Field reporting Posted on December 31, 2025 at 08:21:52 PM by Being paid to learn stuff
Well, that's not altogether true. I don't write book reports so much, I've been lucky enough to understand the trends and write overview histories because of my lucky experiences covering beats over long periods. Education, medicine, aviation, and energy utilities were my favorites. Others are more expert in law and police/crime.
TV doesnt do beats anymore..they let go of all of their beat reporters other than cop and city government. So I didn't get to cover those two as often, just when no one else was available from those specialty beats when something came up. I was disappointed I didn't get sent to KC to cover the Hyatt collapse, but Dave Brinkers got that plumb assignment. We were at a company party when that disaster happened and he left the party for Kansas City, and he was a really good event reporter and did really well that night. My dad had a few friends who died ..his crowd often went to the Tea Dances but luckily he and his gf weren't there that night. It really shook up a lot of the older WWII crowd in their 50s-60s from Central KC neighborhoods, Brookside to Red Bridge.
I usually write media content and Jim just trashes me personally because I'm not fond of corporate media, especially after Reagan ended how many stations/markets a company could own under FCC rules. Jim really never talks abt the media in here, just belittling me. IT started when I wrote a piece about his pressuring that station to build an elevator for his kid. IT was actually originated by the board president, I only responded to it. I didn't even start writing about special Ed until I did two series on it in 1980 and 81. The chief photographer and I got more than a month to shoot and edit it and luckily for us, the Wichita schools opened up wide to cover it. I had the same kind of fortune both in hospitals and the aircraft plants, and I loved doing aviation, especially at Boeing with their cruise missile skunk works and other stuff like that. And the missile wing at McConnell right during the scary time with the films "The Day After" and "Threads" breaking around the country. We came pretty close to nuclear war right then, coinciding with the missile silo propellant leak that killed 9 airmen and caused fatal respiratory injuries to a KFDI radio newsman who got too close to the killer red cloud if nitrogen tetroxide. NBC's White Paper flew to town and did a total tap dance on the Airforce, which was the worst network journalism I ever saw. I covered the missile leak stories parallel to theirs, and our coverage was very different and, imho, ethically unfair. They burned the Secy of the Airforce pretty bad, as if they'd written their story even before they landed in Wichita. I was under a lot of pressure from the Managing EDitor George Winters at KSN at that time to trash KG&E over Wolf Creek's cost overruns and I almost got fired for not ripping them as ordered. I chose to cover the construction and complexity of the plant rather than ripping management. Wolf Creek and Calloway Mo plants, kissin cousins, were the last two nuc plants built in the US which was delayed after the Three MIle Island meltdown. We've seen two other major meltdowns, one in Ukraine at Chernobyl that's still a no-man-s land, and the other, the Japanese earthquake at Fukushima. Both were world class disasters and today, we're lucky not to have major population disasters with so many plants still in operation across the US and Europe. They could still could pollute widespread areas with radiation. But those in the industry have worked hard to make them safer with redundencies and safety measures. Not sure they're earthquake proof tho!
Anyway I found those kinds of stories way more fun to cover than city hall and murder trials! I'm still amazed tho that Washington DC media didn't stop the pentagon years ago for flying Blackhawk helicopters right under the runway approach at Reagan Natnl. At the beginning of 2025, and those skater girls who flew out of wichita and were killed, well, there'd been some near missies before the fatal disaster. Sadly network news is more interested in politics than safety stories around the capital.
We have a bad habit in America of covering disasters AFTER they happen, not preventing them before they do. One reason is that the media doesn't bite the hand that feeds them, so there are few or no stories every done when corporations screw over the public with price fixing and profiteering like the health care industries do. Advertisers are sacred cows which is why the media mostly chases after criminals and crooked politicians and not monopolistic corporations. Replies: