you to show the entire #backchannel. It doesn’t have to be perfect and polished. Just take your flip camera or iPhone and shoot some video. Show us the pictures of why it is a compelling story. If you have a fascinating character that needs to be introduced to the #backchannel… and the Channel 7 audience… put him/her/it on camera and show us. If you can edit some sound, video, even your own narration into a short story, do it! Post the video on YouTube or Vimeo or wherever and hashtag a synopsis to the #backchannel.

I’ll post the links on this blog site and open it to comments. If the backchannel agrees that the story is compelling and interesting I’ll grab my “junior correspondent’s” camera gear and shoot the story for broadcast on Channel 7.  If you really hit your “pitch” out of the park I’ll find a way to slip your version past the “suits” and get it on our website at wxyz.com…maybe even use some of your story in my story. The #backchannel will start showing Detroit it’s best, rather than worst side.

Something I have learned about myself and about you since we started getting together is that we are exceedingly passionate and motivated. We backchannelers are pioneers in a vast new world that stretches somewhere between “old” and “new” media. I have faith that we’re up to this challenge and I can’t wait to get started.

Who’s first?

Stephen

Anyway, I began my undercover research with a diet that arrived on my doorstep about two weeks ago in a shoe box. The box contained dozens of packets of a substance that is allegedly food but actually tastes only slightly better than the shoe box itself…and believe me I’ve tried them both! But after my two week weigh-in I was startled to learn that I had lost 17 pounds. There might actually be something to this wild theory that losing weight is simply a matter of eating less food! I’ve now lost the equivalent of the weight of my cat Ginger before my wife put her on a diet.

I also noticed that I’m beginning to run short of “food” packets which lead me to the conclusion that I’m going to have to find a new way to eat pretty soon. That’s when I stumbled upon the revolutionary diet plan that will make you skinny and me rich.

I call it the: Eat Exactly What My Wife Eats Diet.

The plan is quite simple: You give me some money and I will text or tweet you every time my wife eats something. I’m pretty sure I can find a scientist who will back me on this one. You see, my wife is exactly the same weight she was when I married her. When she got pregnant with our two children I gained weight, but I don’t think she did. So it stands to reason that if you eat exactly what she eats, at precisely the same time you will wind up in the same shape.

And as a bonus for signing up early I’ll toss in, free, “My Wife’s Exercise Plan”… which consists mainly of running around the house hiding things from me.

So, let me give you a little preview of how a typical day might go on the “Eat Exactly What My Wife Eats” and “My Wife’s Exercise Plan” program.

You might get up in the morning and make a pot of coffee. Go ahead and use high fat coffee creamer because you’re not going to drink the coffee anyway. Instead you will notice that the bathtub needs caulking and on the way to the garage to get the tools you’ll notice your spouse left his/her briefcase in the hallway and you’ll hide it.

For breakfast you might cook a two egg omelet with low calorie cheese and broccoli. But you’ll forget to eat it because you will have noticed the exhaust vent on the stove needs cleaning. And on the way to the garage to get the cleaning supplies you”ll notice your spouse left his/her shoes in the family room and you will hide them.

Lunch generally consists of a sandwich and a bowl of soup, which you’ll forget to eat because you”ll have noticed the food in the pantry wasn’t stored in alphabetical order and in the course of implementing the Dewey decimal system for canned goods you’ll see your spouse left his/her car keys on the counter and you’ll hide them.

And finally, for dinner you’ll prepare a delicious but nutritious chicken stir fry. But on the way to get the salt shaker you’ll notice the kitchen needs re-tiling. And on the way to the tile store you’ll see your spouse failed to put his/her car in the garage so you’ll hide it.

So, as you can see, the “Eat Exactly What My Wife Eats Diet” with the bonus “My Wife’s Exercise Plan” program works simply by making good, healthy food choices then not eating them. And through a sensible exercise program involving hiding things from your spouse. All you need to do is wait for your personalized text or tweet to arrive the instant my wife does something then you do exactly the same thing.

What I like best about this program is that I won’t have to leave my house, which is a good thing.

I can’t seem to find my car keys.

Stephen

//

courtesy: Becky Johns

One of the questions I get most often…especially from young people who haven’t yet developed any sense…”how do I get into television?”. I’ve decided to devote this incredibly valuable blog space today to answer that question, so here it goes.

Don’t.

