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Hello all! I'm Mark Liu and I'm an Assignment Editor for KCBS 2 / KCAL 9. Assignment Editors are the folks in the newsroom that hunt for breaking news and dispatch our reporters and photographers to stories as they happen. We also surf the internet and drink a LOT of coffee. This blog should (hopefully) provide a little insight into the inner workings of a major metropolitan TV news assignment desk, and maybe give everyone out there a better idea of *how* and *why* we do the stories that we do. Email me at mliu@cbs.com
Want to know what 200 calories looks like? Check this out.
I'd rather have the apples more than just about anything else.
I pulled a long shift today at the assignment desk. Usually I'm off at 8pm but today they needed me to stay all the way until 11:30pm. It's a long time, but I get a chance to work on the 11pm show which lately I haven't been able to due. Our night was mostly occupied with the impending arrests out at the Esperanza Fire. Pretty much everyone here in the newsroom is certain arrests will come on Tuesday or Wednesday. Monday afternoon saw a flurry of police activity at one of the homes in southeast Cabazon. Two men were taken into custody for questioning and later released. Sheriffs deputies made sure we knew the two men were *not* under arrest. Later on, deputies were seen removing boxes of evidence from the mens' home.
Here's Monday's webcast.
ESPERANZA FIRE
Inciweb says the Esperanza Fire is 100% contained. . Now that community can finally turn to mourning the loss of the four firemen that gave their lives fighting this fire. We've received lots of e-mails at the station asking how people can help out the families of those fallen heroes. We have a page devoted to the fundraiser.
MODEL BITTEN BY SHARKS
Here's a link to the article in the UnderwaterTimes.com. Why anyone would send two skinny girls to swim around with hungry sharks is beyond me.
I'm got another 12 hour day ahead of me on Tuesday. Wish me luck!
It's the five year anniversary of 9/11 today and I gotta say...this assignment desk is pretty quiet. Most of the tributes are all done, everyone's gone home..and it seems that no one wanted to schedule events nightside (tribute-oriented or not) because...I mean...who wants to hold events on 9/11? You don't want to be the PR person who scheduled a product demo or a rally for a non-9/11 related cause on 9/11. It's a bad idea because A) it's tacky, and B) everyone knows that all us local news types are going to be doing 9/11 coverage all day anyway. So...the Sept. 11th anniversary makes for a fairly calm (albeit *regimented*) day at the assignment desk.
Katie Couric has a new hairdo for the anniversary coverage tonight. I'd post a picture but it's too soon for images of it to be cropping up on the internet for me to snag. It will appear soon enough, I'm sure. Katie's just *all the rage* over here at KCBS. ;)
My executive producer isn't exactly happy with me since there hasn't been a lot of breaking news lately. *AS IF IT'S MY FAULT*. I know the guy is kidding most of the time, but he regularly laments that the news doldrums we've been experiencing (read: no pursuits) have been the assignment desk's fault. My usual answer to him is that I can, (quote) "Make a pursuit happen, but I'll be the one driving, and I won't be able to make it back to work for a long...LONG time." He usually shakes his head, sighs, and says, "I think I'll save that for when we really need it." I often wonder if he's being serious.
Neat! Over in Europe, CERN is starting up their Large Hadron Collider. This is cool for several reasons. First, if you check out pictures of the thing on their website, it kinda looks like the generator core of the Death Star. Second, their website states (I'm not making this up):
"Our goal is to prevent, AND ALSO MAKE PLANS ON SURVIVING WHEN POSSIBLE, particle accelerator mishaps including quantum vacuum collapse, mining the quantum vacuum, formation of a stable stranglet, and the creation of artificial mini-black holes."
One of the potential side effects of operating the Large Hadron Collider is apparently the spontaneous creation of mini-black holes. Some scientists theorize that these miniature black holes could eat up the Earth.
If this happens, stay tuned to this blog for directions on how to survive the end of the world. I Promise!
-Mark
mliu@cbs.com
P.S. I also have no idea what a "stable stranglet" is...or what "mining the quantum vacuum" could possibly mean. Awesome.
P.P.S. I am not a slacker.
Well. There's a pretty big fire burning over in the Yucca Valley / Morongo Valley area. They're calling it the "Sawtooth Complex Fire". I'm calling it a massive logistics nightmare of epic proportions.
When there's a big fire like this there's no question that we have to cover it 24 hours a day. That means at least three (maybe four) complete news crews operating around the clock, and THAT means we have to find ways to provide food, water and shelter to these news crews out in the field as they operate. Booking rooms, coordinating start and stop times for shifts, moving video from one crew to the next...it's enough to make your head spin. For instance, Crew A is on duty at 3am to cover the fire for the 5, 6, 11am and noon shows. Crew B comes on duty at 9am for the 4,5, and 6pm shows, but needs to find Crew A before they can get started because they need the tape that Crew A shot overnight. Crew B can't find Crew A because there's no cell service out by the fire. So they spend time retracing what they think is Crew A's steps. After finally finding them, Crew B leaves to continue their work while Crew A goes to a hotel (that we booked for them) to go to sleep at 2pm so they can be up again tomorrow at 3am. But that's not before handing over their truck and equipment to Crew C that comes on at 2pm and is working for the 8,9,10, and 11pm shows. However, Crew C needs the same tape that Crew B did, but Crew A already gave that tape away to Crew B, so now Crew C must go and find the tape from Crew B (because Crew A forgot to copy the tape...they just gave the master copies away...it just "saved time that way.") And all this is before anyone has even gotten on air yet! (sigh)
Two women in South Carolina had their lips and tongue burned when they ordered a Peach Martini and the bartender accidentally dipped their glasses in chemical cleaner instead of sugar. Ouch. Both women got sent to the hospital with severe chemical burns in the mouth...one of them is still in intensive care. The bar's owner calls the whole thing a "horrible accident".
