I am *not* obsessing!

Proof: I overcompensated, somewhat, on the scale between "sounding like a stuffed shirt" on the one hand and "sounding like a normal human being" on the other tonight, while reading a series of weather forecasts: over the course of the evening, I actually said "uhm" on live air somewhere between four and six times. Ridiculous.

Had I been obsessing, I would have a precise "uhm" count for the evening, and would likely have figured out *precisely* how many seconds got wasted by such utterances over the entire course of my broadcast.

I do not have such statistics at hand, and can but guess that probably between a second and a quarter and a second and a half of airtime were filled with "uhms" over the three hours I was on the air tonight.

Therefore, I'm *not* obsessing.

But in reading a wire copy headline about radon test kits, I *did* manage to invent a new word, when I announced that those interested in obtaining a free test kit should call the program's "ouchreach" coordinator.

I suppose that is the person who feels the pain of those suffering from radon exposure, and therefore sends out test kits.

First I swing one way, then the other. I guess it's just a matter of doing it over and over and over and over again 'til it's *totally* natural to sound good. I'm getting better. Slowly.

I'm getting more conversational with weather, but I'm not "there", yet.

Trick seems to be to talk about the weather just like you'd casually talk about it with an acquaintance, to pass the time, as an "icebreaker". It is chitchat, yes, but it's chitchat that happens to matter, which is the only reason I can justify trying to do it, in the first place. It's still one of the hardest things to master.

When talking about the weather in person, you're usually *not* trying to fit *everything* into to 23 seconds, or 17, or 11, or 4, or however many seconds you've got to work with. And you're almost *never* giving *precise* current temperatures and forecasts. As with news, the temptation is huge, when you've got facts and figures at hand, to go way the hell too deep in detail and just wind up overwhelming people with useless facts and figures.

Working in a garden, it matters *deeply* how I talk about the weather with Charles. "It's been dry all week -- there've been storms in the offing, but so far, nothing's dumped any rain." Or -- "I've shown up every day this last week to water, only to find the ground soaked from a series of storms that never hit us where I live".

But I *never* tell him anything like "it's cooling down rapidly now -- at last report it's 37.2 degrees, down from 39.4 twenty-one minutes ago", much less anything like "the upper low pressure system is punching its way northwest, but its forward progress seems to be temporarily checked by the lower high pressure system working its way north from Mexico, while high, thin, fast moving clouds approach from the eastern plains, with a moderately strong cold front expected to push the upper low in tomorrow from Nevada, which should be largely checked from further eastward progress to the great plains by the central mountain range".

Huh!?

If I don't understand what I'm saying, I should probably never say it, on the air.

I made that mistake in a news story once: about the omnibus budget bill. I threw way the hell too many numbers at people, and named, way too specifically, what all would be getting funded. That's why I need an editor. With weather, there's no editor, and it's up to me to make it understandable, each time. (The omnibus budget bill story was accurate, btw -- just *really* badly written.)

It was weird with the headlines tonight. Last couple of weeks it's been nothing, nothing, and more of nothing (not counting abortion clinic fires, which are all the rage, this season, suddenly). Tonight there are more than half a dozen stories affecting communities on the outskirts of our listening area -- Bloomfield, Aztec, San Juan County, and the like. Only problem is because it's *Weekend* ATC, there's only *one* spot to read *two* minutes worth of of headlines. That's enough to read three wire reports, unless you talk like Walter Winchell, in which case you *might* squeeze in a fouth, but talk so fast that no one gets *anything* you are saying.

I'd have killed for a second break during the show, long enough to read headlines, but it just wasn't there. Maybe I should have killed a weather report to read some "newsminute" type wire copy. But I figured people just come to *expect* the weather when I normally give it, and if it comes down to telling people about a wind advisory or saying that a high school got an honourable mention in a national survey, I figure mentioning the wind advisory is probably more immediately useful, much as the folks in Bloomfield *would* like to hear that we give a rat's ass that their high school's indeed doing well. (It is, and we do.)

Went back, finally, and dared to listen to my first weekday ATC air check. That's the day Domenici resigned, remember? (An end-of-year AP poll rated that *the* number one story of the year.) It wasn't great broadcasting, but it also wasn't the disaster I vaguely remembered it as having been, either. Were there glitches and flubs? Yep. But the whole broadcast held together. (Barely, yes -- but it did.)

I'm starting to think that there are two different skill sets involved in hosting, and that *most* people on air tend to do one *or* the other really well, but almost never both equally well.

I think the people who sound good on mic have trouble running the board, and that the people who run the board flawlessly don't sound *quite* right on mic, as a rule.

Maybe I'm just overthinking things again. But heck, I don't want to sound perfect. Just as close as I possibly can.

Listened to commercial talk radio for a few hours the other day 'cause I *didn't* want to hear whatever we happened to be broadcasting at the time. (It *may* have been a rebroadcast of the out-of-state hired astroturf "organizer" A.B. preaching at queers in N.M. about what A.B.'s well-funded east-coast professional lobbyist underwriters think we *really* need in N.M., without having *ever* set foot in the state that they probably think still belongs to Mexico.)

We stand to learn from listening to other stations from time to time. I suspect everyone in radio does. I do respect what the people who pull it all together manage to do -- more the local reporters and producers and board ops and such than the national know-it-all egos. But my god, man, I don't know how you do it.

Listened to Sean Hannity for half an hour a couple of weeks ago. I don't remember much of anything substantial about what he was actually saying, if he was saying anything substantial at all, but do recall, clearly, that he was going off about how his computer was screwed up, and basically made a scene on national radio about kicking the people out who were trying to fix the problem. Basically he made a total ass of himself, throwing a fit.

Is that what people *want* to hear? Do they just keep the radio on for the sake of having a voice in the background, rambling on about how clever they are, and happen to connect whenever they flare up against a common outrage that they can't control from within their own cubicles?

If so, it seems remarkably like bullfighting to me. You know -- identify vicariously with the el Cordobes or Manolete whose courage in the ring has *nothing* to do with your real life, without substantial;y engaging with your world. I admit, I can see the appeal. You can go to the water cooler and tell your similarly-disaffected coworkers how Mr. Hannity, the national radio celebrity, threw a hissy fit over his computer problems, and laugh about it, and diffuse the underlying tension for a little bit longer.

But what's the value in that? Does it empower listeners, or merely sidetrack them into believing that they have something in common with a radio host whose life bears no deeper resemblance to their lived reality than that they're both frustrated by computers?

Just idle random musings, here, to fill my all-too-ample time.

Blue cheese.

In the tradition of Leopold Bloom I am eating a gorgonzola sandwich.

Why?

Because, in planning to head home for New Year, I went to Trader Joe's expecting to find a precious few bottles of 2005 Chateau Latour, and found none. Indeed, they had no Bordeaux whatsoever. What else remains but to drown my sorrows in cheese sandwiches with obscure literary references?

Went to Sissy's, just to water things in. The minions say "we left the irrigation off last year, and no one came by to water, and everything was fine".

Whether everything was "fine" remains debatable between the people who sweep floors for a living and those who tend pansies.

Regardless: last year we had record snowfall. This year it's phœnomenally dry.

I'll argue with the minions on some other day.

Charles is coming home from visiting his family for Christmas, and is, tonight, stuck in a small town in Texas.

He called me to ask me to look online to find gay bars.

I asked him to tell me where he's staying.

Remembering C.E., and all.

Now if only I could get him to check out that DOE facility, we'd be totally on the same page. :)

Box set review, part one.

I have listened to the first CD from the Radiohead "In Rainbows" box set. In fact, I'm listening to it now. Again.

Actually, a copy of it -- don't tell anyone -- because I want the set to remain in as close to mint condition as may reasonably be expected.

As for the vinyl -- I'm *never* playing that. Even if I *do* have access to a radio station full of equipment on which to play it. The vinyl I am saving, intact, for future generations. Some day people may wonder who the hell we were and have no better way to figure it out than by whatever grooves in vinyl disks we leave 'em. I'm just as soon do my part to ensure that something infinitely better than Barry Manilow (not that I don't love him, for different reasons) survives. This is my legacy.

