Tuesday, 11/4/08
The Tristate and The White House -- How OH, KY and IN Affected the Election
Kentucky voters gave John McCain his first victory of the night, giving the republican nominee an early eight point lead in the race to 270 electoral votes. But Ohio voters put an end to the Arizona senator's presidential hopes, stripping the state's 20 electoral votes and delivering them to Barrack Obama.
Kentucky was really no surprise. While Mitch McConnell fought to retain his congressional seat, the Commonwealth was always expected to go solidly for McCain.
Ohio was another story. The two presidential candidates spent more time -- and more money -- in the Buckeye State than anywhere else. On some days in the last month, there were dueling rallies in Southwest Ohio with Sarah Palin and Barrack Obama sometimes fighting for votes just miles apart. Remember, Ohio had delivered a second term to George W. Bush, changing to a red state on the electoral map in 2004. But the state has always been purple; solidly GOP in the southwest and solidly democrat in Cleveland and other inner-city areas.
It has been pointed out that a republican has never won the White House without Ohio. Indeed, has it gone a few percentage points the other way, we would have been watching John Kerry's fight for re-election Tuesday night.
When Obama won Ohio and then Pennsylvania, election watchers knew the electoral math would lead to the first African-American president of the United States by the end of the night.
And then the clock struck 11:00. The polls closed on the west coast and immediately all the networks called California, Oregon and Washington for Barrack Obama. He rocketed through 270 electoral votes and then some, with California's 55 electoral votes putting the Illinois senator over the top.
But what about Indiana? What a close race for president. In fact, it's still too close to call even though we already know who will be moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With 97% of Indiana precincts reporting at 11:45 P.M., only 7,000 votes separated the two candidates out of more than 2.5 million votes cast. That's less than one half of one percent.
In the end, Indiana's 11 electoral votes will not change the outcome of the national election. They will either add to Barrack Obama's mandate, or they will give more solace to John McCain as he returns to the senate having won some 20 states.
Finally the election is over. We don't have to hear the ads imploring us to reject one candidate and support the other. You can bet in another four years we'll see the candidates return to our arenas and our airwaves.
Enjoy the silence. It won't last forever here in the nation's political battleground.
Thursday, 10/9/08
Building for The Future
What is with the strange the connection between falling stock prices and rising buildings? For some reason, especially in Cincinnati, the construction of tall office towers has coincided with the worst economic times in each generation.
The tallest building in Cincinnati right now is Carew Tower. Construction began just a month before the 1929 stock market crash that created the Great Depression. Work on the building continued until 1932, coincidentally the same time period that stock values fell a total of 90% off their peak.
Right now workers are hollowing out the foundation for what will be Cincinnati's new tallest building, The Great American Insurance Building at Queen City Square downtown. Again, work began just before the stock market tanked. Here we are facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and we're watching another skyscraper rise into the skies above downtown.
New York saw the same thing happen with its tallest buildings, first the Chrysler Building in 1930 and then a few months later with the Empire State Building. In fact, the Empire State Building sat mostly empty for more than a decade -- no one was looking for office space in the midst of the depression. The owners of the building paid their debts by charging tourists to see the views from Empire's observation deck. Things looked better above the bread and soup lines, I guess.
Of course this is all coincidence. At least I hope so. Because the stock market didn't stop sliding from the 1929 crash until the Carew Tower opened. If that's the timeline we're facing here, stocks will continue to slide until the new "tallest building in Cincinnati" opens in 2011.
Hopefully the outlook from the top of Cincinnati's newest building will be a bit better than the financial outlook down here right now.
Tuesday, 9/23/08
How Did We Get Here?
There's a lot of talk about the word "greed" right now. Taxpayers talk about the greed of Wall Street investment bankers. Bankers talk about the greed of home owners who bought more house than they could afford. And now, after a decade and a half of record profits, the financial sector has gone hat-in-hand to the government looking for a $700 billion handout.
But how did we really get to this point?
The answer, of course, is complex. So complex in fact that there are scores of analysts and economists trying to untangle the mess. But the meltdown of the financial markets can be simplified by taking a long view of history.
In 1929, the roaring twenties came to a screeching halt with the crash of the stock market and a run on the banks. The depression affected the vast majority of Americans and had lasting economic consequences through World War II. Most Americans today know well the story of the "Great Depression" as told by our grandparents. But most don't know the back story and the lessons learned then that can be applied now.