-Mark
mliu@cbs.com
I must have heard LAPD radio traffic regarding code 37 vehicles at least twenty times tonight. "Code 37" is the LAPD radio code to identify a "suspected or confirmed stolen" vehicle. Occupied and rolling "code 37" vehicles are targets of high priority for LAPD cruisers because if stopped, the cops usually get A) a car thief sent to jail and B) someone's stolen car recovered. Net result: bad guy off the street and an honest citizen gets his or her car back. All good, right? Sadly, most rolling code 37 vehicles turn into pursuits which are bad for everyone. That's why when one is spotted, the officer in charge usually calls for more ground units for backup and an LAPD chopper to arrive overhead. The driver of the last code 37 vehicle I heard them talk about just minutes ago surrendered peacefully to cops.
-Mark
mliu@cbs.com
Yes I know, the title of today's blog is a famous line from The Simpson's character Ralph Wiggum but I feel it's appropriate considering what's happened to me.
Since there was no webcasts today I spent the first part of my day learning the intricacies of our two Web Publishing programs. It was all pretty simple -- these programs are designed to help newsrooms manage their gargantuan websites with as little effort as possible. The embarrasing part of the day came when I published a story to our website with an enormous typo. I'll spare you the gory details but it was enough for my cubicle mate to remark, "Um, that's not how you spell (insert very common word here)." Yikes! Hence my choice for the title of today's blog.
The assignment desk chugs along as normal. Working the assignment desk on a holiday is a lot like flying a plane (at least according to the pilots I know.) It's usually described as "hours and hours of boredom followed by moments of sheer panic." Usually nothing news-worthy happens on a holiday, but when it does, it happens BIG. News items of note on a holiday are usually of the "something really large is on fire" variety that require swift and overwhelming response by our news crews. That's always kind of nerve racking because holiday staffing in newsrooms is usually bare-bones. Hmmm...the equation: Big News (divided by) Skeleton Crew Staffing = Mark works very hard to get everything together. But then again, days like that are when you really feel the "juice"...the excitement of breaking news that I think all of us live for.
-Mark
mliu@cbs.com
Well that guy that dug the hole in his yard looking for gold fixed the problem today. The city made him hire a soil engineer to supervise the filling of the hole. I'm sure his neighbors were relieved.
The tiny city of Gorman has a serious problem with it's water supply. It's loaded with nasty E. Coli bacteria. Okay how did that happen? Sure, E. Coli can be naturally occuring but most of the time it comes from water contaminated with human or animal waste. Nasty! The problem is so widespread in Gorman that the water district there has told EVERYONE in the city to boil all the water they use. Excuse me, but if there was E. Coli in my tap water I'd be drinking, washing, and cleaning with Sparkletts for the rest of the month. I wouldn't be boiling anything. Actually, I might move.
Ya, and here's a list of 10 extremely weird Japanese technological inventions. My personal favorite is the automatic door. It has a very Rube Goldberg-ian aspect to it, dont'cha think?
-Mark
mliu@cbs.com
Well it's been a fairly insane five months. I've been working 12 hours a day, five days a week...from January to the end of May. Normally my shift would be a simple nine hours a day at the assignment desk, but working on the webcast required that I come to work about three hours early to get everything done. Thankfully though, the Leaders of the Assignment Desk(tm) have agreed to let me go home a little early, so as not to burn my soft brain out. I'm sort of split between two worlds now...the first part of my day is all about the internet, the last is all about assignment editing.
The best story of the week so far was the one on Tuesday night about the guy in Montclair who dug a 60 foot hole in his front yard. When we first got the tip at the Assignment Desk that the fire department was rolling out to the call of a "man digging a 60 foot hole in front of his house" we all said in unison "THAT'S OUR NEW STORY!" Of course, our next question was,"What could possibly compel someone to destroy the property value of their own house and that of their neighbors by digging a crater into their front lawn?" The answer: he was digging for gold.
Allow me to repeat that again: He was digging for gold. Under his front lawn. In a Montclair neighborhood, on a residential street. *SIX STORIES DOWN*
Today reporter Kimberly Ball talked to the homeowner and got the scoop on why he was doing all this. It seems that the guy bought some sort of "gold detection device" and used it on his front lawn. The device told him that there was gold somewhere under his property, and in what apparently was a mind-boggling display of mental and physical willpower the man decided to dig. And dig. AND DIG until he was 60 feet straight into the earth. His reward? A small amount of gold dust and a surprise visit from the Montclair Fire Department. After figuring out that there was no one trapped or injured in this hole the fire battalion chief on scene explained to the homeowner the rather horrifyingly dangerous situation the man had placed himself in over the last week while digging his mine shaft. Apparently unaware that a 60 foot deep, four foot wide, un-reinforced hole was remarkably dangerous to be in, he admitted that he had "gotten a little carried away" with his digging and agreed to shut down his mining operation. We don't know yet if this guy is gonna face any fines, but the battalion chief told our reporter that the homeowner is probably gonna have to pay for a licensed engineer to come out and fix the whole thing.
-Mark
mliu@cbs.com