Are you still here? Are you ignoring my advice? Okay, that makes you a perfect candidate for television. Never take “no” for an answer. Well, there are times you should take no for an answer, but that’s a whole different subject. If you are dead-set on getting into television you will hear “no” a lot. You’ll also hear things like: “There’s no way on God’s green earth or anywhere else in the universe that you will ever succeed in TV or any business that remotely resembles it.” It wasn’t exactly “no” but I learned it meant pretty much the same thing. But I didn’t give up and neither should you.

Stay classy Detroit!

My first bit of advice: if you want to get into TV to be an anchor, forget it. That’s my job and you can’t have it.

Seriously though, the days of being “the Anchor” are quickly going away. Those of us with vast amounts of experience (read: “old”) are rapidly being offered the “opportunity to pursue other options”, which is a corporate euphemism for “getting Donald Trumped”, which is my euphemism for “you’re fired“.

Like virtually every other industry on earth the TV bosses are trying to figure out how to do more with less..and I certainly can’t blame them. When I got into TV there was a secret room in the basement of the station where they printed money…at least that’s what I heard; we never seemed to run out of the stuff. But back then there were only three TV stations in any given city and we had to walk to work, knee deep in snow, uphill both ways. Now days with roughly a million channels on cable, another couple billion websites, email ads and that guy in the dog suit outside PetSmart, the advertising dollar has been sliced pretty thin. And ad money is what makes our machine go ’round.

So, here in Detroit we’re learning to do a lot more with a lot less. Some reporters and anchors are shooting video, a couple photographers are showing up on air as reporters. Writers are learning to edit. We’re all getting trained in posting content to our website. There is understandably resistance to this kind of change…especially from some of the “veterans”. I can’t blame them. We’ve spent a lot of time getting very good at what we do. We’ve worked our way to one of the top TV stations in one of the biggest markets in the country. And now we’re being asked to do jobs for which we’re not qualified…at least not by our high standards.

"One Man Band" on Mackinac

Personally, I have to admit I’ve found new life and new energy in this new direction. I get plenty of strange looks when I show up at a story with a camera, microphone and tripod but no photographer. “Don’t anchors have people to do that for them?” I’m asked almost every time. We used to…but I’ve found I really enjoy the process of creating a news story, start to finish by myself. As the photographer I find myself examining the “location” much more closely, trying not to miss the best shots…and since I’m constantly in contact with the reporter (me) I’m shooting the video that will best tell the story I’m about to write.  As the reporter I’m utilizing the video much better, after all…I shot it! And as the editor I have the ability to fix all the stupid mistakes I made as the shooter and reporter. I’ve got to say, the stories I’m ending up with are some of the best work I’ve done in years. Stories I wanted to tell, told the way I wanted to tell them.  Could the photography and editing have been better? Sure, but overall the product is strong and I’m getting better at these new skills every day (at least that’s what I keep telling the boss).

Then the whole process moves to wxyz.com where I have to re-write and often re-edit the story. But I’ve found it also gives me an opportunity to add back all the stuff I hated to leave on the cutting room floor for the TV version. Plus I can become my own promotions department simply by logging on to Twitter and Facebook.

I guess what I’m saying for those of you interested in getting in TV is that you need to think about it as one job, not a bunch of different jobs. The journalist of the future will shoot, report, write, edit, package for internet, promote by social media and… yes… anchor. All at the same time.

You know…. on second thought forget all that stuff I said about “don’t’ get into TV. Go ahead and do it.

I’m having a blast.

Stephen

BTW here are a couple samples of my latest “solo” stories. Let me know what you think:   Blight Busters / Race Kart Family

//

Silverfish Hand Catch

Who would have thought it would take a Silverfish Hand Catch to tear down the walls between traditional media and social media?

I promise I’ll get back to the fish but obviously a statement like that requires a little bit of a back-story. A few months ago I began “tweeting” from the news desk during live newscasts. At first one or two people would “tweet” back, usually just curious whether it was really the “guy on the TV” tweeting. They wondered a) how I had the time and b)why I had the interest.

That got me thinking.

As I’ve reported in this blog before I have had a very long one-sided relationship with the people who watch my newscasts. I talk, they listen. If they had something to say to me they yelled it at the TV screen like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Twitter changed all  that. I can now hear you and I can now answer you.

So a few weeks ago I created the “backchannel”… while the news rolled forward on the front channel… Channel 7… I tweeted on the backchannel. I invited viewers to watch the news, tweet comments and questions to me and to ‘discuss among themselves’ when I was actually busy reading the stories. I really only had a vague idea of where the ‘backchannel’ might take us all, but I hoped it was a first step to tearing down the glass screen that divides us.