The roaring twenties were fueled by an unprecedented number of Americans gambling on Wall Street -- not bankers and traders, but everyday Americans. The lubricant of this financial machine was something called "margin." Basically you could buy stock on credit, purchasing a thousand dollars worth of shares with just a hundred dollars down. Once the stock went up -- and it always did in the years leading up to 1929 -- you could sell it at a huge profit and pay off the loan and keep the rest. So long as the market kept going up, everyone made a lot of money.
But then stocks started going down. There was a mass "margin call" -- time to pay up for the stock you bought for 10% down. But who had that kind of money, especially since they'd have to sell the stock at a huge loss? Not enough had the money, and the margin call accelerated the collapse of the market and the banks that funded all that buying. As the banks started to buckle under the weight of all that unpaid debt, depositors ran to get their money out. That hastened the fall of the banks and left millions of Americans broke. The FDIC was born of that crisis, insuring individual deposits up to $100,000 in all commercial banks.
What does this ancient history have to do with the problems gripping our economy today? We all started treating our houses as investments rather than places to live -- and we bought them on margin.
You could buy a house (or two, or three) for 10% down or less. Sound familiar? You didn't need a million dollars to buy a million dollar house, just a $100,000, and they'd even let you borrow that. People started making fortunes virtually overnight as they bought Miami Beach condos pre-construction and "flipped" them for a profit before they were even built. That's right, a hole in the sky could be sold half a dozen times before anyone even moved in. With the profit, people started buying yet more properties, or larger ones. Tick, tick, tick....
Home prices shot up. And that was a good thing for just about everybody, or so it seemed. So long as the market kept going up, banks and sellers reaped huge profits. And, because the house I'm living in is suddenly worth more, why not take out a huge HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) and take that vacation to Europe? The buyer of our house will eventually pay off the loan when we sell! It's like free money -- what could possibly go wrong? Tick, tick, tick....
The banks got creative to make this dream (now nightmare) a reality. They started offering "exotic" loans with little or no money down. You could buy a property with an "interest only" loan and live in a mansion for less than you were paying in rent. Even at a time of historically-low interest rates of less than 5% for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, people were opting for ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) that would lock in an even lower rate for five years before eventually rising. "But who is ever going to have to pay those higher rates?" we asked. We're going to flip the house for a huge profit before then. Tick, tick, tick...
All Americans wanted to get in on this bonanza, so the banks relaxed rules for loan approval. Don't have enough income or have too many blemishes on your credit? Don't worry, we'll just charge you a higher interest rate after five years. The "sub prime" market was seen as very profitable because of those higher interest rates. Tick, tick, tick....
Wall Street took notice. All these average Americans were making fortunes in real estate. How could the investment bankers get a piece of the action? They started cutting up mortgages and repackaging them as so called "derivatives." Investors could suddenly invest in a sure thing -- the American home -- which historically always goes up and is secured by bricks and mortar. Tick, tick, tick...
Then home prices stalled. They didn't drop, they just stopped ballooning. Many home owners feared they would lose their profit (not their house, just the money they'd "earned" over the last five to ten years). "The Jones's sold for $500,000 last year." Suddenly, thousands of home owners, then hundreds of thousands, put their homes on the market to get out while they still could. The market was flooded with supply and demand dried up while frightened buyers took a breather. Tick, tick, tick....
Home prices plummeted. A panic broke out first on Main Street. "For Sale" signs started cropping up like weeds as home owners tried to sell the roof over their heads before prices hit the basement. This was like a run on the bank. Simultaneously, millions of adjustable rate mortgages were getting to that five year point when the interest rates would jump. Many people couldn't afford the new rates and they couldn't sell. Tick, tick, tick...
BOOM! Or rather, "bust."
Then came the margin call. Banks said pay up or it's foreclosure time. Millions of people faced the prospect of losing their only home, albeit one they couldn't afford in the first place. A new term was coined: "jingle mail." Many home owners just dropped the keys in the mailbox and walked away.
The bust quickly spread to Wall Street where those derivatives that looked like such a good idea were suddenly worthless. The banks (including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the secondary mortgage market) couldn't sell foreclosed properties for enough money to cover the original inflated loan and the huge home equity lines. Three of the five top investment banks, plus Fannie and Freddie, either failed or were taken over.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created to supply liquidity to the market. We keep hearing the word, "liquidity." It simply means cash or its electronic equivalent. Banks make mortgage loans to you and me, but then they have to wait up to 30 years to get that money back, so they sell your debt to Fannie or Freddie. That infuses them with fresh capital, allowing the same bank to make more loans (keeping the market "liquid").