The sound quality on the CD, by the way, is notably superiour to that of the download.

Deeper. Richer. More layers to it. Less clipped. Less compressed. And generally, less compromised. The highs don't go pegging like they do in the download, and you can hear the warm tonality of the drums. It doesn't sound near so scratchy and flat and rough -- though it *does* become clear when that sort of thing's used as a deliberate device, which occasionally, it is.

A song like "weird fishes/arpeggi" only really makes sense for the first time hearing it on CD -- the downloaded version sounded "aimless", but the CD version is distinctly an underwater soundscape. I don't really know how to explain it, but on the CD, it is *vastly* better. What's funny is that the songs I liked best from the download almost pale in comparison to the songs I'd previously skipped over, just because they had felt "flat". They sound better. But the songs I'd previously skipped over as "aimless" (or "rough", or what have you) all come into a whole new light on the CD. I am only *just* beginning to learn the value of production, let alone the limits of digital editing and compression.

I *highly* recommend the box set, and don't feel the least bit cheated. Indeed, I now feel bad about having said some less than kind things about the download.

Are they "levelling off"? Perhaps. Surely there's nothing in this CD that shakes me to the very core of my being like OK Computer did. But OK Computer is one of those *very* rarest of albums that had, in its time, the ability to permanently alter the lives of its listeners. Perhaps it still has that potential for people who have not heard it, explored it, let themseves be saturated by it.

Radiohead's one of those bands where the more you hear the same piece over and over, the more you hear *in* it. Listening to the CDs, now, it's the same thing, but on a whole different level. The download *was* disappointing, because of technical limitations which mean it's little more than a preview of the actual music, which is deep, rich, and utterly rewarding.

Perhaps this is Radiohead's way of rewarding their listeners loyal enough to buy a box set from another country for way more money than they think it will be worth when they get it in order to subsidize millions of people downloading the music for free. It's a very smart thing that they've done, if that's the case. They have touched *all* the bases, as it were.

New listeners get to listen for free.

Loyal listeners buy the box set -- and are *not* disappointed.

And maybe, just maybe, the loyals will convince some small handfulls of the newbies that yes, it's *very* much worth paying for.

Boxing Day MMVII.

Happy Boxing Day!

First off, found out what "Boxing Day" *is* since "Boxing-day" was the word of the day in the OED online.

Second, got my Radiohead Box set today, appropriately enough, a fact to which I will return shortly.

Third, did one quick phone interview on the recent rash of abortion clinic fires in Albuquerque, because, frankly, no one else was there to do it. Came out totally one-sided, but only because everyone was gone for the holiday. Will correct that, tomorrow, without fail.

Fourth, found a handful of "Flip the Frog" cartoons on You Tube. *Now* I see the charm of You Tube! Not great quality, but most people haven't seen these cartoons since the early 'thirties.

Now, back to Radiohead.

Remember how I was feeling kinda disappointed at having spent the forty pounds? That evaporated when I opened up the box.

It's a *gorgeous* package, to begin with. There are two books included -- both apparently hand-bound. One has the lyrics to the songs, and is bound into the binding. The other is the size of an LP record and seems to be mostly visuals. Absolutely stunning.

Then the surprise -- they didn't tell you about this when you ordered the set. The 40-minute CD that was available for download is only the first of a two-disk set. The box set includes a second CD, roughly 28 minutes in length. I have yet to hear it, but look forward eagerly to doing so. Comments, online, to the effect that one of the songs is "the most beautiful tribute to nuclear war" (or something like that) only pique my interest further. But I won't listen to it 'til I can focus on it, absolutely.

And it's not just one vinyl disk, but two, corresponding to the two CDs. The first is a standard LP, I believe, but the second is a 12-inch 45 RPM record.

Took 'em in to the station and showed 'em around, but I'm preserving the whole damn thing in mint condition.

Not that I wasn't tempted!

And not to be cynical about the abortion clinic fires, but I have to admit, when it's just people talking at eachother from one side or another of the issue, I *don't* get why it's important. It turns into "women's right to choose" on the one hand and "life begins at conception" on the other, which are both philosophical abstractions. As well-intended and sincere as people on both sides of the issue are, it strikes me as largely academic. But when something *happens* -- when people are inspired to committing criminal acts, for instance -- then it *hits* me as a *story*.

My two cents worth. Let's just hope no one gets hurt.

Trusting the clock.

Today's accomplishment lies in the cleanness of my network joins.

I've learned how much to talk, how much to say, when to compress a great deal of information, and when to talk like a human being, and join the network satellite feed "clean", more or less regardless.

A big part of it is trusting the clock -- usually, it won't lie, and what with three of 'em in the room, you can *usually* get a good sense of which one *is* lying, *if* one of them *is*, which it *usually* isn't. But put it in my memory that, yes, one of the clocks was a little over half a second slow just eight short months ago, and it'll trip me up forever. I've been cutting away too early for months now just based on that one-time memory.

It's when you start to think "it *might* be fast, or slow, by half a second, by a second, or by more" and trying to calculate multiple unknown intangibles that you *can't* know before you start off trusting the clock in the first place that you screw up, not to mention you can't be fully *present* for listeners if while you're *trying* to read weather, you're *actually* lost in your own head wondering whether it, or NPR, might be "off" by whatever unknown and ultimately unknowable fraction of a second. In short, it's learning NOT to overthink things. If you overthink things, you might as well be a machine, for all your lack of on-air presence, besides which, you'll never join clean regardless, because the brain does not perceive time like the clock does -- ever. At least that's my theory, right now. I'm sticking with it.

If you can't tell, I am the sort of person with a bunch of mechanical clocks in my house and I keep them all running (those which, so placed, will run at all, because the house itself is crooked) and then try to keep track which ones run just how many seconds fast after a week and which runs minutes slow after so many hours or days and *will* not let itself be accurately adjusted, causing me to have to think, on Thursday, when I look at it, "the time is roughly 4 minutes and 30 seconds ahead of what it says" and on Friday "the time is roughly 4 minutes and 50 seconds ahead of what it says". That kind of thinking may be charming enough in an antique shop, where if you're lucky, you can make all the clocks chime at about the same time, but it's anathema to radio, where all you need to know is what the time actually IS.

There wasn't much by way of news today. The latest twist in an ongoing ethical dilemma regarding a developer and the zoning board in Las Cruces was the leading headline -- that should tell you it's a "slow" news day: Las Cruces is nowhere near our listening area.

For most of my on air shift I was the only person in the building.

I like it in that I am very much alone with the listener, at just such times.

But still, the thought crosses my mind, from time to time, "what if?"

What if the CD of "This American Life" stops playing, and I have to cut to music, sounding bloody stewpid?

What if I don't have a CD for Radio Theatre?

What if the Youth Radio person doesn't show up to relieve me?

What if some terribly important headline breaks, and I miss it because the AP designates it not a "separate" but a "bulletin"?

What if the EAS goes off, announcing some incomprehensible catastrophe, making me *the* person that listeners call to find out information I may, or may not, have access to?

Being alone in a radio station that's usually bustling with activity makes me think in these terms. None of these things has ever happened, by the way.

And guess what.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

It was a thoroughly predictable broadcast.

And my joins were clean.

Then I come home and finish the 1,217 page "Maugham Reader" I began some years ago, and have taken in fits and starts.

The final piece in it is an essay on El Greco. Largely about the role of "decoration" in the arts, the shift from the Renaissance to the Baroque, and the peculiar predilection of those suffering from the "abnormality" of homosexuality toward decoration. Dated, indeed, but interesting. The idea seems to be that the Baroque arose out of the exhaustion of the really great, profound ideas of the Renaissance, but that neither such exhaustion nor the violent force of the Counter-reformation could alone account for the Baroque's specific genius: that the Baroque's characteristic idea was that mass in movement could serve decorative purposes, and that this was perhaps most "intriguingly" expressed in the sardonic humour exhibited in the paintings of El Greco, who may, or may not, have suffered from the characteristic "abnormality".