I can’t speak for the dozens of people who check in regularly every night…sometimes at 6 or 7:00.. but mostly 11:00. I don’t know exactly what they get out of it except a kind of cool experience of actually conversing in real time with the guy on TV. But I can tell you what I get out of it. For the first time in years I actually feel like I’m talking to someone rather than at them. Frankly it’s energizing!

But I promised to talk about the fish. Specifically the Silverfish Hand Catch. You may have heard about the “Old Spice” guerrilla marketing campaign. The ridiculously handsome guy standing in a towel in his bathroom with his six pack abs and mellifluous baritone voice answering tweets from average people. In his final video posted on YouTube, the actor ended with a spectacular “Silverfish Hand Catch”. What did it mean? Who knows, who cares; it became an Internet buzzword that landed with all the grace of a flying Asian Carp in my ‘backchannel’ Monday night.

For that you can either blame or credit Charlie Wollborg, a brilliant marketing man who knows a few things about getting people engaged in social media. Early in the newscast @CharlieCurve posted the following Tweet– and everything changed:

First of all, to be clear, I probably wouldn’t have said “Silverfish Hand Catch” even if a thousand people had re-tweeted the post. I like to think of the backchannel as a kind of Las Vegas…what happens there, stays there. If I start excluding people on the front channel I risk losing them (not to mention my job!). So I needed to keep the whole “Silverfish” affair a “backchannel” thing, which wasn’t easy. Over the next half hour my Tweet stream exploded with re-tweets and suggestions of how to work the phrase “Silverfish Hand Catch” into the newscast. @CharlieCurve suggested I introduce the weather segment by saying, “It’s 74° in Detroit right now. A perfect night for a Silverfish Hand Catch.” @danielmrose suggested an addition to the Tigers highlights: “A fan in the stands just made a Silverfish Hand Catch.”  And on and on. It was all a bit silly sure, but I realized something else was going on. The audience of our 11:00 newscast wasn’t just talking to me…they were talking to each other! I felt like Alexander Graham Bell when he made his first call to Watson. The backchannel worked!

I hope it continues to work…and not just as a novel way to include the TV guy in on-line hijinx. I hope people watch my newscast, ask questions, make comments and most of all talk to each other about what’s going on in our community.

In the meantime. No, I did not say “Silverfish Hand Catch” on the newscast. Technically we came a few short of 100 re-tweets so I was “off the hook” so to speak.  But I did do something in the final seconds of the newscast that let my Twitter friends know I heard them loud and clear.

You’ll have to watch the clip to see what it was.  And you’ll have to join us some night on the backchannel.

Bring your own fish.

Stephen

//

One Meal

I’ve been doing a secret in depth investigative report on weight loss and have uncovered a startling fact. I don’t want to get too excited about this but I believe I have discovered the secret to losing weight. Eat less food.

I know…bizarre, right!

Apparently there’s been a radical group of so-called medical experts called “doctors” on the outer fringe of the nutrition movement saying this for years. I for one didn’t hear them–probably because of all the loud chewing. But I’m listening now.

This revelation began in the course of my “investigative report” on dieting. I recently went “undercover” as a dieter and since I’m a dedicated investigative journalist I needed to “look” authentic so I spent the last ten years packing on an extra 40 pounds. It was tough but, hey, its my job!

Anyway, with the assistance of my wife, who has secretly been a member of that “eat less food” cult since I married her, I embarked on a diet. For research purposes only, of course. We went straight to the paragon of responsibility, that pillar of reliability…the Internet…to find a diet to “research”. A few days later it arrived. A month’s worth of meals–in a shoebox. Okay, I’m exaggerating. The box wasn’t quite that big.

The box contained packets of powder which the instructions allege is “food” but is actually smaller than the amount of  salt I’d sprinkle on a typical meal. The plan is to mix the powder with lo-cal ice and water and “enjoy a tasty shake”. I got the mixing part down, I’m still waiting for my wife to return from Burger King with the tasty shake.

Turkey the Size of my Palm

You want to hear the good news? I get to have five of these packets a day! Plus one “real” meal consisting of a vegetables and a piece of chicken, turkey or fish “the size of my palm”. I’m stuffed just thinking about it.

I just started my diet… er… “research” last week and have made some important observations.

1) The palm of my hand is not nearly as big as I’d like it to be.

