Raw, but c*nsored blabbing and blogging of a young journalista
and local news producer in Southern New England.
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Saturday, October 23, 2004

Saturday

Apologies for a silent blog for the past week. I had a good birthday weekend. Then a busy week.

I'm starting this in the -- what does that say? the top of the 8th? I need a bigger TV, dagnabit -- the top of the 8th of Game One of the World Series. How happy am I that I'm not working tonight?

I've been in a weird mood most of the weekend. I've been spending too much time at Old Navy lately. Today I got 5 shirts. Four out of five cost merely $1.48 each after starting at as much as $12.50; the summer stuff is priced to move (on sale an extra 50% off this weekend only). Tomorrow I'm strongly tempted to see what I can see at the Providence Place store as opposed to Warwick Mall. Maybe I can pick up a pair of $7 pants.

At the mailbox today I got two, count them, two pieces of mail designed to get me to contribute to either my old private school or college. One has given me ideas. The other just makes me want to jaw with the student once she/he comes calling: So what's your major, are you in TV, which of the three or four on-campus TV stations do you work with, where are your loyalties, am I going to have to work with you in a couple years? I already know he or she is getting paid to make the phone calls. It's a work study job, kind of. It needs to be reimbursed because it's a pain in the neck. Think of it. It's a parallel to a telemarketer. I'm just tempted to just plain waste the student's time. Personalize this for me, I could say, so I really want to give you some cash but won't. If you're a Communications Disorders major I won't be interested but will commend your chosen calling; if you're a PR or Marketing major I might just pity you but won't be likely to give; if you're a TV major, tell me about all them newfangled DVC-PROs you're trying not to break as you cart them across Boylston Street.

Or maybe it'll be a BJ major and you can make me drool with all the non-linear editing talk and ParkerVision tales.

I feel kinda rotten, apparently just for kicks. I was working on a sinus headache yesterday. I have to do laundry. It's like it's the feeling that I could try to get into bed and neither sleep nor bed rest would make me feel better, and the day that happens there's no hope left for me.

I was thinking of buying another Red Sox cap that was cheap and nice today, but it didn't say 2004 ALCS CHAMPIONS, and I want something that commemorates that. Maybe I'll go back to Marshalls tomorrow and get the cap and find an ALCS T-shirt.

It seems very uninteresting for me to be talking about shopping plans, especially ones that are so mundane and mediocre.

Aha! One down, six to go, Red Sox.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/23/2004 11:41:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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Handling It: A Talk With My Boss, Who Calls The Kettle Black

[edited 01092006]

My xxxx xxxxxxxx decided to start screaming and yelling this weekend when the new show full of novices started having problems. Like screaming and yelling is going to help matters. When this sort of bullsxxx happens it can't help but remind me of when I was given a letter of reprimand for my personnel file because I screamed at on-air talent during a show. On three separate occasions. Because the talent were being idiots and I was under the gun.

I also spilled one of the talent's cups of coffee all over her script. During the first week or two of sweeps. (Yes, I was wrong, regretful, and apologetic soon after.)

So I imagined going in on Monday morning after much (other) annoying hoo-ha and asking my boss the following Q & A, not aggressively, just curiously or inquisitively -- innocently. I didn't bother imagining his responses.

So I heard there were a lot of problems over the weekend.

How did you handle them?

Is there something, a lesson of some sort I can take away from this situation and what happened?

I know this medication I’m taking has really mellowed me, though when the freight train of time gets really close to crashing, I am still being a tad short with people by a few degrees, but I think I’m safe in saying I am far less angry or vitriolic when I get slammed now than when I did in the past.

Why? Because if the train crashes, the train crashes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t, and that’s all there is to it.

I’m very slowly coming around to the idea that simply raising your voice or shouting or screaming simply because something is going wrong is not at all helpful, necessary, or acceptable, and I’m starting to realize that people who work around me when I do that hate me and hate working with me because of it, and are very likely expressing their disbelief in my unprofessional behavior when I am out of earshot.

I am trying not to get angry because it is not necessary. If I screw up, I screw up and I should take the blame for it, and if I screw up on a regular basis I should be made to answer for it and be disciplined for it and if it continues I should probably be terminated. If someone else screws up they feel just as guilty or slammed as I do when I screw up and they don’t need me screaming at them to shape up because they either have the voice in their head screaming at them or know enough to strive to do better the next time.

I am trying not to get angry with people who are inexperienced or slammed with too much work in too little time because they cannot help it.

