Oklahoma weather in Washington
I took a tour of the Belo operation in Washington DC today. I was joined by Ed Kelley, David Jones, Scott Horton, Chris Casteel and Mark Greene from OPUBCO. Our mission was to look at what Belo is doing with their bureau from the Capitol.
We didn’t expect the surprise.
And we didn’t expect the gorgeous weather: 70s and perfect.
Upon arriving in a mostly empty building (it’s Presiden’ts Day and DC takes this day seriously), we were pulled aside and told the Belo staff at the DC bureau were just informed on Friday of staff cuts. The Belo bureau in DC is a combined print, online and broadcast team. I got the impression they had more synergies in the past than the present. And the staff cuts would only further that gap.
Ed and I spoke more today about how large operations like Belo and the Atlanta Journal Constitution are going more towards silo’d efforts, where departments focus on their core compentencies instead of collaboration.
Should be interesting to see how it shakes out.
It was also interesting to see the weather take a left turn, for the clouds to roll in and the skies to open. The temp dropped about 20 degrees and it started pouring. Welcome back winter.
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Washington DC bureau update
David Jones, Scott Horton and I worked on the new Washington DC set this morning, installing the teleprompter software with the help of Donna Young’s crew. Sometimes ya just hafta call for some backup to get the job done.
With that accomplished, we finished setting up the compression and resolution settings and knocked out a quick debrief previewing our upcoming DC coverage.
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Flip the switch, hit record
Late Sunday night we recorded a quick video from the Washington DC set. We will meet with Ed Kelley, Mark Greene and Chris Casteel on Monday to go over format, answer questions and finish plugging things together. Maybe hit a Radio Shack.
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Video reports from Washington D.C.
David Jones, Scott Horton and I hit the National Press Building tonight. D.C. is very quiet on a holiday weekend, especially on a humid Sunday night. The streets were wet, but empty. Only the occasional tourist walking past. Amazing how many foreign languages and accents you overhear while here.
Jones and Horton have done a very nice job in hooking up the equipment for our set which will serve as our D.C. bureau. Reporters Chris Casteel and Mark Greene will have great tools to use for their video reports.
On a side note, I can report the Old Ebbitt Grill knows a thing or two about baking crab cakes.
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