Mike and Aaron….and a Newsroom with Broken Hearts

No one anywhere at any time in the next few days or even weeks can say something to ease the pain being felt in a newsroom in Greenville, S.C.  WYFF is a place with which I have at least a token familiarity.

Memorial Day is like most holiday observances.  In a TV newsroom, assignment editors scramble to develop a working menu of stories.  While retail stores are usually thriving with people, government offices are closed, schools are out and public servants are taking the final day of the weekend off with their families.

The typical roster includes retail sales compared to year-ago Memorial Day weekend totals, patriotic events, gas prices and holiday weekend travel, holiday festivals, crime or major holiday accidents, and weather-related stories (usually with increasing heat as June approaches or when heavy rains put a damper on Memorial Day cookouts).

The weather was a significant part of news coverage on this Memorial Day.  Subtropical storm Alberto came inland in the Panama City area Monday and began its ascent toward Alabama.  Gulf Coast stations, Dothan, Birmingham, Montgomery and Huntsville were all monitoring the progress closely.  The Carolinas, likewise, were hit with pelting rains that went all the way up the Mid-Atlantic coast and created flooding in Virginia and Maryland.

No one in any newsroom anticipates a holiday will leave a staff heartbroken.  Monday, at WYFF, tragedy struck.

Mike McCormick was an 11-year veteran at the Upstate South Carolina station.  He started his career at WYFF as a reporter in the station’s Spartanburg bureau.  In recent years, he became a weekend anchor.  I never met Mike but I occasionally exchanged conversation with him on Twitter when interesting weekend stories developed.

Aaron Smeltzer was a talented videographer who joined the WYFF staff earlier this year.  As happens when anyone signs on at a new television station, a few weeks are needed to become part of the culture.  From all reports, Aaron had done just that.

Both men were 36.  They were in the prime of their careers.  McCormick, in particular, was a well-known face and voice to viewers in Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville.

Monday morning, their assignment was to report on the impact of heavy rains in the lower portion of Western North Carolina.  They stopped to interview the fire chief of the small village of Tryon, NC.  As is routine, they packed up their gear and were headed either back to the station or to another interview.

One of the offshoots of continuous showers is softening of the soil around even the oldest trees.  I had personal experience with that approximately 10 years ago.  A huge oak tree suddenly collapsed and crashed in my front yard during torrential rains.  Thankfully, the tree fell away from my home.

No more than ten minutes after they left Tryon, a nightmare occurred at mid-morning.  Aaron and Mike were traveling when a huge tree, softened at the roots by the constant downpours, fell and struck their SUV.  They likely never saw it coming and had no time to react.  Both men, with so much ahead of them, were killed.

I have no idea what the instant reaction was like in the WYFF newsroom.  I wasn’t there.  Yet, I know firsthand what the emotions are like when one has to report on the tragic death of a personal friend.  I can surmise tears flowed from even the most stalwart men and women on the WYFF team.  Mike and Aaron were two of their own.  They were not supposed to be the lead story of the evening news on Channel 4 Monday night.

I had no doubt the voices and the emotions would be heavy from WYFF veteran anchors Michael Cogdill and Carol Goldsmith Monday night.  I have known Michael for 33 years.  He was a rookie reporter with WECT in Wilmington, NC, when I was news director at the opposition at WWAY.  I badly wanted to hire him away.  At that time, managements in Wilmington did not smile on “stealing” on-air journalists.  Michael’s wife-to-be Jill Kremer interned with us at WWAY.

Carol is the epitome of professionalism.  She has connected so well with women in the Piedmont area of South Carolina because she is a mom.  When I served my fellowship at WYFF, she told me some interesting stories about her early days as a reporter while covering the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

I observed how Carol was always ready to answer the bell regardless of the story.   I well remember a Fourth of July that was your typical “slow” news day.  In the final hour before news time at 5, not one but two major breaking stories developed.  A fire erupted in an apartment complex that left more than 20 people without a place to stay.  Almost simultaneously, a Greyhound bus accident on I-85 near Anderson SC forced first responders to set up a triage on the interstate as traffic was backed up for miles.

That day, the WYFF news team was a machine.  No sign of panic evolved. No worries surfaced in having to rearrange what appeared to be a routine holiday lineup.  Carol and 5:30 anchor Tim Waller, who was subbing for Michael on the holiday, were cool and reassuring to viewers in the midst of what could have been two tragedies.

The difference Monday:  Mike and Aaron were part of the family.  Imagine attending a family reunion one day and receiving word the next morning that two of your relatives are gone.  Mike and Aaron were in that newsroom early Monday morning.  They will never return.

