On gravity.

Need to stop smoking.

I like what it's done for my voice -- given it texture, and depth -- but it takes me a couple of seconds to "start", if that makes any sense, on a day that I happen to be smoking. I like the sound of it generally, but my first couple of words seem to tend to get "lost" as my lungs pick up steam, slowly, to push those crucial first words out from my mouth. It's simply trying to use oxygen that's not there. I wouldn't be surprised to hear I've already got reduced lung capacity. Or maybe it's my diaphragm. Who knows? I'm not a doctor. But I do think I should stop smoking, if only to correct that certain weakness in my voice. It kind of ties in to the ongoing and unsettled debate (almost as old as broadcast radio news itself) of whether the first line in a story is a "throwaway" or not.

One school says you don't put *any* crucial facts in the "lead", because it's just a "throwaway" most people won't hear, anyway. Another says the point is not to *lose* the line, but to use it to "grab" people's interest without introducing too many complexities right away. Maybe it's two sides of the same argument. Maybe the latter position is the natural outgrowth from the former. I honestly don't know. But if my first two words are barely audible, because I'm smoking like a chimney, it doesn't matter. Whatever kind of "lead" I've got to work with, I should make it *audible*.

If you can't tell, I listened to my air check tonight right after going off air.

It was a pleasant shift. Radio Theatre got preempted for a special, hosted by Scott Simon, about fifty years of "West Side Story". I enjoyed that thoroughly. Turned on the "cue" speakers underneath the board and let it blast.

I did say one *incredibly* stupid thing, while starting to read headlines. "Glad to be with you, with this news -- a soldier killed in Iraq last week was born in Albuquerque". The good news is that even realizing I'd just said something supremely disresectful and downright yucky without even meaning to, I keep moving without drawing attention to it.

I say "glad to be with you" more or less routinely, because it's true. It's become a "crutch" -- a phrase I say too often, even though I mean it, and it bears being said once per broadcast. It's good for a couple of seconds of airtime, because I *mean* it. But even as the words came tumbling out of my mouth, I realized, because I knew what I was "leading" with -- this is gonna sound *really* bad to *someone* -- like I'm glad to report that he's dead, which I'm not, in the least. Nothing to do but just keep moving on. Just try and give it enough of a pause between being happy at being on air on the one hand and reporting the bad news on the other.

And *don't* say "glad to be with you" when leading into headlines. Ever. For weather? Sure. Signing off? Absolutely. But *never* before reading headlines. Yeesh.

There is a certain sense of gravity that has to go with much of what we routinely report. People die horribly. Government officials get caught up in terrible corruption. Taxpayers get ripped off by contractors. Elected officials enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of the public. Science gets funded not for its scientific value but for its value in advancing the art of war. People fight things out in court.

Like it or not, the news *is* mostly "bad". Can't change that. Can report it. Better to report it with the gravity that it deserves.