The credit crunch became a true crisis last week when there was zero liquidity in the market. Fannie and Freddie weren't buying mortgages and banks weren't making loans to each other or anyone else. Those transactions are the engine of the entire economy. The credit cycle had ground to a halt -- the financial equivalent of going to the mall and finding all the stores either closed or refusing to sell.
The home was once the very symbol of the American dream. But now it might as well have the Enron "E" in the front yard. We gambled with the one thing we couldn't afford to lose. And now we're all going to pay for it, one way or the other.
Monday, 9/15/08
Surviving The Aftermath
The residents of Galveston or New Orleans will tell you that surviving the storm is the easy part. The aftermath -- no power, no ice, no water, spoiling food -- is the real challenge.
This is a dangerous time when many people drop their guard because they think the worst of the storm has passed. Indeed, the winds have died down and the skies have started to clear. But there are live power lines down everywhere and weakened tree limbs overhead. Add to those dangers the potential for food poisoning as the blackout is measured in days, not hours.
There are a few tips I can offer after surviving nearly a dozen hurricanes in my reporting career. On our way to New Orleans to cover Hurricane Katrina, we stocked up on the usual emergency items you will find in the Red Cross disaster kit; bottled water, batteries, etc. But what allowed us to survive 72 hours out and beyond was a collection of food items practically designed for disaster nutrition.
We had cases of Ensure meal replacement shakes. These are nutritionally balanced shakes that don't need refrigeration and don't require a can opener. Along that same line of thinking, we brought several foil packets of tuna. Cans of tuna are great, but you need a can opener. The foil packets can be opened just by ripping the seal and they require no refrigeration beforehand. They even sell them in individual size packets. You don't even need a fork.
In the Tristate, we were spared the flooding and of course the storm surge (we are landlocked after all). Fetid flood waters are generally filled with sewage and other unpleasant debris. But even absent that nasty aspect of storm survival, we do need to keep our hands and bodies clean. Baby wipes and "waterless" hand sanitizer are perfect. You can never have enough of these in your storm kit. They last indefinitely and they can be a real life saver. Just ask the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially during the invasions before the forward operation bases were established.
Finally, a word about gasoline. There are lines around the block at many stations, despite the jump back up to $4.00 a gallon. Some of those lines are the result of so few stations open during the blackout. But many of the drivers in line aren't running on empty -- they're running on panic. The fear that stations will run out of gas, and the general anxiety brought upon by sitting in the dark at home, has motivated the entire population to try to fill up their tanks at once.
Of course the best advice is to fill up and stock up before the storm hits. We couldn't really do that this time because the remnants of Hurricane Ike hit us without warning. But seeing store shelves empty of staples like flashlight batteries tells me we're not doing a very good job keeping a disaster kit at home. I admit I had let mine lapse also.
After an earthquake and now hurricane force winds hitting the Tristate in the last six months, we have come to expect just about anything. I have a feeling we're going to be very prepared for the next snow storm or ice storm that hits this winter. A storm named Ike has reminded us all of the Boy Scouts' motto: "Always Be Prepared."
Monday, 9/1/08
Always Fighting The Last War: Reflections On Katrina
Here we go again. The levees surrounding New Orleans are buckling under yet another major hurricane three years after Katrina flooded the city. I was there for two weeks and witnessed first-hand the natural devastation and man-made disaster that followed.
But this time it’s different. The only people seeking shelter inside the New Orleans Convention Center are soldiers of the National Guard, waiting out the storm in the city center so they can deploy immediately. But there will be few people left behind to help, thankfully. That’s because 95% of New Orleans residents evacuated before the storm. What a contrast to August 2005. Tens of thousands sought shelter first in the Superdome, then the convention center after a rumor spread that there was food, water and a mass evacuation waiting there. There was nothing there awaiting them but misery.
The city was flooded on a Monday, but the help didn’t arrive at the convention center until the following Saturday. The images are fresh in our collective memory – sweating babies held limp in their mothers’ arms; a sea of people starving and dehydrated; unanswered cries for help. I was there at the convention center that day when the buses finally arrived to ferry survivors to Houston. The image that has stayed with me is that of relief supplies arriving on huge pallets just as the last bus was pulling out. Military MREs (Meals Ready to East – combat rations) and cases of water were dropped exactly at the moment they were no longer needed.
