Breaking news: the good, the bad and the ugly
With a full business week under my belt I have some experiences to share. Breaking news can be really fun or basically nonexistent.
One of the things I learned this week was how to go t0 the Oklahoma City police stations and pick out police reports to cover. When I was told I would be going to the police station I assumed it would be a lot like the DMV except with weapons and handcuffs. I assumed every question would be met with eye rolls and loud exasperated sighs. I was wrong. The public information officers were usually happy to help and it gave me a chance to fraternize with people from other media outlets and remind myself why I’m not going into broadcast.
Looking through a stack of reports may sound mind-numbingly boring, but it is the gems in there that make it all worth it. In that stack I found a story about a man who shot himself while driving high with a child in the car. There was also a report of a woman who stole not one, but two vibrators from Spencer’s. The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me.
**Sidenote: later that week I had to take a call from the grandma of the man who shot himself. She wanted to know where I got some of my information because she was convinced she would know if her grandson was in a gang. After all, who doesn’t tell their granny if they made it into the bloods or the crips?
Some times things take a turn for the worse…
I had to talk to the mother of a dead 16-year-old girl mere hours after she found out her daughter was murdered for apparently no reason. This woman was so distraught and sad she could barely hold herself together and her words were frequently broken up by sobs. I can’t put into words how awful that felt and I think that’s the one thing that won’t get easier with practice.
To end on a lightearted note, it’s been a good first week. All of the death and destruction hopefully won’t stop me from walking into work like Joseph Gordon-Levitt from “500 Days of Summer.”
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That woman in Spencer’s sounds desperate.