Breaking News: to Hope or Not to Hope for?

Yesterday I was fortunate to have a breaking news in the middle of my newscast. I have to admit the reason I said that I was fortunate is because our team handled it well. I would've probably called it the other way around had we not.

The story is about a murder trial that's been going on for a couple of days. We were waiting on the verdict. Three hours prior to the newscast, nothing happened. We had a reporter who was waiting patiently outside the courthouse for announcements. We weren't hoping for anything to happen at that time. Simply because it was Saturday and we don't have live truck operators on the weekend. So everything was a smooth sailing until I was inside the booth. We were in the middle of the A block when the news broke and my supervising producer stormed in to the booth.

We were able to insert the breaking news towards the end of the A block. It was a good feeling. An amazing one, in fact. But I really have to admit, my supervising producer helped me a lot. If those extra hands weren't there, I don't know how well I would've been able to handle it. I realize how teamwork matters a lot, from the moment the reporter called the desk person, who told my supervising producer about it, who told me in the booth. There was a sense of accomplishment when the show's over. It made us feel better and stronger as a team.

As for me, tracking the time and telling the anchors and director what to do already keep my mind busy. Having to write the breaking news story at the same time might drive me crazy.

But they say practice makes perfect.
When's the best time to practice other than when breaking news itself happens?

Healthy Detachments

What do you do to make yourself fall asleep? Drink a cup of herbal tea? a glass of Riesling? Count sheep? I used to try reading my textbook whenever my vicious insomnia strikes. Only a couple paragraphs then my eyelids would be as heavy as lead. Well, me having a problem to hit the hay is not exactly news. But I caught myself enjoying the persistent but painful moment of reminiscing what has happened during my newscast lately. I replay a slideshow of mistakes over and over again. The slideshow even has no parameter of autoplay equals false. Too many shoulda woulda coulda flashing before my mind's eye.

One of my great mentors, Mariel Myers, an Emmy-winning KPIX -TV/CBS 5 producer in San Francisco, Bay Area, read my mind verbatim.

She said, "As you produce more and more shows, you'll make less mistakes; you'll realize there are times when there's nothing you could have done; you'll find ways to save a show when it goes off course; and you'll realize every day is a second chance to get it right."

So the trick is to let go once the show is over. A little bit of reformatting to the brain that there's always tomorrow.

She told me, "the old producing motto is... "you're only as good as your last show."

Once I screw up, I should even be more motivated to do 10x better the next day.

I figured that I should be able to master this let-go skill over time. I mean, if the frequency of me butchering the show is quite high, I should be developing some kind of immune system to the heartache sometime soon, right? Not that I'm saying that my show is normally a trainwreck..

So..Dear Ebay, I have some textbooks to sell.