Radio killed the video star.

Maybe not. But let's just say I'm not exactly being let loose on the world with video equipment.

Attended the weekly KUNM News Department meeting this morning. It's taken me two months almost to get here, mostly excercising patience as the election dragged on and on only to have Patricia Madrid give up in the last round for reasons I can't possibly begin to fathom.

Meeting was good -- didn't have much to contribute as I barely understood from listening all the names they threw around. It's one thing to hear the news each night, it's a whole different ball game to hear stories develop before they ever hit the airwaves. Did chime in once with a possible lead on an angle to a still-developing Eminent Domain story that's likely to be big this coming legislative session. (I knew who owned the Blue Spruce Inn, you see, because I worked for him at Foxes.)

Jim Williams handed out stories to be developed to a couple of people and surprise surprise within five hours they were developed into fully fleshed-out news stories. At noon it was little more than a rumour that two new Uranium exploration permit applications had been filed for land near Navaho lands with the State. By five PM it was a news story, complete with interview by telephone explaining what the process was and where it would likely go from there.

I've heard about newsrooms and "tight deadlines", but the whole process of putting together a radio news story is so new to me it's positively baffling that it *could* be done in a few short hours' time. And yet, somehow, it is.

After the meeting, peace be upon him, Danny Hernandez said "let's talk".

Danny and I worked as phone room captains during the pledge drive and drove eachother slightly crazy but ultimately accomodated eachother because we're both very exacting in different ways. (I am a total bitch about my European dates.) It wasn't until the pledge drive was over that I put 2 and 2 together and figured out he was as much as any other single person *the* reason I still vote! I can't explain why this escaped me at the time, except to say sometimes I merely hear a person's voice and say "oh my god, are you Waddell Dawson? I *love* your show!" (each time he signs off saying "have yourself a great -- great day", I find I always do), whereas some other times it doesn't "click" so fast. Danny's the latter. (Maybe he's got the gain set high, who knows?) At any rate, *his* reporting on elections was a BIG part of the reason I didn't finally get too scared to go out and vote in 2004, and knew where to find the County Clerk and chase down my missing absentee ballot to the Voting Machine Warehouse on South Broadway.

He is amazing. He doesn't own a car, and gets around *everywhere* on a bicycle. He's an elected official, on the Flood Control Board -- for my district, no less. (No candidate, including Nader himself, has ever *earned* my vote so thoroughly as he has earned it.) He routinely does interviews for the radio *while* riding his bicycle. (Anyone who knew me during my "I'm only going to bicycle everywhere" days may appreciate that this is an excellent person for me to be around.)

He shows me a couple of his stories that he's done -- yes, *shows* me -- what they *look* like in Adobe Audition, which is how they edit "tape". There are three elements to any news story: background noise, narration, and interview. He guides me through the basics of it, then and there. Avoid collecting too much sound, he says -- if I get three hours of in-depth interviews (like everybody tries to do their first time out) I'm going to spend weeks editing it down into a two- to eight-minute story. The temptation to get ALL the sound is strong, and to be avoided, because eventually whatever you capture in the field has to be gone through, cut apart, and pasted back together into a coherent story.

This is the guy who took the 90-minute train wreck of the second Wilson-Madrid debate for CD1 and turned it into a coherent story, fairly presenting both candidates' key positions the very next day. Less than 24 hours turnaround time. There's that old cartoon of mathematicians at a blackboard: "and then, a miracle occurs". That's how it seemed to me at the time. I think it's fair to say I now know slightly better. It's not a miracle. It's just judicious, maybe merciless editing. Every other news outlet talking about debates focused on "style", including what I wrote about it here. On KUNM, thanks to Danny Hernandez, you get a solid sense of what each candidate really stands for -- because of how he edits the story and writes his narration. Amazing. I could not be learning from anyone better, if you ask me.

So the next step is to develop and pitch a story. Last time I heard the term "pitch", I lived in Hollywood and had ideas of "The Player" playing through my mind and it was all about cartoons to bigshot studio executives in an environment where cartoons were considered to be "dead". Oh no, I could never do that, I'm woefully inadequate, and all of that. Bullshit. Surely I have some idea floating around inside my empty head somewhere.