Just the perfect thing to read after an on-air shift where all I can say about it was that my joins -- my "ornaments" -- were "clean".

My head hurts.

Ghost town.

Planted pansies yesterday.

Not sure where they came from! It's super-late in the season, but Charles scrounged some up, somewhere or other, and they were nicely rooted out. Of course, the ground was frozen solid in some places. Claudette came over and planted with Charles and me and it was delightful. Charles and Claudette get extremely campy when the lady of the house isn't around -- they sing showtunes in "call and response" and generally have a grand time, while all the same time planting pansies with incredible dispatch. Between the three of us, we got all eighteen flats planted in practically no time, and then topdressed, and watered in, and I dare say Sissy's has *never* looked so bloody fabulous as it looks now. A few crucial, previous "dark corners" have been planted to tie the whole thing together. By spring, it should be a raving marvel.

Charles had to work for Gertrude today, so there's nothing more to do at Sissy's, for the time being. Today, I head in to the newsroom.

At ten we'd planned on having the year-end "reporter's roundtable", where we bring in whatever print journalists will talk to us and discuss (a) what the biggest stories of the year were, and (b) look forward to what we can probably expect for the upcoming year. After a little scrambling, I got to engineer, which was a privilege.

Trip Jennings was there from the Albuquerque Journal -- he's New Mexico's quitessential "follow the money" reporter. If there's the slightest hint of so much as the appearance of fiscal malfeasance, he's likelier to get to the bottom of it than anyone in the state that I know.

Steve Terrell was there, too, from the Santa Fe New Mexican, whose knowledge of things happening in political circles is so forward-thinking it's almost frightening. I wouldn't be surprised to hear he knows who the next three governors will be -- but of course, he'd never quite come out and say that in the presence of other reporters.

I couldn't be happier just to be a fly on the wall.

Jim joined in on the conversation, and Steve moderated. I got to be the "engineer" because it's better just to moderate than it is to moderate while twiddling knobs with one hand and fading sliders up and down with the other.

My engineering wasn't perfect, but it got better as the conversation went on. It sounded "live", that's for damn sure -- I was mostly sitting there thinking "mic 2 is humming, and it seems to be feeding off mic 1 in such-and-such a way" so for the first ten minutes or so; until I figure out the unpredictable visual cues between mic-accustomed and print journalists, not to mention the differences between sliding faders and twiddling knobs. It sounds like people start talking off mic and then lean in, which the speakers were doing, a little, but not near as much as it sounds like, for the first ten minutes. At its worst, it's still worth listening to for its content, even if there are whole seconds now and then while I figure out who to fade up how much where and when.

The *content* of the conversation is intact, though I'm sure the best production people will cringe when they hear what I've done, from the depths of my ignorance. I *invite* their criticism: I've got *lots* to learn.

Many thanks to Tristan for figuring out a workaround for some unpleasant technical problems in Studio C -- if anything's wrong with the sound, at this point, I take full responsibility for it.

The conversation after we turned off the mics was *great*. And you'll just have to take my word on that. :)

Looked at the waveform and realised the levels were all over the place. With no disrespect to anyone involved, it takes actually working with mics on a daily basis -- and listening to the sound *as* it happens -- to figure out how close to place yourself, how loud to speak, and all of that. There were a bunch of variables and the sound was kind of "all over the place", level-wise.

Sam takes some time and fixes us up. First he does the "group waveform normalize" thing you can apparently only do in the version of the editing software that none of the newsroom people are comfortable using, because every time we try, we come a little bit too close to burning down the building.

But then, after he's done that, there are other issues, too. We're clipping in the upper frequencies here, and the bass is way overaccentuated there, but not clipping, and so on. He spends maybe half an hour fixing it up and putting it in a form where it can probably just be edited, straightforwardly. It's not flawless, network quality stuff, but heck, neither is most network stuff. It's *way* the hell more uniform and less clippy without a bunch of weird and unpredictable room noise than we could otherwise have hoped for. It was an education watching him. As always. If I only use one in ten things that he showed me, that's one thing I wouldn't otherwise have figured out how to do, on my own.

My intuition, as a careful listener to news and public affairs programs, tells me that if I can adjust the volume knob *once* at the beginning of a broadcast to a level that's comfortable for me, I'm *far* likelier to stay tuned through to the end, regardless whether a second here or there sounds "processed". I'm looking for dependable levels -- I don't want to have to turn my volume up and down -- and generally won't, unless what I am hearing is completely earth-shattering, hard, breaking NEWS and there's just no other way to get it. I'm also willing to take a little understated boosting of room noise from time to time -- *if* I don't have to change my volume to hear the ideas being expressed.

I don't listen to music the same way, and doubt anyone does.

I then spend a few hours taking three soundclips, editing those, writing a script around 'em, recording it, editing it, boosting my levels, and training myself how to manipulate envelope curves in multitrack editing mode so it sounds like I'm crossfading, for a "promo".

I totally respect the people in production. For me, with my mindset, production is just a means to an end. For them, they seem to enjoy production challenges in and of themselves. I enjoy it well enough, but only insofar as it serves the news department's end of things: the dissemination of facts, and what have you. But editing out 14 different f-bombs in a single song 14 different ways for something that *might* air at 3 AM? I deeply respect the mindset that undertakes such challenges, but I would never do such things, myself, just for the love of doing so.

I'm used to doing "news spots", which can range anywhere from "give listeners the relevant facts in an understandable format as quickly as possible" to "make a human story out of this complex policy issue" in anywhere from under a minute to oh, I dunno, a couple of minutes, tops, depending where you want it to get played in any given broadcast.

The line between "spot" and "feature" seems not to be super-clearly defined, but if a story's over 2 minutes it might as well be anywhere from 4 to 7 minutes long, depending on what else the host has got to run, and that time *better* be used well! I don't think I've done any serious "feature" stories, though I have come pretty damn close, a time or two. All in good time.

Airtime is priceless.

A "promo" is, perhaps, *the* perfect excercise in brevity, and it does me a *lot* of good to do one, now and then. It's basically a 30-second "teaser" spot that has to tell listeners why this matters, give them a little sample of what they can expect to hear when they listen to whatever show we're promo-ing, and drill it into their heads (in case they missed it the first time we said it) when and where they can tune in -- all without sounding like commercial radio.

I can put together a passable news story of two or three or four minutes length in under half an hour, if I have to. But producing a promo? That takes *hours*.

People will hear a news story *once*. People will hear a promo several times, probably; and its *intent* is different, because the whole purpose is not simply to beat the papers in telling people that "this happened", but to mould their future behaviour, to get them to actually tune in, when they might otherwise not. There's less margin of error on the one hand, and more time to play with getting it right, on the other. You're trying to do far more with less. All I figure I can do in a promo for an end-of-year roundtable is

(a) say 2007 was historic for New Mexico,
(b) provide a short, enticing quote to back up my statement,
(c) tell listeners when and where to tune in,

(c)(1) explain the roundtable we're having with these journalists,

(d) explain that we will also look forward to 2008,
(e) provide two lively, conversational quotes to back up that claim, and
(f) remind listeners when and where they can tune in.

Simplicity itself.

The station is increasingly a ghost town. We're down to skeletal staffing as it is. I can only imagine that by the time everyone comes back from their various holidays we'll be holding the place together with duct tape and paperclips.

I can also only guess that all the government agencies that want to bury news stories release their stories in these coming days.

I'm in my element.

Did a quick story on "Veterans for Peace" (VFP), too. They're a pretty amazing organiation -- goodness knows I've recommended them to several veterans I've worked with in restaurants (back when I regularly worked in restaurants).

I've done so many stories on "lab funding this" and "lab safety and security breaches that" in these last few days that I'm practically *dying* to do a nice, breezy "holiday" story.

Got a call during the time I was engineering the "end of year" thing.

Thankfully, my phone was on "vibrate", which it pretty much is, permanently. Didn't recongnize the number. Jim laughed, silently, while watching my try to dig the damn thing out of my pocket, only to sit on it (literally), but the recording wasn't jeopardized.