2) Hunger makes you do strange things, like fantasize about drinking glasses full of strawberry flavored wallpaper paste five times a day.

3) I now know what it would feel like to let a mating pair of weasels loose in my stomach.

I can’t tell you if this diet has actually been working. I’m avoiding the scale until the one-week anniversary Thursday. But I can promise if I’ve lost weight I’m going to celebrate.

With a tasty shake.

Stephen

Forrest Gump

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “News stories are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

I’ve been in the news business 30 some odd years (actually, come to think of it, most of them are odd), but I digress. Anyway, in my vast experience I’ve learned I shouldn’t write the stories I cover before I actually cover them. The story may sound like one thing over the phone, or written in a press release, or as related by a third person, but when you actually get your “boots on the ground” as the network correspondents say, the story changes. Actually the story doesn’t change; your perception of it changes.

It’s not uncommon in the TV news business for producers to “stack” their news show based on what they “think” the story is…long before the reporter has left the station. I’ve actually seen “promos” of my stories run before I’ve actually left my house to go to the station–much less go to the location of the story to report it.

My experience on a story this week reminds me that’s not a good idea. “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Chantay Anderson

Let me set the scene. Over the weekend someone fire-bombed Chantay Anderson’s home on Detroit’s east side. Her two year old son Jasiah Collins died in the blaze. Our reporter on the scene that day, Tom Wait, asked the grieving mother if she had a picture of Jasiah to put in the story. She said “yes”… one single framed photograph, damaged in the fire. That’s all she had left she told Tom of her baby. One damaged photograph. She asked if Tom knew someone who could fix that last precious memory. After all, that’s all she had left.

Tom went live on our 6:00 newscast Sunday with a plea for someone who  might be able to repair the picture. I was watching from home and can find my way around Photoshop, so I emailed Tom and told him I’d take a crack at it. It was, after all, the only memory she had left.

At work Monday we scanned the photograph and one of our video editors, Teresa Simmonds, and I divided the workload and began painstakenly restoring, repairing and replacing lost pixels, one at a time. It was heartbreaking as I rebuilt the damaged eye of the little boy who’s real eyes are forever closed. But the result, I must say, was pretty impressive.

I emailed the file to Tom to give to the grieving mother and he suggested it might be a good story for me to present it myself. Newsroom management agreed. It was never my intention to get a story out of rebuilding the photograph. But after talking to Chantay on the phone I saw the advantage of doing the story as a springboard to get her some help burying Jasiah, which she says she has no money to do.

So I arranged to meet Chantay at Swansons funeral home to present her with the restored photograph of her dead son. And that’s when this story took a bizarre twist. Proof that “you never know what you’re gonna get.”

I was early, Chantay wasn’t there yet. But a woman who told me she was Jasiah’s grandmother was there and was excited to see the restored picture of her grand baby Jasiah. But when I showed it to her she frowned, then became angry. “That’s not Jasiah,” she nearly shouted as though I was intentionally trying to trick her. Or maybe she didn’t like my photoshop skills. I didn’t know.

“That’s the picture Chantay gave to us,” I pointed out. “She gave the same picture to the newspapers,” I added weakly.

“That’s not Jasiah,” she insisted, growing angrier. “That’s Jamari.”

Jamari, as it turns out is Jasiah’s older brother…five years older.

When Jasiah’s mother, Chantay, arrived moments later the situation only got stranger. She argued with the woman. “That’s my baby, that’s Jasiah,” she argued through her tears. But then, when pressed by Jasiah’s grandmother, Chantay made a startling admission. “He looks just like my baby.”

Then the real story began to emerge. Chantay, it turns out, has NO pictures of Jasiah, burned or not with the exception of one tiny cell phone snapshot, which she didn’t know how to retrieve from her phone. When reporters asked if she had a picture, the grief-stricken mother found the next best thing.  A picture of big-brother Jamari, taken five years earlier.  After all, “he looks just like my baby.”

So the story had changed…dramatically. The producers had already stacked into their newscasts because they thought they knew what the story was. I can’t blame them, so did I. Actually, journalistically speaking, the story had gotten better. The producers moved it up in the newscast. Had the promos already been shot, recorded and aired they would not have teased nearly as interesting a story.

Oh, by the way, what story did I eventually come up with after picking through this box of chocolates?  Here’s the link… tell me what you think. Plus, here are the before and after pictures of Jasiah–I mean Jamali–let me know how Terry and I did…just in case I wind up doing that again.

Because you never know what you’re gonna get.

Stephen

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