Hi! I'm new.

Worked with Charles all of yesterday 'til about four when I headed in to the newsroom. Jim says "something's come up"; I say "uh-oh -- what?". He says "Domenici's resigning", and I say "no, seriously". I thought it was a joke.

Pete Domenici's been one of New Mexico's US Senator's for 36 years. Six terms. Now he's resigning. No, seriously. He's resigning.

I make some phone calls and line up an interview with a respected New Mexico pollster whose name eludes me, so Jim can get some historical perspective on Domenici's legacy. There's a press conference tomorrow (now today) and Jim needs to go to that -- it's where Domenici's slated to formally announce his decision not to seek re-election, even *after* the big fundraiser and all. He's covering it not only for the station, but also for NPR. It's a national story for a bunch of reasons I won't bore you with.

I sit with Jim through his ON AIR shift yesterday and he's *totally* different in how he runs board. You can hear the difference on air between him and Steve -- they both sound good, but it's hard to pin down exactly what the difference *is*. It really only makes sense when you see it.

Then I stick around for my "Overnight Free Form" music show I'd agreed to do because no one else had, because it makes me better at running the board, and because I enjoy it. It went fine, I suppose. Played a bunch of stuff from vinyl. As I'm getting off the air at 5 AM I check my email and there's a tiny hitch in the plans.

Domenici's press conference is scheduled for 4 PM, so Jim has to go to that instead of being my training wheels in the Control Room while I operate the board. But Marcos (the program director) will be available to help me over any rough spots. Can I comfortably run the board for All Things Considered (ATC) without a News Department person in the room?

I don't see that I have any choice. I mean, I *do*, but this is a corner I painted my own damn self into. They ask if I'm willing to do something: usually I am, because 98% of the time I wind up enjoying it and it winds up transforming me. What's more, they never throw me out, and so I never leave.

The news shifts are all shifted around as it is this week: the morning person's out for a few days. The evening person's covering for the morning person and the reporter person's covering for the evening person when he can. That's how I got into agreeing to cover this Friday's ATC and started training for it formally: they needed someone to cover for the reporter person who's covering for the evening person who's covering for the morning person who can't be there. Are there others at the station who *can* do it? Yes. But right now I am *steeped* in the Control Room and the current needs of the Weekday ATC shift, which is unlike any other. I also feel passionately about news as few people do. (It's extremely exacting.) I need to put what I'm learning to use, sooner or later, and better today than tomorrow, let alone "who knows when".

Regular weekday news shifts don't open up *that* often. Maybe not as infrequently as Senators resign, but not often. Given the chance to substitute, I'd be a fool to say "no" when I know I'm physically and mentally capable of doing what needs to be done.

So I'm over the hump. I hosted All Things Considered today.

The best I can say is I didn't knock the transmitter off the air, set the station on fire, or utter anything on mic that might get us fined by the FCC. I kept missing buttons, and forgetting in the crunch of time to line certain things up. I did almost everything wrong that a person *can *do when doing a newscast, at least once tonight. I even caught myself apologising. I don't care. I mean, I do care. But I know I'll get better. I *can't* get worse. It was a rollercoaster ride, just holding everything together with duct tape and paperclips. I enjoyed it, thoroughly.

It was a busier than average news day, what with Domenici resigning and all. At least it seemed that way to me -- I'm sure my newbieness had lots to do with it. I had three local stories to run, and was still not 100% sure where to run them, and Jim and I discussed it and fit them all in. Tight timing. Not super-tight, but tight enough for me to start talking fast. Which isn't a problem, except that it makes me sound like a vacuum cleaner salesman, and more importantly, leaves me without anything to say at the end of the break. I start worrying about time when I miss a button by two seconds because the cart's not cued up or what have you and then RUN through the weather report (or whatever) in half the time I'd planned.

So I start out rushing, and then slow down as I see the clock has yet to come near running out. It sounds kind of like "coolandclearing, isolatedthunderstormscominginfromthenorthmovingsoutheast and! Then. In Aaaaaaallllbuquerqueeeee (long breath) it should. get. up. to. eighty. one. degrees. Faaarrrennheit. Tomorrow. Thaaaat's the high. Forecast. From the Naaational Weaaather Serrrrrvice." And then I've *still* got to play that damned NPR theme music for ten seconds which feels like a year with no voices because I rushed through it and have plenty of things I can say in *thirty* seconds, or a *minute*, but *none* on hand to fill up a mere ten.

Dreadful. Dirty cutaways and sloppy fadeouts littered the airwaves like dead bodies on the Western Front. It's the old fag joke: "Hi! I'm new.", only in front of thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

And every time I made a mistake I didn't have a chance to dwell on it. I just had to line up my next break. It's one thing to see it done. it's another thing entirely to do it! I can't believe they let me talk on radio. It was my baptism by fire.

Jim got back from the press conference early and *somehow* put together a cut and copy for me to air over the story we'd planned to air over the "Newscast IV" segment at the bottom of the hour. I clipped the first words of the Senator's soundclip but we did still beat the TV news.

And then somehow -- I have no clue -- he put together the whole farewell speech, which was actually fairly moving, into a 21 minute CD. Marcos wrote out an intro and a promo and we preempted the last half hour of ATC to air that.

And then from all the wire copy I'd printed out there was *one* story that I *had* to read on air, even though there wasn't time. Three hundred NM Air National Guard troops getting shipped to Iraq. Yeah, it's just wire copy, but damn, dude, I *would* have lost sleep if I hadn't fit *that* in!

I survived.

I am over the hump. Tomorrow should be *easy*, in comparison.