Hours later I finally get a moment to listen to my messages.

Someone from VFP had gotten my name and called me to tell me about something they were doing later that day, but by the time I'd gotten the message, my cellphone batteries were shot to hell and the event had long since wrapped.

I wish I'd known about it sooner, 'cause I would have *loved* to cover it, in greater depth, but oh well! Things happen fast, and I'm not going to beat up on myself just because I didn't cover something I didn't know about until after it happened.

I call him back at 4:30.

I ask him if he's ready to be recorded.

He says he's willing to be recorded, but asks if I can give him forty minutes.

If I'd been ever so slightly more cynical than I am now, tonight's story would not have happened.

My dearly beloved, deeply dedicated, citizen activist freinds: I adore and respect you to the very core of my being; but you have *no* idea what "tight deadlines" are 'til you've actually worked in a newsroom. I know it's tough when it's just you and a small group of like-minded people talking about issue "x", "y", or "z", in addition to juggling your lives, and you feel like you're up against a powerful, entrenched bureaucracy, which usually, you are.

But like it or not, if you're advocating for a cause, whatever that cause might be, it would do you well to assume that whoever is working on the other side of a given issue has easy answers to standard questions more or less ready at hand for whenever they happen to get called up by the press.

If you are sufficiently convinced of the rightness and truth of your cause when you call a reporter, you should be prepared to speak of it to her, on the record, when she picks up the phone.

Various federal agencies are, at least, prepared to call me back precisely one minute prior to whatever deadline I tell them I am working under, with a statement, even if it's two hours after their offices have closed for a holiday weekend on the east coast, and even if it's only to say that they won't comment on pending litigation. If they do so, I'd be remiss to say they didn't get back to me. And I know damn well that their "talking points" are scripted, but my job is to facilitate a dialogue, and even under such constraints, I would be lying if I told listeners "they didn't respond" if they did. My credibility's at stake.

I tell the gentleman who asks me for forty minutes that I will try to call him back.

Right then, we're going on air with the evening's first news broadcast. Weather conditions are such, at that precise moment, that I wonder whether I should call him or the weather people.

To his credit, he calls *me* back, right *after* we go off air and cut to network -- I can only guess that he's been listening, carefully. He does this much completely right: I might have written off his story in order to do something else more pressing -- like deal with the details of the latest winter storm warning -- but he has made his own story more pressing.

I call him back, not from my cellphone, but from the newsbooth phone I need to use to record interviews.

We're not looking for manifesti or broad-based statements of principle. We *are* looking for human stories. We're not looking for ten-point declarations which you hope will drive policymakers into whatever directions.

We *are* looking for what you did today, and the reason you did it. And, ultimately, why does it matter? You know -- to the listener who didn't know, this morning, that you even existed?

We're not looking for explanations of organizational structure (important as they are, internally). We're looking, as outsiders, just to find out who you *are* at all -- what kind of human beings *are* you? What might we have in common with you? Why might your actions actually make a difference? And, finally, how might anyone interested get in touch with you? Most of all, we want to know *why* you're there in the first place.

Reporters can answer all the other "Ws", but the big one's up to you.

We can fill in the whos, the whats, the wheres, the whens, the hows. What we can't tell listeners is the whys. That's your job.

Yeah, I did a story on Veterans for Peace. Good organization. Wish it could have been more than 1:06.

Wish I'd known, say, 48 hours ahead that the event was happening -- it could have been a heck of a good feature. Would have loved to bring in some other voices; would have loved to have facilitated a more fruitful dialogue; would have loved to have actually advanced the story.

Would love to have broadened the issue, so that it wasn't just "the public radio station's answer" to the "standard 'toys for tots' story".

Live and learn, I guess.

But I guess you have got to start somewhere.

I'm getting sick.

So is everyone in the newsroom. There's some bug going 'round.

I noticed it today in everyone's voices, including my own. Same news stories, but they sound just a little more nasal. It's kind of weird -- anyone deeply attuned to all our voices might be forgiven for thinking we're having a collective "Capote" moment.

Did a rewrite for Steve of a wire copy story for what has to be one of the strangest reasons I have ever done so -- but it makes sense, if you think about it. Two environmental groups are suing the Interior Secretary and the US Fish and Wildlife Service over protections for four endangered species on a wildlife preserve down around Roswell. The reason it made better sense to have it recorded, than to read it live, on air? Because the four species are all snails, and they've got *really* funny-sounding names. Having it "on tape" means you don't run the risk of breaking up on air trying to read what really *is* a serious story.

It took me six takes before I got one where I didn't wind up laughing.

Then something came over the wires about Sandia's Mixed Waste Landfill. The state appelate court upheld a decision by the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) to order the lab to cover its Mixed Waste Landfill with a dirt cap. By this time it was six o'clock.

I tried to rewrite it to fit in a few harder facts than were included in the wire copy and contextualize things. I wound up going back to the story I did on Citizen Action's countersuit against NMED regarding the release of the TechLaw reports on the "fate and transport" model used to monitor underground migration of contaminants from the radioactive and hazardous waste dump. It helped. I realized there was sufficient potential for factual error in the wire report that I *had* to call someone involved in the suit to confirm or deny what it was *about* in the first place.

The wire story only cited "a spokesman" for Citizen Action, which is one tiny step better than a totally unattributed source. The NPR standard, as I understand it, is roughly "*no* unattributed sources, unless someone's life, safety, or job is at stake". The wire copy, put bluntly, was not quite up to standard, besides which, I wasn't convinced that the facts they were reporting were correct.

And the story is complex enough -- with suits and appeals on the one hand, then suits and countersuits on the other -- that I *have* to be sure what I'm putting out there is factually *right*. I get Dave McCoy on the phone and he confirms that the wire copy I read him is basically correct -- the ruling's *not* about the NMED suit against Citizen Action, nor about their countersuit against NMED, and indeed has only to do with NMED's order to Sandia to cover the Mixed Waste Landfill with dirt.

He offers to make a statement. I take him up on it, not least because (a) I'd called him to clear up the facts, which he did, and (b) because it's a better story if it has someone else's voice in it.

I call up NMED, but of course, by now, it's seven o'clock and they're closed for the day.

It ain't perfect, but it's a newscast length piece that I feel *way* better about airing than just reading wire copy.

If anyone from NMED's reading, I would love to hear from you, as well -- it's just that stories break when stories break, regardless whether someone's in the office. I wish I could promise you I would come in bright and early tomorrow, determined to get your side of things, and sit with you for thirty minutes or an hour on the phone, but I can't. Tomorrow I've got to work topdressing pansies before this storm hits. If I don't, I can not pay my January rent. If you want to get in touch with me, call the newsroom and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

That story from a couple of days ago, where I was trying to finagle a satellite feed, wound up working OK -- not great, but OK. Since it's already happened, I can talk about it, here.

Thomas D'Agostino, the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), announced the latest "transformation" of the way the NNSA approaches its nuclear weapons mission.

It involves consolidation, between sites, of both jobs and sensitive materials, and the retooling of the "Cold War era nuclear complex" into a "21st Century nuclear enterprise".

On the one hand, that means 20% fewer people will be working on nuclear weapons.

On the other, it means that Los Alamos is now *the* nation's sole plutonium pit production facility.

It was a teleconference and I hit the buttons to ask a question, but he only took a few, and I think by the time I figured out I'd probably hit the wrong buttons, I was just too far down in the line. I may call them back on that, though -- I had a good question that no one else asked.

And there's no telling that the numbers I punched in to put myself in queue were even transmitted to the conference call center, since they had to get routed through the whole setup we use to record off the phone in the first place, and I didn't hear them through my headphones.

Now if I may be forgiven a moment of vacuous levity, I've got an idea for a B-movie, too.

When you get into a "production" frame of mind, you sometimes kind of cease to hear whole stories, and put together random words that happen to be emphasized by people speaking them.