I still remember the stench in New Orleans. It was a putrid cocktail of flood waters, decomposing bodies of dogs and people, sewage, spilled fuel, and the unmistakable odor of thousands of people living in inhuman conditions for a week.
The New Orleans airport brought fresh horrors. It became a field hospital. Ticketing and check-in became a triage area and emergency room. The lower-level baggage claim was a warehouse of human suffering with "patients" sleeping on the luggage belts – as if waiting for loved ones to claim them like so much human baggage. And they were the lucky ones because help had reached the airport before the city center.
Flash forward to 2008. Hurricane Gustav threatened the city with a repeat performance of Katrina. Regardless of the outcome, the response has been overwhelming. FEMA, the target of so much rage three years ago, scored high marks for positioning relief personnel and supplies along the Gulf Coast well ahead of the storm. Mayor Nagin and other local authorities got the vast majority of residents out days early.
But they’re all fighting the demons of Katrina. All politics aside, we’re always "fighting the last war." It’s a subject taught at the military war colleges. Terrible mistakes are made, and then the lessons learned from those past mistakes are applied to the next battle.
Here’s the sad part of that calculus: next time, people may not evacuate so quickly. The next time a major hurricane threatens the Gulf (probably sooner than later with Hanna and Ike churning in the Atlantic), residents will remember Gustav -- not Katrina. They will remember they evacuated in advance of what was feared to be a Category 4 hurricane that ultimately made landfall as a Category 2. "Maybe I should have stayed home to ride it out?" they’ll wonder.
It happened in Houston three years ago. Hurricane Rita threatened the four million residents of the area soon after Katrina. Millions fled their homes, creating a traffic jam all the way to Dallas five hours north. More than a dozen were killed trying to get away from the storm – far more than were claimed by the hurricane itself. It’s unlikely Houstonians will make that mad dash again, remembering Rita which skirted to the east and spared the city.
It’s human nature; we always fight the last war over again, even if the threat that faces us is new and different. Hopefully the memory of Katrina will not be replaced by a false sense of security the next time the Gulf shows its fangs.
Thursday, 8/28/08
History in The Making
The 5:00 P.M. news began Thursday August 28 with a preview of Barrack Obama’s "historic speech." I said the words myself on the air before I caught the error. No, I’m not showing my political stripes or in any way denying that Sen. Obama’s acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s "I have a dream" speech was historic. But that’s the key word; "was."
By definition, for something to be historic it has to have already happened! The root word is "history," defined as an event that occurred in the past. Within two seconds of the conclusion of Sen. Obama’s speech, it was history and, dare I say, historic. But five hours before the speech? We should have said "history making speech," or "likely to make history," or "what’s expected to be a historic speech."
Sometimes in news we get ahead of ourselves. We do chronicle history in the making. That’s why I signed up for this job nearly two decades ago. But we have a tendency to jump the gun and analyze the significance of events that have yet to take place.
The error on November 7, 2000 was made by all the networks when we called the presidential race for George W. Bush even as Florida remained too close to call. The election of course did eventually go to Mr. Bush, but not until weeks later and only with the intercession of the Supreme Court. In our zeal to be first, we forgot to be right.
I was there in Austin, Texas when Gov. Bush failed to materialize on the stage on election night and the nation went to sleep without knowing whom the next president would be. A photographer and I went over to the press room at the Austin American Statesman, Gov. Bush’s morning paper, and watched as they destroyed 10,000 issues with the headline "Bush Wins!" Now that was historic!
And on that note, we often mutilate the English language by guessing at proper grammar. We first wrote "an historic speech" before changing it to "a historic speech." The article "an" is used only when the H is silent, as in "an hour." You wouldn’t say "an house." It’s "a house," and therefore "a historic…"
Hopefully these errors are just that. History.
Thursday, 6/19/08These ARE The Good Old Days
The TV news business is changing rapidly. In the newsroom and in the trade journals, all you hear these days is talk of the impending death of TV news, sprinkled with nostalgic references to the "good ol' days" when the business was full of promise.
I have news for you:
THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS!I do not share some of my fellow broadcasters' pessimism about the future of local news, nor their selective memory of days gone by. Television news has always been dynamic -- it has never been the same business from one decade to the next. We ply a craft built on the ever-shifting platform of technology. As technology changes, our habits -- and those of our viewers -- change along with it.
- Television news was born in the 1950s with one man on a black and white set with a curtain behind him.
- The 1960s saw the advent of color television and the addition of more field reports recorded on film as the most tumultuous decade of the late 20th century exploded.
