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Trolling the streets for news
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Location: Blogs Now We're Talking |
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| Posted by: Joe Byrnes |
11/14/2007 8:18 AM |
This is the Now We're Talking column from Wednesday, Nov. 14.
I should probably write something about the $3.13 price I saw for a gallon of regular unleaded or the race-colored glasses of actor/defendant Wesley Snipes or the grey-green, greasy future of the Rainbow River.
Or I should at least call for a designated driver on all Marion County juries.
Here's the problem. Those topical, timely and potentially informative columns would require work, and I just got off vacation, physically, at least. My mind is still in vacation mode, bobbing in a boat on Lake Wauberg, waiting for the next 14 ½-inch-long speckled perch to bend a rod.
Now I am going to get my mind back in the game and forget the cool fall evening and the glorious sunset mirrored on the lake ... Hmm. Maybe a cup of coffee will help.
I'll grab my computer bag and tell you how this many-zippered, black fabric satchel is an indication of changing times.
In the big pocket, that's where I put my laptop and air card to access the Internet. In the front pouches, there's a dual-purpose camera for making videos and photos. There's a backup battery and a tangle of cords and cables. Add to that a row of pens and pencils and a couple of tablets half-covered in a handwriting so bad that people commonly ask me if I know shorthand.
This bag - plus my cell phone and the tripod and red folding chair behind the seat in my truck - are the print journalist's office of today.
In 1990, when I first started in this business as a stringer for the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, I'd write my story longhand on a tablet and then dictate it to a typist while standing at a pay phone.
The little article would show up the next day, buried in the back of the local section.
Now we're posting articles - and photos and videos - on Ocala.com as quickly as we can. Police reporter Austin L. Miller e-mails the latest from the Marion County Sheriff's Office or from his parked car, and it's edited and on the digital page in a couple of minutes.
Take Tuesday afternoon, for example. As an armed robber held up people in parking lots around Ocala, Miller called in updates, which went online right away. He carried a video camera to record the scene and document the lockdown at Blessed Trinity School.
Recently, during the John Couey trial, reporters Mabel Perez and Christopher Curry sent updates continually from a Miami courtroom, and photographer Bruce Ackerman captured video of the trial.
I believe the online readers have come to expect this immediacy.
For me it means that, when A&A Trucking and Excavating calls to say they are demolishing the front of the courthouse, I unplug my laptop, shove it in the bag and drive there. After an interview, I unfold my chair on the sidewalk, turn on the computer and post an update on Ocala.com. Then photo editor Alan Youngblood hands me a picture on a thumb drive, and I add it to the story online.
I end up looking like a character in a Monty Python skit or some oddity in a surrealist painting - the office worker typing away on a street corner - but that's just what I've come to at this point in my career.
If you see me sitting around, typing in your neighborhood, please don't hesitate to say hello. And if you have any fishing tips, I'd like to hear them.
Joe Byrnes may be reached at joe@ocala.com or 352-867-4112. |
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