Thus:

A plague of radioactive snails has escaped from Sandia, because the NMED is trying to keep secret certain reports which, in fact, predicted the radiological and chemical contamination of snails far downstream from a cold war era landfill that has leaked. These radioactive snails mutate, and are reportedly terrorizing the populace near Roswell, to such degree that careful parents wind up building plywood snail-proof shelters for their children at school bus stops. Ranchers are starting to shoot the radioactive snails on sight, because they've also taken to mutilating cattle that graze on public lands.

Then a whole family of snails goes mysteriously missing -- surprise, surprise -- they were being tracked, by the federal government. For, you see, it turns out that the snails are endangered, and the US Fish and Wildlife Department has been tagging the entire endangered snail population with radio collars. Amidst increasing speculation that the missing snails have been dumped down old mine shafts, their disappearance brings in dedicated wildlife activists without any connection to the ranchers, setting up further conflict within the community.

How does it end? I honestly don't know, but I suppose some little town capitalizes on the fact that Sandia denies having ever created radioactive snails to begin with, and makes a fortune for itself as the "radioactive snail capitol of the world", bringing in tourists from around the globe for its annual "snail festival".

It's just an idea.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

The next thing I do to try and be a "lucky reporter".

Stuck around the newsroom today. Smaller than usual news department meeting with most people being gone. Steve and Jenny talked me into starting to thinking about applying at UNM to be a student -- the simple fact is that if I want to go *anywhere* as a public radio reporter, sooner or later I'm going to have to have a degree. It's dumb, yeah, but finally I've got something I *want* to do that might stand as a good, solid reason to go back to school and finish things up. At the same time I have no doubt that taking a bunch of journalism courses sure can't *hurt* the work that I do.

Came back and finished "working up" the Domenici teleconference. It was all about the omnibus budget bill that's passing through Congress. Being an omnibus bill, the story's a mess, and the implications are *huge*. It's not just "this one thing happened", it's "this one thing happened, then that happened, and something was slated to get so much money, then that got cut, then funding got restored at such-and-such a level", and through it all, the Senator is *clearly* reading large segments of what he's telling us, verbatim, from the multi-page press release his office had sent out shortly before. Fine with me -- I'd rather have him saying it in his own voice than have to report "in a press release today. . .".

I take a couple of cuts from it, and narrate *around* that. I'm more comfortable doing that, now that I'm *starting* to understand a single issue at stake: the funding for the national labs. I *do* have some inkling of what CMRR is (for instance), so I figure it's fair for me to lift the numbers from the press release and say the CMRR is slated to get so many millions of dollars for design, while the conference also recommended the Energy secretary release so many more millions for loan guarantees to the nuclear industry, and recommended to the NNSA that LANL's pit production capacity be increased from its current eleven to eighty per year.

It's one teensy, weensy step up from straight "stenography" reporting -- with no disrespect to stenographers, that's what it's called when you just reword the official line and put it out there. I did cram in a lot of detail -- probably way too many numbers -- into 3:06 and Steve ran it. There were *no* other locally produced stories. I figure at worst, the information needs to get out there, the sooner the better.

Then more loitering.

Then I get an email.

There's a big announcement planned tomorrow.

It's available by teleconference or by satellite feed.

But we no longer have the ability to go dial up the transponder directly and get the frequency we need. Satellite time ain't cheap.

One minute I'm dealing with telephones and microphones, the next I'm dealing with satellites.

I ask Steve if he knows how to do what I need the Satellite to do if I want *really* good sound from the event. He doesn't. I show the email to John Burgund. He recommends I call Tristan, even though he's just left for the day. I do.

Tristan explains things to me and that it might or might not work but that I need to call up to agency that's making the announcement and ask them if they're sending the transmission to PRSS, the Public Radio Satellite Service. He also says there may be a couple of workarounds and will address them in the morning.

I call the agency that sent the press release -- they say they haven't heard of such a thing as PRSS, but will be glad to clue them in if *I* can give *them* contact information. I thank them and hang up.

I then call the first phone number I see for PRSS. The guy who answers is clearly in the wrong department, but he's *extremely* helpful. He checks the schedule against what I'm telling and says it's "on a different bird". I need to call Scheduling first thing tomorrow morning and see if they're planning on carrying it. If they're not, I need to ask them what it would cost for them to carry it for us.

If they say it costs anything, I have to weigh my options: is this a story I can pitch to NPR? Might NPR be persuaded into paying for the downlink, if they get a story out of it? I think they might.

But that's two steps ahead, and we're still working on the backup plans.

Life is good.

I am covered in sticky, red goo.

This is why I'm in radio.

The listeners need never know that the person forecasting their weather is covered in sticky, red goo.

The holiday party was today -- I forgot I'd RSVPed for it, and apparently, so did a bunch of other people, who also forgot to go. Anyhow, there was a ton of Indian food from Taj Mahal left over. Delicious, but right after reading headlines I go in to where the food is and start taking these giant foil trays out of the refrigerator and whaddaya know? The first one is half filled with green stuff and half filled with sticky red goo. It kind of folds right in the middle -- catastrophe. I think it's tamarind-based. It's yummy. But it was gooey enough that it went running down the front of my shirt and pants and shoes without my even knowing it until I'd put the tray down and realised I'd gotten it all over the floor. Wiped it up as best I could and came in for my 5:18 break. It looks exactly like I've been stabbed, or just crawled out of some horrible car accident.

I'm finally drying out as I write this, but for once I can hardly wait to get out of here. I need to wash up.

Three-and-a-half story day.

The only thing better than a three-story day is a three-and-a-half story day.

Watered Charles' fountain. Asked the minions not to unplug it, since they have done so, now, twice in the process of putting up Christmas lights. I trust that they don't understand what disaster might happen by their doing so, and ask them, as cordially as possible, to keep it plugged in, at least so long as we're under the threat of freezes. They say they will.

Headed in to the newsroom.

Found a wire copy story I wanted to rewrite because it used a few too many words to explain, totally incorrectly, how plutonium pits work in nuclear weapons. Minor detail, yeah, but one that lots of our listeners would have noticed. Could have been literally five minutes spent rewriting it for Steve to read. Turned into something one shade better, if not quite groundbreaking "hard news" journalism.

Did a little quick research and discovered a whole new federal agency that I didn't even know existed: the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which was created by an act of Congress in 1988 -- I presume, but do not positively know, in the wake of Chernobyl.

The DNFSB, true to its name, issues weekly reports on safety issues in the labs, or at least most of them, and good god, there are half a dozen stories *begging* to be told just in each weekly staff report. In multiple unrecorded conversations, they tell me that they'd tried to set up a whole electronic "press release" system, but gave up on the effort because the press didn't show very much interest. What the hell's wrong with the press? Oh, yeah -- other things just keep happening. In the meantime, if I want to follow their work, they advise me to check the website on a regular basis and sign up for their conventional mail announcements.

Spent a good bit of time on the phones and made it into a nice little piece, albeit one without anyone else's voice. Not perfect, but "hey, listeners, here's this little federal agency you probably didn't know existed, and they've got some critical things to say about LANL's production of plutonium pits". That in itself was news, in my eyes -- it wasn't an anti-nuke group issuing criticisms, it was the federal government itself, albeit an agency without any enforcement, but only advisory authority.

Got that wrapped up, and Steve had a phone interview he did with someone from the State Attorney General's office about the settlement of a lawsuit which had alleged that certain credit card companies and their member banks had conspired to set fees, and then used inflated base exchange rates to charge fees to customers using their credit cards and ATM cards in foreign currency transactions.

Basically, the card companies admitted no wrongdoing, but New Mexicans who'd used credit cards for foreign purchases within a roughly ten-year window of time need to visit the settlement adjustor's website (or call the toll-free number) to see if they qualify for a share of the 336 million dollars (or something like that) in settlement funds.

I edit a 1:45 story on that. Then I go in to the Control Room to loiter and watch Steve work. He lets me do this because I pull carts for him and put them back once they've played. I also chide him mercilessly whenever he comes anywhere close to flubbing a word, a syllable, or even a single phoneme in a syllable. I run him ragged on each slight hint of a possible mispronunciation, but he never tells me to get out.