Someone has to do the obituary.  Someone has to decide what to say about two colleagues, who to offer tributes and how to treat the kind of story that is not taught in college textbooks.

Michael and Carol had to tell their viewers that a regular guest in their homes would no longer be dropping in during the early evening or pre-bedtime hours.  They had to give people a frame of reference about another member of the WYFF family they never saw but who was integral to every story he shot and edited.

Earlier in the day, I posted on our local West Tennessee Today Facebook news page a sentence that reflects how I would fell if I were back calling the shots in a newsroom.  “When tragedy strikes a TV newsroom,” I wrote, “the news has to go on but hearts are breaking.”

In TV news, you take a lot of brickbats from viewers who hate the media and feel no one in a newsroom has a heart.  Trust me, hearts are more than heavy in Greenville and will be for a while.

Michael and Carol and the reporting staff will have to go on detailing routine stories.  Meteorologist John Cessarich will be keeping viewers updated on the aftermath of a storm called Alberto and the local weather.  People are already gearing up for the hopeful fortunes of Clemson and South Carolina in football this fall.

Yet, for days, weeks, even months, things will happen that will bring back the memory of two men in their mid-thirties who were brothers in a special family.  New people will be hired to fill their slots on the roster—but they can never take the places of Mike and Aaron.

Memorial Day 2018 will be remembered for years by the men and women who work for WYFF.  In TV news, you cannot put up a sign that reads Pardon Us While We Grieve.  The news will continue on Tuesday and beyond on Channel 4.

In an era when some who act out of misguided emotion attempt to minimize the sincerity of those who offer thoughts and prayers, the outpouring the WYFF family is feeling today is from people who genuinely are offering prayers for the two men’s families and the staff.  A news team is in many people’s homes more than some in their real families.

My father was a minister and his gift was knowing the right things to say to families who were in the midst of grieving, especially in times of sudden tragedies.  I remember many times in eulogies he turned to Psalm 147:3, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

That healing will not come tomorrow, this week, or probably next.  For those of you who live in the Greenville area and regularly watch WYFF, remember that a lot of people you see on Channel 4 in the days ahead are hurting inside.  They may not know you personally.  However, you know them.  Offer a prayer for them.  Be a family to them at a time when they need it most.

God bless and comfort the WYFF news team, the entire station staff and the families of Mike McCormick and Aaron Smeltzer.

WYFF 11 p.m. newscast Monday, May 28     

http://www.wyff4.com/article/wyff-news-4-remembers-anchor-photojournalist-who-were-tragically-killed-in-crash/20946162

 

Solid Reporting Under Stress: Three Stations Excel in Active Shooter Situations

Periodically, The Old TV News Coach tackles weaknesses in television news presentation.  The object is not merely to be critical or to sound like the old geezer in a rocking chair in front of The New Southern Hotel in Jackson, Tn.

The idea is to see our industry of broadcast journalism improve and become far better than it is.

Likewise, I take genuine joy in pointing out quality practices that serve the viewer well and reflect credit on the profession.

In the last week, I have witnessed three first-class efforts in the midst of the two most frightening words of the current day:  active shooter.

This is not to minimize the efforts of competing stations in these cities but I take my hat off to reporters and anchors at KHOU in Houston, WMBB in Panama City FL and WTHR in Indianapolis.

The mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas had many of us uttering what is now an angry cliche:  “Here we go again.”  The loss of eight students and two teachers stirred up the national debate on gun possession, mental illness and overall security measures at American schools.

KHOU was the most accessible Houston-area station for me on Roku.  Shortly after 12 noon last Friday, I saw one of the most impressive pieces of work to sort out truth from fiction and rumors.

https://media.khou.com/embeds/video/8133320/iframe

Reporter Tiffany Craig, using the equivalent of an electronic chalkboard, set up three columns:  one for verified information, one for false reports and a middle section for possible but unsubstantiated data.

Craig’s work reminded me of the stories of Walter Cronkite explaining complex stories on WTOP in Washington (prior to his joining CBS News) in the early days of television by employing “chalk talks,” using a blackboard and chalk to detail specific facts in understandable fashion.

Several times during the afternoon Craig performed solid work, especially in diffusing wildfire rumors that erupted on social media.  Typically in today’s cyberculture, false information spreads from online users who claim to know people who know people who know people who have so-called specifics that they are sure the media are not reporting.

Craig did not do her work in a lecturing fashion but was almost like watching the best schoolteachers as she turned to her electronic board, illustrated the key points and turned to the camera to talk to viewers in a calm, non-threatening fashion.

The video of Craig’s work we have embedded should be a textbook for every newsroom in America on how to sort truth from baloney for viewers during crisis situations.