- The 1970s ushered in the era of "action news" and "eyewitness news" styles with portable videotape machines and ENG cameras hitting the streets. Cable television took us from four channels to 40.
- The 1980s brought us LIVE! reports from the scenes of breaking and not-so-breaking stories, satellite trucks, and the 24 hour news cycle of CNN.
- The 1990s were characterized by slick new sets and computer graphics, a new technology called the internet, and a blurring of the lines between news and entertainment.
- The new millennium has given us 400 channels on cable and digital satellite, HDTV (just in time for my wrinkles!), real video on the internet, and a million bloggers checking our facts.
- 2010 ???
The above summary is simplified and incomplete, but I offer it only as basic evidence of the ever-changing world of TV news. If there ever were any "good ol' days," they didn't last long.
I remember when I was a news intern at WFSB in Hartford, CT. It was the late 1980s, a period of rapid growth in television news. I was a wide-eyed college student wandering the halls of a TV station I saw as my personal technological playground. I distinctly remember a grizzled old veteran TV engineer (probably as old then as I am now) complaining about how the entire TV news business had gone "down the tubes." He said, "it's not like the good old days. This used to be a great television station until they ruined it." "They" always referred to management. How dare they cut costs, boost ratings and increase revenue!
It's funny now that I sometimes refer to the days when that engineer was complaining as my good old days. If he only new then how things would change! So THESE DAYS will be somebody else's good old days of tomorrow.
Since we in TV news are married to technology, we are subject to its rapid changes. But it's like surfing; the key is to stay on top of the wave without falling in over your head.
Historically, technology always creates more jobs than it eliminates. Sure, there are few if any wagon wheel makers left in the world. But the successful ones learned how to make car wheels when the automobile was invented.
So we too can learn how to adapt what we do on TV to the changing world of the internet. Will TV news exist in its current form ten years from now? Absolutely not (go back to the timeline above). But local news on video will prosper in this digital age, even if it's delivered in a new fashion on a different platform.
Be patient. If these aren't the good old days, they're coming soon...to a television or computer near you.
Wednesday, 6/04/08No Photography Please...
We take pictures for a living. Actually, they're moving pictures, a.k.a. "video." Without video, television would be radio.
I bring up the issue now because of two recent incidents in the field where our efforts to capture the truth on videotape were met with angry opposition. Often times that anger is based on confusion about when and where we can take pictures for TV news.
Our recent investigation of mall teeth whitening booths used hidden camera footage to reveal what's really happening. The full story can be found
here. We had to use hidden cameras to document the truth. Large TV cameras change human behavior and, in this case, they would have the drawn the attention of mall security, likely resulting in a request to leave.
So our producers concealed cameras in their clothing and simply asked questions at the teeth whitening booth. Two different employees told us the wrong information five separate times. In short, they were claiming the bleaching gel was three times as strong as it really was. They even told us they were using a different chemical. The cameras also documented a booth employee operating the bleaching light in violation of Ohio laws banning the practice of dentistry without a license.
A friend of one of the employees was very angry we used hidden cameras to investigate this story. How could we show this woman on TV without her permission? How could we shoot video on private property?
I am no lawyer. But this is a widely-misunderstood area of the law. Generally speaking, our cameras are welcome anywhere we are welcome. We are not trespassing unless and until we are first asked to leave and then refuse to do so. That didn't happen. Even though the mall is on private property, it is a public place. So there is no expectation of privacy. The teeth whitening booths are in the corridor of the mall in plain sight. As far as the law is concerned, no permission is required.
Bottom line: no one disputes that what we recorded was accurate and true. They're just upset we got it on tape and put it on television. "Shoot the messenger."
On the other hand, we were asked to leave the scene of a double drowning on the Ohio River recently and we complied. Two boaters had been thrown from a speedboat and there was an active search underway on the Ohio River. With the thick foliage this time of year, it is difficult to see the river in many spots unless you're standing on the edge of the bank. After several attempts to find a place to see and record the river rescue operation, we ended up driving down a small road that brought us to two trailer parks. We set up a tripod and a camera on the river bank and began taking pictures of the rescue boats.
At that time a man starting yelling from a distance, "get out of here!" I attempted to walk closer to him to explain why we were there and to ask if we could stay. He yelled again, "get out of here and don't come any closer." We immediately packed up our gear and walked about 20 feet off the property to the other trailer park. Residents there invited us onto their property and we continued recording the breaking news.