What do I get out of it all? He is *incredible* on board. Just watching him is an education that goes *well* beyond that little period where I was officially "training" to cover the board for weekday ATC. There are all sorts of little nifty tricks you can do, and I'm just now starting to see, let alon understand, some of them.

At about 5:20, Music Director Matthew Finch comes in and very casually asks if either of us have heard anything solid and verifiable on the rumour that Mayor Chavez has left the race for the Senate seat being vacated by Domenici. It's on a blog, he says. Of course it would be big if it were true, but there's no solid word as yet whether it's true or not. As he tells it to us, it's still a rumour, and neither Steve nor I had heard a word about it.

Steve continues the broadcast. I run in to the newsroom. At Steve's recommendation, I check with the Santa Fe New Mexican (newspaper) looking for *something* by their reporter Steve Terrell, in the hope of finding a phone number for him, because I know he is *always* ahead of the curve, completely forgetting that I've had a link to his blog in my own sidebar since the last regular legislative session. DUH.

I also check the "Chavez for Congress" website, find a phone number and call them up. The poor woman who picks up, I think, honestly doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I tell her the rumour, say I'm looking for confirmation or denial, give her my number and tell her my deadline.

Yeah -- I wind up being the reporter who reports to Chavez's own campaign headquarters that Chavez has withdrawn from the race. I might as well have told the lady "you can go home, now".

Then I reload the Santa Fe New Mexican's website and there it is: a clearly rapidly thrown-together story with a big old chunk from the press release, posted just a minute or two before. Chavez is definitely stepping out of the race. I print it on the control room printer from the newsbooth and tap on the glass like it's an aquarium to give Steve the thumbs up and point at the printer and nod.

By this time it's 5:29 and we're hard up against the single trickiest break of the show. Things happen *very* fast at the bottom of the hour in ATC, regardless whether you've got breaking news. There are carts to play, and billboard music, and NPR headlines, but only two minutes of them during "Newscast III" before you're into "Newscast IV" which is where you can read local headlines, if you have them.

The good news there is that you've got three whole minutes to play with, not two-fifteen, like at the top.

Steve and I at this point are running around like chickens with our heads cut off. It's *definitely* a story. Heck, the staffer answering phones at Chavez's campaign headquarters didn't know what was going on, and no, I *don't* think she was playing coy, I think she honestly didn't know what was happening.

Steve plays the bottom-of-the-hour NPR theme music, forward announces the NPR and local stories, and now it's 5:30:30. He lets the network run and starts asking questions. What's going on -- is it true? He asks me. I say yeah it's true, and if it isn't, we're getting our information from the Santa Fe New Mexican which is getting its information from the Associated Press.

So any word whether Chavez is planning to run for Heather Wilson's CD-1 seat in the House at this time? I look down at the paper I'd just printed out; it doesn't look like there is any word on that. The temptation to speculate is huge, but the facts just aren't there, and we've got to go on air with facts, not speculation. Still, he can ask me about it, and I can say yea or nay, based on what I'm looking at.

By now it's 5:31:45. I *can* do a rewrite and put something together and we can air it at 5:48:30. Or -- we *could* do a live "two way" type deal, just kind of casually talking about what we're seeing happen -- you know -- *as* it actually happens.

I don't know, he says. Are you comfortable with that? He asks me. I move guest mic Number 1 into talking position, put my headphones on, and say "I'm ready". It's not just a gesture, either -- the timing's so tight there's no time to "get ready", there's just time to go on the air. I get to see Steve *scramble* on board like I've *never* seen him scramble in my life. What mic is that again? Right. How do you want to handle it, he asks. I say something like "introduce me".

5:32:00 passes without incident, although he's frantically reaching underneath papers to access mic sliders he doesn't normally use.

At 5:32:12, he breathes. He says "we'll be all right". We both take a deep breath.

At 5:32:14 he gives one of his trademark slightly crooked grins in profile, and says "Am I *telling* you that, or *asking* you?"

At roughly 5:32:17 I respond "I don't know. All I know is I'm ready."

At 5:32:22 I have a flash of judgment, and think to tell and signal him "one minute". Meaning: not "one minute to air", but "I've got enough hard data for a minute here, but we *can't* spend all three minutes of Newscast IV *just* talking about this". He gets it. There's just not enough information, and lots of other stuff is happening that matters *way* the hell more than whatever "Mayor Marty" of the "Mayor Marty's Clean Team" infamy has got to say.

He goes on air, and announces Mayor Chavez's withdrawal from the race. He introduces me. We talk a little bit about it, cover *all* the basics, cite *all* our sources, and even our sources' sources. We acknowledge that nothing coming out right now indicates whether Chavez might run for Heather Wilson's seat, tell listeners he's throwing his support to Udall, and generally, get *all* the basics covered. Steve then casually moves on to other headlines. Like, an abortion clinic fire, and what have you. Not unimportant stuff.

Matthew Finch, who clued us in to the rumour in the first place, comes in the second we go off air to tell us that we beat KOB on the story.

He tells us this very casually, like he does everything, just like he clued us in to this scoop over not just the papers and TV stations, but other radio stations as well. He said he was listening to two radios simultaneously -- one tuned to us, one tuned to KOB, and told us that we got the story on the air "thirty seconds" before they did. I do my little happy dance.

I go back into the booth. I call back the campaign office person, and tell her it's now coming from the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Associated Press, that it's now something more than an internet rumour. This time, I overhear her telling another caller on a different phone that she's already on two different lines. I ask if she'll email and/or fax the news relase to us. Of course, by now, we've broken the story to tens of thousands of listeners, and it's *so* "five minutes ago" that it hardly matters.

I rewrite the story and produce it as a 45-second package. I sound *damn* good, if I do say so myself, by the time I read that into the ElectroVoice RE-27 in the newsbooth. A bit excited, even breathless, and goodness knows the RE-27's stronger magnet accentuates every little drop of saliva behind my teeth as I speak like the RE-20 it replaced did not, but I was modulating *beautifully*, what with having done two other stories that same day. I put a hard limiter on the waveform so it wouldn't burn out the transmission. It ran at the top of the hour.

Someone calls the instant we air the first bit, which is just about Chavez leaving the race. He wants to know why we didn't mention Leland Lehrman, who's also running for the democratic party nomination for the seat being vacated by Senator Domenici.

Because Lehrman was not part of the breaking story at that particular minute, any more than Wilson or Pierce or any other candidate other than Udall was. The story was breaking at that very minute, and analysis of the overall race would very simply have to wait.

Chavez leaving the race *was* the story. Udall figured into it, only because Chavez threw his support to Udall, in a widely unanticipated move.

At this point I'm already writing Lehrman into the piece I'm going to record for the top of the hour.

That airs around 6:04:17 (more or less) and the guy calls back, saying I'd got some facts wrong.

Leland Lehrman is the editor of the biweekly "Sun", *not* the publisher of the "Sun Monthly".

Well, I'd gotten the information that Lehrman was the publisher of the "Sun" from the AP wires, long ago, and trusted that the AP wire was reliable.

Now that I think of it though, the caller was *certainly* right on one count, and probably on both.

I know the "Sun", if only in passing; I don't know the "Sun Monthly" at all, except that they're one of the station's underwriters. We would be sorely remiss to fail to mention that a newsmaker also happens to be an underwriter if, indeed, they are. I erred on the side of caution here, and apparently, in doing so, made a mistake.

I know that Leland Lehrman is involved in the biweekly "Sun" (not to be confused with the "Sun Monthly") in some capacity, though whether he's the editor or publisher I honestly *don't* know, because the "Sun" is not a publication I can find down here in Albuquerque with such regularity that I can casually follow it over time and come to *know* who plays what roles in its production.

I spent many an hour in the Senate Press Gallery with Leland, and we are, last time I checked, on good speaking terms. I hope and trust that this hasn't changed just because I get confused by two different "Sun" publications in the roughly two minutes I had to choose between reporting in a 45-second story that a major candidate is dropping out of a hotly contested senate race or else letting other news outlets break the story and resigning my station to following *their* lead, days after things happen.