A serious talking-to once the show is over (which could be scheduled as soon as a problem arises with a frank “Can I please talk to you once the show is over, before you leave?”) will resonate so much better than a deafening, strident volcanic explosion, and will cut down on the high rate of turnover going through the building which I have no doubt been contributing to.

I fully comprehend the concept of taking out one's frustration on one's co-workers or underlings. I am all too familiar with it and I have seen myself do it and I am striving to stop it. There must be a way that everyone can be put in check when this happens, and in truth it shouldn't be happening anywhere in the newsroom, because no matter where it comes from it sets a bad example for people, whether making B think it's acceptable because A does it, or simply that A does it at all and B, C, D, and E all feel like they're being verbally horsewhipped.

Apologizing immediately after one does it is one thing. I am striving to apologize in short order if I raise my voice in any fashion. NEVER apologizing is another, far more serious, arrogant, and pompous crime, and such an attitude is spreading among those who are receiving that treatment.

I’m wondering if, since we are obviously one of the flagship stations for the company, seeing as Corporate can see everything we do, if there is an extra degree of scrutiny and knuckle-rapping to be had from the bigwigs, and if there is I’d like to know about it rather than feel the pressure from an immediate threat. It would make more sense for me to be saying to myself, “Corporate is going to be displeased and unhappy in ways A, B and C” rather than “Management might be very angry in ways X, Y or maybe even Z and Q, and I will be screamed at once again”. What does Corporate make of all this? Do they send you comments?

A colleague of mine read this in an earlier format and she said I should write a column of some sort. Ha ha. She doesn't know about this blog and she's not going to.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/18/2004 01:23:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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On Location: Mirabar

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me... the 26-year-old who is no longer carded, apparently.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/16/2004 01:01:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Two women at the anchor desk

I didn't know Amy Poehler had gone blonde, as featured in an NBC PR picture on the NYT's website: A First for Fake News

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/15/2004 09:38:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Neighbors' Chorus

The other day while I was supposed to be doing work the lyrics "Did you beat her and choke her and knock her all about?" came to mind. It's from the Neighbors' Chorus, from the Jacques Offenbach comic opera La Jolie Parfumeuse. How about giving the "Rent" treatment to this? I of course have no idea what the opera is about. ....

.... Aha. This could fly. Various publications on the Web, including some books referenced on Amazon.com, tell me that "La Jolie Parfumeuse" concerns a virtuous perfume salesgirl fighting to maintain her purity in wicked Paris. At the same time it's about a young married woman seduced by a rich financier whose mistress manages to have her sent back to house and husband.

Thanks to PoMoMusings for the lyrics, and for being in the Northwest.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/15/2004 01:03:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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NO! DON'T TAKE MY JODI AWAY FROM ME!

Jeesh. Shows me up for not reading my NewsBlues regularly.

Last week they reported Jodi Applegate of Boston's Fox 25 Morning News is leaving to head back to New York City.

I am so very disappointed. She's a great combination with the rest of the horde, including Gene Lavanchy, VB, Anqunette Jamison, Doug Meehan, and Cindy Fitzgibbon. It was one of the things that made me have delusions of wanting to work at Fox 25.

Here's hoping Fox Network decides to do something national with you, Jod'. We miss you already.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/12/2004 02:14:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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Link fooling around

I'm trying to figure out how to make the website title become a link but not appear as a link.

TOPSTORYLIVE

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/09/2004 02:11:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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BREAKING NEWS: MOUNT ST. HELENS SAYS, "I'M READY TO BLOW MY STACK"

ABCNEWS.com : Mount St. Helens Releases Plume of Steam

In 1980, volcanic ash from Mount St. Helens gave me, a two-year-old living in Beaverton, Oregon, asthma. Reports say 57 people died, and the dusty ash covered towns all over.

In 2001, George W. Bush was inaugurated on a cold, bitter rainy Saturday in January in snowdusted Washington, D.C.

Later that year -- I had a feeling something bad was going to happen -- and then three planes flew into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, respectively.

Today, the volcano belched. About 32 days from we will go to the polls.

Get ready, folks. It's quitting time.

Belief I've heard is that George W. Bush's plaintive, whiny cries of "flip-flopper" will actually work and he'll get re-selected.

The volcano is your warning. Tell George W. Bush he is fired, or the literal fire and brimstone will rain down on our heads.......

.......Sheesh, I just can't keep this doomsaying up for love nor money....

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 10/01/2004 04:18:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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