Three days later, my old friend and colleague Jerry Brown and his co-anchor and assistant news director Amy Hoyt demonstrated how small market journalists are just as professional during a crisis.

Before Brown and Hoyt took over, morning and noon anchors Chris Marchand and Kelsey Peck did a first-rate job of guiding viewers through an active shooter at an apartment complex.

While Marchand and Peck were at the anchor desk, reporter Megan Myers—who has only been with WMBB a few months—was in the midst of interviewing a neighbor in the area where 49-year-old Kevin Holroyd erupted.  As police were attempting to bring an end to the violence, shots rang out behind Myers and her interviewee.

http://www.mypanhandle.com/news/shots-fired-while-reporter-is-on-air/1192587128

Despite the fact that the sequence went viral on social media, WMBB did a professional job of following the story with marathon coverage while not employing alarming language or sensational tactics.

Jerry Brown was my prime time male anchor when I was news director at WWAY in Wilmington, N.C.  Jerry had the vocal delivery and straightforward approach that viewers need in nervous moments.  When Hurricane Dora was pounding the Atlantic coast for hours, including downtown Wilmington, in September 1984, Jerry and his colleague Stella Shelton were stalwarts all night and into the early hours of the next day.

 

When I received an alert of the Panama City eruption, I would have been surprised if Jerry had been anything but what he was—-the calming voice to a city which eight years earlier watched as an unstable man fired shots at Bay County school board members.  The shooter missed all of his targets but was shot by a security officer multiple times before finishing the job himself.

Jerry’s co-anchor Amy Hoyt was solid at delivering point-by-point retrospectives and summaries of what had transpired for latecomers to the story.

WMBB did not employ a video chalkboard but Hoyt was adept at outlining the day and the unanswered questions in one-two-three sequences.  If you were a viewer in Panama City Monday, Jerry and Amy brought you up to date within a matter of a few minutes.

This blogpost is being written approximately 15 hours after violence exploded at Noblesville West Middle School in Indiana near Indianapolis.  At this hour, a teacher who was shot and who is emerging as a hero of the day, Jason Seaman, is apparently out of danger.  A vigil continues for a 13-year-old girl who was shot, apparently by a classmate who asked to be excused from the class and returned with two revolvers.

I stayed with WTHR for better than three hours Friday afternoon.  In any marathon coverage of a crisis, television news has to draw a fine line between being invasive with parents and, in the case of Noblesville, with students of middle school age.  The wrong reporter can quickly turn off viewers either with insensitive questions or giving the impression of not respecting frayed emotions after an active shooter.

One reporter who impressed me specifically was Steve Jefferson.  He was sent to Noblesville High School, where at least temporary reports were of that school receiving threats.  Emergency personnel made the decision to send the middle school students via a large motorcade of buses to the high school to decompress and reunite with their parents.

Jefferson was especially sensitive with the mother of a 14-year-old for one key reason—-he listened.  Jefferson did not bombard her with questions after every two sentences of her responses.  He allowed her to talk and go through the myriad of emotions she was experiencing.

A key moment in that interview was when the mom expressed what virtually every parent had to be feeling in Noblesville:  “I don’t want to sound insensitive to say that I’m glad my daughter wasn’t hurt…..but I’m glad my daughter wasn’t hurt.”

One of the keys to good interviews in any situation, crisis or feature, is for reporters to be good listeners.  Jefferson listened.  His followup questions connected with what the woman previously said and advanced the story without heightening hysteria.

A couple of low moments during the three crises:  one station made use of the phrase “bring closure.”  In the case of the Holroyd story, one reporter said, “Kevin Holroyd is now dead and this will no doubt bring closure to many people who have been on edge during this long day.”  I wrote in an earlier blogpost (and was backed up by several working producers) that the word “closure” is the most misused other than “went missing” in television news today.  Victims or people who have been in harm’s way from an active shooter often need weeks, months, or even years, if ever, to experience closure to violent moments.  Families of victims who lose their lives do not suddenly find closure if a perpetrator is killed by law enforcement officers or if the shooter takes his (or her) own life.

Three times during the Noblesville coverage, I saw WTHR reporters respond to anchor tosses with “good morning” or “good afternoon.”  When one is covering murder or potential murder, the morning or afternoon is not good.  That becomes an anachronism of habit and often conveys insensitivity.  Producers and news directors—-drop the “good morning” or “good afternoon” response from live field reporters.  Teach the reporters to just go into their narrative, especially at a crime scene.

Still, I was impressed by KHOU, WMBB and WTHR with no intent to minimize the work of their competitors that I did not witness.  In Houston, Panama City and Indianapolis, that trio comprise Allstate stations.  You’re in good hands if you watch them for news.