But can you see how this might be just a tiny bit complex? At least in the context of having to make decisions on a second-by-second basis?

Which brings me to this unfortunate fact: we don't have a formal "corrections" policy at the station. We need one. True that one fact (possibly two) I got wrong here didn't alter the central facts of what I was reporting: that one candidate had just resigned and thrown his support behind another. When that broke, that *was* the story, and it was utterly irrelevant for that moment whoever else was running in whatever primary. For not mentioning other candidates in either the democratic or republican primary when the story broke right then, I do not apologise.

However -- I *need*, for the sake of my own credibility, to be able to correct myself, on air, when errors *do* come up, which they invitably do, from time to time, because, surprise, we're human.

The problem is, it doesn't happen on a regular basis. Which is a good thing, in a way, but its irregularity presents a problem when it does happen. We've got to set up some sort of policy for this.

NPR has a regular segment for "letters from listeners", which is largely devoted to just such minor factual corrections. At the station level, though, we don't have the kind of relationship with our listeners that they routinely write to us when some ancillary fact is just plain wrong. But they *do* call. And yes, *some* of the callers are plain cranks and hacks and people with vested interests. But sometimes they are not. We make mistakes too.

When we make a mistake, we should have *some* way to correct it.

It's part of what will make us "credible". I don't know where I'm going with this, and wish I could flesh out a well-planned proposal for the Monday News Department meeting. As it's shaping up now, though, I'll probably be up in Santa Fe, covering a story.

Welcome to the newsroom: you can spend hours and days and longer trying to change things, or you can cover stories -- the choice is yours.

I just hope it comes to pass that we work out some sort of *policy* regarding corrections.

We'd be crazy to throw away our relationships with *any* of our listeners just because we won't deign to correct what are clearly mistakes on our part when we do air them.

At least that's my own take on things.

Free advice.

Worth every penny you pay for it.

Mic envy.

Covered the opening of the PNM Rate Case in front of the PRC yesterday.

That meant driving up to Santa Fe and sitting in a commission hearing for roughly eight hours.

Why would anyone in their right mind do that? You know, besides having a mildly masochistic streak to begin with?

Because PNM -- the state's largest regulated utility, and the only NM-managed company on the NYSE -- is proposing to increase electrical rates to end consumers on the order of somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15%, not counting the proposed "fuel clause" which would tie electric rates to the cost of fuels that PNM uses to generate its electricity.

Anyone remember PG&E in California, say, around 1999/2000?

Back then, if I understand things right, PNM was an active energy trader on the "spot market". These days, at least according to yesterday's sworn testimony by PNM Chairman and CEO Jeff Sterba, PNM's no longer nearly as "active" a trader, since they're generating less excess energy.

Of course, I don't have to tell you that the price of copper's risen something like 40¢ over the last two months. Nor that the price of Uranium has recently gone through the roof. Nor that a barrel of light sweet crude is now hovering around the hundred dollar mark. Nor that PNM's Bond Rating in "Standard and Poors" seems to be somewhere on the "triple-B" par. Nor that PNM wants to improve its bond rating, in order to lower the costs at which it can borrow money from prospective investors. Nor that Jeff Sterba seems to be getting paid not inconsiderable bonuses which are, in his words, "performance based" at the same time that PNM is laying off hundreds of workers, as a "cost-cutting" measure. No, all these things, I take it, are "common knowledge".

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

The hearing started yesterday and Jeff Sterba was on the stand.

The news here is that nineteen parties have filed as intervenors, asking to cross-examine witnesses called to testify on behalf of PNM and PNM's proposed rate increase. The number of intervenors filing in this case seems to be rather, well, for want of a better word, "unprecedented" in any rate case under consideration by the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.

It was a fascinating day. Hard on the butt, what with that vaguely fashionable, but undeniably uncomfortable "Santa Fe" style furniture and all in that almost-very-well-restored dining room of St. Vincent's Hospital, a turn-of-the-century hospital for consumptives which has since been converted into a hearing room, in the way that so many old buildings not demolished got almost-very-well-restored in the early 'eighties. Charming enough to be dismissed from final consideration for inclusion in the pages of some long-forgotten issue of Architectural Digest, I'm sure, but sheer hell to sit in.

I adored the high windows, the tile floors, the old ceilings and exposed pipe, the transems that still opened and closed, but those light fixtures were a sad joke of a reflection of what hung down from the ceiling one short century ago. And the three ferns adorning the bay window of the dining room in 1910 might have done wonders for the hearing room, today, if only *somebody* would open up the blinds.

The acoustics were predictable. Sound bounced off the floors, in addition to the windows and walls. Since I'd just happened to position myself properly with the correct mic as things started, I didn't lose any significant bit of testimony, though the quality of sound that I recorded was nowhere near what I would call "up to standard".

How dare the Sisters of Charity fail to design their space with twenty-first century broadcast acoustics in mind.

Mr. Sterba introduced his testimony in written form, with a small handful of corrections here and there.

It was the cross-examinations that proved interesting. Like most reporting, it's a "hurry up and wait" game. You sit there *struggling* to follow every percentage point and detail that they're mentioning, *trying* not to get it wrong, or worse yet, just get totally lost.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere -- while you've got your head turned, most likely, or are swimming amidst inconsequential details -- the fæcal detritus rapidly impacts the oscillating black-enamelled rotary blades attached to the 60-cycle, 35-amp motor on your fabulous Robbins and Myers fan from Springfield, Ohio, which just happens to perfectly suit the room in which you find yourself situated.

I casually stepped out of the room at precisely three o'clock to file my story. Not because it was a sensible time in the testimony to do so, but because that was my working deadline.

I felt deeply validated today to read Jack King's article in the Albuquerque Journal on the same hearing. We sat next to eachother much of the time, and he was *far* better than I was at taking notes on proceedings. It was one of his stories that got us on to covering the hearing in the first place. He's a damn good reporter, if you ask me, besides being left-handed. Seeing the same things I mentioned in my "phone-in" the day before, but expanded on without being contradicted in any fundamentals printed in the paper the following day meant a *lot* to me. We can't do much more on the radio than give people a *taste* of things the paper can cover in considerable detail.

I didn't return today. May return next week -- the hearing's going 'til at least the 19th.

Today drove out to water Charles' fountain and see if Sissy's Accounts Manager was there so I could get paid for the last month. She wasn't, so I didn't. Such are the joys of working in a garden!

Paid a bill -- a single bill -- by such convoluted juggling of cash that I won't bore you with it -- just take my word for it that I'm not in the debtors' prison yet.

Then with nothing else to do, unable to top-dress the pansies with the ugly skies that we were having, I headed in to the newsroom, kind of mellow in mood to begin with, which is certainly never a bad thing.

Steve's covering a meeting of the UNM Regents, but the thing they were going to discuss that he wanted to cover got put off 'til later the same afternoon so he wonders if I could conduct an interview with someone on campaign finance reform that he'd lined up for three PM.

Heck yeah. I've dealt with them before and I know that the guy coming by is well-spoken, and easy to edit.

I do. It sounds good, if I say so myself. Is it one-sided? Yeah, but it's a conversation, and anyone who doesn't like it is completely welcome to come in and talk with me on the same terms: on mic, for possible air.

Winds up being the feature item for local/regional coverage. Jim's always got about two dozen stories going on, but he hosted "Morning Edition" this morning because Elaine was covering a whole different big, ongoing story in a whole different part of the state.

The new recorders came in today.

We've been using MD recorders since whenever. They're great, except when they're not.

Today we got a handful of Marantz recorders in. And a new stereo microphone for field recording. The only disappointment was not having anything to record.

Patience. It's only a matter of hours or minutes before there are more stories requiring the kits that we've got.

Worked up a "check out" sheet for the new recording kits, which we'll hopefully post near the cabinet of magical goodies, the sooner, the better.

