Fly on the wall

When it's quiet during my Friday evening Cops Shift, I like to surf the blogosphere.

Some of the younger reporters and I have been leading an effort - albeit unsuccessfully thus far - to start a blog at The News-Journal, the details of which I can't get into for obvious reasons; so it's my thing, I'm afraid.

Anyway, sometimes I come across gems from fellow reporters across the country. This is a difficult job to have some days and even if we may work in different coverage areas at larger or smaller newspapers, we share that bond of heart-wrenching and positive experiences while covering the news.

After the Trolley Square Shooting in Utah, Salt Lake Tribune chief photographer Trent Nelson asked a question on his Fly On The Wall blog - from the photographer's perspective - that we often have to struggle with:

"How do we as news photographers balance our feelings of sympathy for the victims of tragedy with the importance of our job, which is to be the eyes and ears of the public, who (me and you and all of us) have a real need for this information?

"How should journalists cover these moments of tragedy, especially when the pain is so fresh that the bodies are still uncovered?"

(Full entry, "More on the shooting")

I remember covering my first accident as in intern during Bike Week: a speeding biker slammed into the side of a pick-up truck turning into a Daytona Beach park.

By the time I got there, the body was gone and the blood was covered in sawdust, but the young, shaken driver was still there with his family being questioned by police.

After the experience, I wrote: I arrived on the scene with my trusty reporter’s notebook, my lucky black rolling ball pen, a confident stride and a knotted stomach...

The photographer arrived not long after and I watched jealously as she positioned herself 20 feet away snapping pictures with a long lens.

I eventually did approach and the mother shooed me away. I felt horrible then, even more horrible that I had to step in the middle of this family’s pain to do my job. I stood on the side helpless, more than ready to leave, when the father strode over and answered what he could.

By the time I got back in the office, the PIO had sent a press release. What probably changed that young man's life forever, the memory of bones and metal crunching, turned out to be no more than a five-line brief. Emotionally exhausted was not the word.

I used to think that maybe photographers had the easy part: snap a moment in time and leave while we, the reporters, had to approach and deal with emotional trauma up close, wanting to comfort at times rather than question.

But after the Feb. 2 tornadoes, I realized many of them feel as much as we do. While I can sit in the back of a church for a victim's funeral, hiding my reporter's notebook between the program, scribbling eulogy notes discreetly, the photographer - the obvious media guy lugging all the equipment, sticking out during difficult times like a sore thumb - is the one near the altar snapping grieving family photos and taking names with quiet discretion.

They deal with the welcome and the malice as much, if not more, than we do. It's not a job, it's a lifestyle we chose. And it's damned hard some days.

Photo courtesy procorbis.com