“Yes,” I replied. As an Elder grad who worked for three years with the Panther football program I was more than familiar with the head coach of our biggest rival.
“Do you think you can stick a microphone in his face and ask him a few questions?” Zach said, pointedly.
“Yes,” I said, nervously. God I was scared.
Within seconds I was walking out the door, tailed closely by producer Ron “Rufus” Millennor, who was quickly giving some last second directions to myself and photojournalist Dave Smith.
“Get out there and call me, OK?” Rufus said.
“Got it,” I answered.
“Send a Sat truck,” Rufus yelled inside.
“Rufus…Are you…going to put me on air?” I stammered as the door closed behind him.
----
When I arrived to FOX19 on Friday, April 2nd last year I didn’t expect to be thrown into a whirlwind of action that became one of the biggest local and national sports stories of the year.The Cincinnati Cyclones had a game that evening, and as an intern, I had come to enjoy the Clones. Games were always fun to watch and easy to edit for the nightly sportscast. To be honest, I’m not sure the highlights that were shot that evening even made it to the air.
By the time I had gotten back to the station, after watching two periods of hockey, I knew what the goal was. My job was to chop up 30 to 35 seconds of action for Zach Wells to talk about that evening on the fifteen minute “Final Quarter” on FOX19. Easy enough.
While I was cutting some highlights in an edit bay, I received a text message. It stated, simply, that Matt James, a star Notre Dame recruit that attended St. Xavier High School had died. I replied to the message, “Don’t mess with me. If this is true I need to know, we need to run it on the news.”
As I swung the chair to tell photographer Dan Wood what I had just heard, he walked away. Commotion was occurring feet below me in the newsroom. Rufus had just hung up the phone with someone who had the same message for him: Matt James had passed away in Panama City, Fla., during a spring break accident.
The Cyclones game no longer mattered.
Rufus, Zach and everyone who had the time picked up their phones to try to confirm the story. Rufus sent me to the edit bay to compile footage on the massive 6-foot-6 left tackle, who had chosen two months earlier to play football for Brian Kelly at Notre Dame.
No one in the newsroom could find anyone to confirm the story. Although every news outlet had heard the rumors no one in Cincinnati or Panama was able to confirm that James had actually perished.
“When Matt James died it was tough,” Rufus told me a few months ago. “The way the business is now where a lot of people want to get information now, rather than waiting and being right. When you’re dealing with somebody dying, especially a teenager, again, I go back to being old-school, I’d rather be right than first. My bosses probably wouldn’t want to hear that, but when you’re dealing with life and death, it’s different.”
It was almost a surreal experience. Until we could confirm that James had died, we couldn’t run any video. It’s the ethical thing to do, and while it was totally new to me, I was in the hands of professionals who had dealt with this in the past. They knew how to do this.
‘Follow their lead,’ I thought.
“It was chaotic,” Rufus said. “In this era of social networking, people were Facebooking that he had died and Tweeting that he had died. There are no established guidelines for dealing with that. There’s no handbook out that says Twitter and Facebook are now accredited sources.
“So, you’ve got to go with your gut. If it’s somebody you know that’s Facebooking or Tweeting it, you’re a little more comfortable, but if it’s a kid saying So-and-so died, I really need confirmation from somebody else,” he added.
By the time Dave Smith and I were on our way to St. Xavier to try to get some footage, the newsroom was able to confirm the sad story. Zach Wells sat at the news desk and told the audience the story of James, a heralded recruit that chose Notre Dame over Cincinnati and Ohio State. When Smith and I got to St. Xavier I called Rufus.
“The Final Quarter” was on air, but I was able to relay a message to his voice mail. I told him that the lights were on at the stadium and that students were walking into the football stadium for an impromptu prayer service.
As we approached the front gates a parent asked us kindly to return to our car. Cameras were not allowed at the event. We obliged, thanked the man for telling us to turn around, and left.
By the time we got back to the station it was 11:15 p.m. Rufus and Zach stood around the bank of TVs by Rufus’s desk and watched the other three stations talk about James.
I walked over, and let Dave Smith explain what happened. There was nothing more we could do.
“Half of this job is showing up,” Zach told me as I packed my backpack and prepared to leave. “It was crazy tonight, but you did a good job. Thanks.”
I highly doubt I would have gotten to be on air if a satellite truck had met Dave Smith and I out at St. X, but on the drive out to North Bend Road I was abuzz, and plenty worried. I was only wearing an orange polo shirt and khaki pants. I couldn’t go on the air looking like that could I?
We never found out, but I know that if need-be I would have done my best job in front of a camera. It would have been the right thing to do, the best thing to do, the only thing to do.
I’d say that more than half of the job was showing up that night. It was caring to get the story and get it right, something that is lost on some in the media business today, where being first is sometimes all that matters.
When Rufus explained to me that in this instance it was only appropriate to get the right information first before getting wrong information and running with it, my mind was at ease. Ethics are covered thoroughly in all my journalism classes, but this was a real-life opportunity to practice the ethics of reporting and journalism.
It was a sad day, but a great opportunity to learn about some real-world instances in the newsroom. Hopefully I never have to cover another story like this again.
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