Tristan Clum, the Production Director, walks in while I happen to be fiddling around with one of the new kits and microphones.

We got into a long damn conversation about ribbon mics.

This, if you haven't figured it out yet, is one of my latest obsessions.

Tristan dared to call the RCA 44DX that I want with all my heart "a clunker". To my face.

I would have been insulted, but my interest in ribbon mics is way more academic than his interest in what can reproduce this or that or whatever sound in whatever circumstance. Yeah, a big part of me is hooked on what the Murrow boys used. But I'm not *of* the Murrow generation, myself, and so, I admit to him, I really just want such-and-such frequency response and proximity effect for my own purposes, today. I tell him what it might cost me to get my hands on an old CBS RCA-44DX with an XLR connector attached to the back. We then discuss, at interminable length, whether CBS actually retrofitted their RCA 44DX mics with XLR connectors or with some similar but ultimately incompatible three-pin precursor to the XLR.

At some point it becomes clear with no one saying it: I'm taking up his time that he's got to spend on other far more pressing things, and we're both starting to get on the nerves of the newsroom crew who have no idea what we are arguing about in the first place. Eyes glance this way and that, and on that basis, we move on to other things.

It was a *perfectly* delightful conversation.

He tells me that a firm by the name of "Royer" is currently manufacturing a whole new generation of ribbon (a.k.a. "velocity") mics, and advises me that as long as I'm determined to spend a ton of money on a mic with certain very highly specialized characteristics, with limited usability, I can certainly do better than buy an antique.

Clearly he's mad, I think, but at the same time, he's got to get back to his department and I've got to get him out of mine so that we can put together tonight's newscast. Fine, I figure, I'll humour him. I'll check out that website and tell him whatever I saw was "interesting" whenever I happen on him again in the hallways.

I poke around the Royer website and find myself deeply surprised. I spend most of the next three hours there.

My mind is almost totally made up.

If anyone wants to buy me a three-thousand dollar present for the holidays, I'd *never* refuse a mint-condition RCA 44DX, and *would* use it for broadcast; but truthfully, I'd *much* prefer a brand-new Royer R-122V, complete with lifetime warranty. I have no doubt, based on the slideshow on the Royer website, that the Royer mics will be in *far* better working condition now than *any* RCA 44 or 77 series mic I might happen to find on the secondary market today.

But please, don't waste your money on the gold-plated version. Chrome is quite good enough, for me. I'm really *not* ambitious.

Just be glad I'm not asking for post-hole convolutes.

Of course, I wouldn't ever turn down a spare post-hole convolute, either, if you've got one laying around somewhere.

;^)

Stress.

All stress today. No single person's fault. Just too many things going wrong all at once, and I had the exquisite luck to be around for all of it, coming in from all sides. Perhaps it's just the waning crescent moon in Virgo (a feminine, but barren sign, ideal for eliminating weeds, but not much else). I honestly don't know. (I'm not into astrology, but I'll be damned if Blum's Farmer's Almanac doesn't have some halfway useful tips on how to run a garden.)

Went to Sissy's to water Charles' fountain so it won't shatter when it freezes. It takes me ten minutes, max, but it is *super* critical. I don't charge her for that, of course, because it's a personal favour I do for Charles; and if I happen to see something that needs doing for Sissy while I'm there, well, then, I'm there, and I can do it, and if it takes more than the fifteen minutes I am there for Charles, then I can charge her for that, which so far, is not at all.

Every time Sissy leaves town, though, all the house and garden servants start to seem to feel more or less threatened by eachothers' presence. I show up and the assumption seems to be that I am "on the clock".

So day before yesterday, Tender Like Woman tells me that the Accounts Manager told him to tell me not to water.

I tell him "of course, the ground is soaked", just assuming he'll see on a cursory glance that it's *obvious* I wouldn't water anyway, because I suspect that he understands enough about the outdoor plants that he will understand it's not in my own best interests to kill them by overwatering, without explaining that I'm not there to water the pansies but to water Charles' fountain, and that it's not going to cost the house a cent.

The communication problems go both ways. It's a big house, in terms of how many servants are involved, but we don't have even half the communications systems that, say, people working in an office involving the same number of people would. There's no messageboard we all check every day, and we don't exchange notes with eachother.

Signals therefore get crossed, and at best people ask eachother to tell other people things and they get muddled in translation, and before you know it we're all half convinced we're after eachother's jobs, which maybe we are, or maybe not. Who knows?

I'm about to give Sissy a whiteboard for Christmas.

From there, in to the newsroom today. For one day I'm determined to put the pansy and viola world out of my mind. It winds up the newsroom is just about as messy.

Finally I find *the* one super-specialized cable that I can use to transfer some sound I recorded over the weekend, but thought I had lost because I'd somehow aparently managed to record in sound in Hi-MD on an MD, which nobody thought possible.

But the sound comes in *waaay* soft. It's good sound, but it's just too soft to boost without screwing up *all* the levels. Sam shows me how to use "Group Waveform Normalize", which is *only* available in Audition 2.0. Sam's the only person I know who *prefers* Audition 2.0 to Audition 1.5, but he uses Audition *way* more than anyone else in the newsroom, since he *also* works in production. I learn a valuable lesson or two, and move on.

I edit out the sound and transcribe clips only to realize -- I asked some *really* dumb questions! Yeah, there's a story here, but I've come *nowhere* near "covering" it. The people on the different sides aren't even talking about the same thing. There's no rhetorical stasis. No stasis = no story. My job's to facilitate dialogue, not to enable people sniping at eachother. They can go on commercial radio for that. If I can't always do that, I take responsibility for it. But I'm *not* willing to put voices on the air just talking *at* eachother, regardless what the other side is saying, like they're just casually dropping rhetorical rocks onto cement.

Then the printer in the newsroom goes down, less than an hour before Steve's set to broadcast.

Fixing that problem winds up being *way* more complex than you might imagine.

Jonathan finds the problem, but it's not something he can fix before airtime. So we have to deal with various circuitous workarounds in the meantime.

Steve's computer won't print.

Mine will print on the alternate printer, but only from MS Word. Not from either web browser.

Adrian works some magic getting some super-crucial things of Steve's printed -- like his weather rewrite.

Meanwhile, Charles calls me from Colorado in order to tell me what I already know from Tender Like Woman.

Steve's in the newsbooth trying to get *any* printer to work, and simultaneously interviewing someone over the phone.

Finally, it turns out, the printer in Control will print.

But -- the computer in "Control" is temporarily "off limits" because the CD for "Democracy Now" (DN) was apparently burned at 48x, making for all kinds of skips, and so we're currently running DN backup off the Computer on LS-1. Meanwhile, DN got reburned at 12x by Sam and whenever Amy breaks -- if she will *ever* break -- will she? -- once she does, Steve can run DN off CD and use the CR Computer to access the wires and print headlines and copy on the CR printer.

But still no newsroom printer.

By this time it's time for "good evening!" ON AIR.

Jim's simutaneously crunching on two separate stories.

The newsbooth is alternately in and out of service as Jim demonstrates to Tristan what's going on and as Steve interviews a woman over the phone.

I'm still halfway despondent at my "planned" story not working.

I offer to rewrite some wire copy, based on something Jim had emailed me a couple of hours before. but Jim's already got that, and is rewriting and recording the story. (I hadn't checked my email to see what he'd emailed me a couple of hours before.)

Finally I take the phone interview Steve did, edit down a soundclip and do a "wrap" on breast cancer.

I know *nothing* about breast cancer.

Somehow it doesn't sound, ON AIR, like we're all desperately foundering. Sounds like a slowish news day on which things still seemed to happen. Not a big historic news day, but things happened, and we covered it.

Some days, I guess, that's the best you can say.

Tomorrow: pansies and violas.

Wednesday: up to Santa Fe for a government hearing which may either wrap up in a couple of hours or go late into the night.

After that, either I phone in a story, or come back to edit one, or phone one in and come back to edit a third. It's nothing super big, just has to do with how much most people in the state pays for electricity and gas.

Life is good.