Well -- what about those containers of nuclear wastes from Sandia National Labs found underneath a car at the State Fairgrounds? Seems to me I heard about it, then it disappeared from the news totally. Same thing happens every few months where nuclear wastes are concerned in this town. They routinely pop up, only to disappear without explanation.

"Winds up it was a false alarm", he says. "Good story, but not a good place to start -- it would have to be investigative". Ahhh. It sinks in and a light goes on. My *first* priority is *not* to win the Pulitzer, it's to learn the mechanics of putting together a news story. He advises me that my first story's bound to take a week or two to put together into something that can be aired, since at this point I don't even know the file formats and software that's involved. He says I ought to go for something timely, but not absolutely urgent -- something that can comfortably sit on the shelf for a week or two while I work out the mechanics of editing sound (about which I know less than *nothing*) without going stale in the meantime.

"What about the New Mexico Coalition to Prevent a War Against Iran?" I say. It's in its formative stages as we speak, and has well-recognized and respected local groups behind it, and they're meeting next Monday to formulate strategies, now that they've spent two hours hashing out a broadly inclusive mission statement.

Great idea, he says. Pitch it.

What, me?

Yeah. Pitch it now.

What, you mean *me*? Down the hall? In the newsroom? You want me to interrupt what they're doing?

Yes. To Renee. Go in and tell her. She'll love it.

Uhm. OK.

My mind takes a BIG leap of faith here.

I know better. I do it anyway.

I barge into the newsroom and interrupt Renee while she's working on this evening's stories, at the same time I know my parking meter has run out of time and I *need* to get to work 'cause we are weeks behind on claims.

"Hi, I'm sorry to interrupt . . ."

She takes of her headphones.

"Danny said I should 'pitch', I believe that's the term, an idea for a possible story to you."

Jim Williams turns around as well. I start to get scared. Surely this is when they call security and have me escorted off premises.

"Have you heard about the New Mexico Coalition to Prevent a War Against Iran?"

Jim has, Renee hasn't.

"Stop the War Machine is behind it, and there are other groups involved as well. They just had an initial organizational meeting last week, and decided to form this group specifically to focus on Iran, and are holding a meeting on Monday to plan actions for January."

Her words? Something to the effect of "Sounds good. Would you like to cover it?"

Before I think what I'm saying I say "I'd love to."

Surely I've lost my mind! I mean, there's Article Seven of the NPT and the difference between "nuclear power" and "nuclear weapons", and the whole Shia/Sunni angle, not to mention foreign policy implications, and let's not forget John Bolton resigned just this morning, and the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, not to mention the CIA-backed coup agaqinst Mossadeq which installed the Shah, who got overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini in the Islamic Revolution, and the current administration's emaciation of the CIA in favour of Military intelligence and -- for god's sake -- I have clearly lost my mind! What am I agreeing to cover?

What about centrifuges, and the deeply buried compound at Nataanz, and how much Hexafluoride can they process in how short a period of time, and their timetables for nuclear weapons production, and the timetable for our own "low yield tactical" Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, and the B61-11 warhead, and the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" while we're at it? And are the Sunnis of Fallujah *really* truly Wahhabis? And what is the significance of Governor Bush meeting with the Shiite head of SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) this very day? And what about the broken IAEA seals? And the reliability of Human Intelligence (HUMINT)? Can't I just put a kitten in a tree, call the fire department to rescue it, and please, please, PLEASE just make that into something not too terribly unlike a real news story?

It's too late! The words are out of my mouth.

"Great, so we need to get you some equipment checked out . . ."

"Oh, the meeting isn't 'til Monday. I'll be here next week for the meeting."

"Great, we can do it then."

"OK. I'll see you then."

So I've got a week to whittle it all down to a few key questions to ask a few key people about this whole messy Iran thing.

Next time I'll just ask fifteen registered Libertarians for their opinions about abortion. It'll be easier.