There's usually a lot of confusion over whether we can take pictures
of private property
from public property. Once a private school headmistress walked across a public street to tell us we couldn't take pictures of the school because it was "private." That's simply wrong. Generally, we can record anything that's visible from a public area or another property where we have permission to be.
The other disputed territory is the sidewalk in front of a home or business. Even though the property owner is responsible for cleaning the sidewalk, it is generally "owned" by the local municipality. In other words, it's public. We can take pictures from a sidewalk in front of a business, home or school with or without the permission of the those in charge of that property.
If you don't want something to be seen from the road, put up shrubs or blinds. If cameras can see it, so can the rest of the public.
Tuesday, 05/27/08Iraq - The Forgotten War
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a dusty land 6,000 miles away where death can arrive in an instant. Many Tristate families don't have to imagine that land because it is a very real part of their daily lives. Of course I'm talking about Iraq and the 137,000 U.S. troops currently serving there.
Perhaps like many Americans you've grown weary of the daily reports of progress or defeat for the last six years and counting. The fight over the war has resulted in a truce here at home, both sides agreeing to forget about the war. But please read on...
Memorial Day passed with its cookouts, ball games and the opening of swimming pools. A few veterans gathered to remember comrades lost in Vietnam, WWII or Korea. There were memorials in honor of the 40 or so Tristate soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there were very few signs that this is a nation at war in those two far away lands. What about the troops risking their lives
TODAY? Indeed, we should honor the past, but what about THEIR
FUTURE?
I am not one of those journalists or pundits who talk about honor and duty from the comfort of an arm chair or anchor desk. I've been to Kuwait and Iraq -- three times. I survived a 600 mile convoy through the worst parts of that country during the deadliest month for I.E.D. attacks. And I literally owe my life -- not just my liberty -- to the men and women of the U.S. Army. We were attacked in the outskirts of Baghdad by insurgents with rocket propelled grenades and AK-47s. But we all made it back home because we depended on each other.
I was an embedded journalist with the 854th Engineer battalion. On two tours they offered us protection and access that would not have been possible had we wandered onto the battlefield ourselves. There has been a lot of criticism and analysis of the embedding process, much of it justified. But I can tell you the access we got to the front line soldiers more than outweighed any sense of "control" by the military. I will admit we came to sympathize with the soldiers in our unit, but not because we were biased by their proximity or their protection. We came to respect this group of reservists -- "citizen soldiers" -- for their silent sacrifice. Their families, too, earned our respect.
Barely one percent of Americans serve in our volunteer armed forces. For those of us in the other 99 percent, our duty is to pay tribute to those who risk their lives in our stead.
Do not let Iraq become the forgotten war.
While we wake up in a land of freedom, despite the recent challenges to our prosperity, we must remember all the mothers and fathers who don't wake up here -- because they never went to bed last night. They will spend tonight sleepless as well, hoping tomorrow will not bring a sharply-dressed officer and military chaplain to their front doors.
When this war ends and all the troops finally come home from Iraq and Afghanistan, we must still remember their sacrifices -- each and every Memorial Day.
Reader Response:
Thank you for your story Iraq - The Forgotten War. My son has been in Iraq for almost 14 mos. It has been a very difficult 14 mos. and I am a little bitter about the fact that it is a forgotten war. My son has a son who he barely knows so I see the sacrifice that my son and grandson make on a daily basis. Fortunately we have jounalists like you who will not let everyone forget.
Thank you.
Kim Bush
Friday, 05/23/08In The beginning...
Welcome to the first installment of
The Story Behind The Story.We get a lot of questions about the stories we put on Channel 9 and wcpo.com. Just one of my stories may generate a hundred emails with many of the questions revolving around the methods we used to produce the story.
This blog is an attempt to continue that two-way dialog by giving you an inside look at how news is made -- and by giving you an opportunity to guide the discussion with your replies. Soon, we'll be offering a spot right on this page for you to post questions and read the replies from others. For now, you can email me directly:
brendan.keefe@wcpo.com and we will post your submissions to this blog.
I anchor the 5:30 P.M. news with Tanya O'Rourke every weekday, and I produce special reports for other newscasts. I write those reports myself. This blog will be no different. The material you see here will be my own, and the editorial freedom of a blog will allow me to address some of the reasoning behind my reports.
Some days I will address specific stories you see at 5:30 or in the other newscasts. Other days I may open up the discussion with more general observations on journalism or issues in our community.
Let me hear from you!
