(I have been writing stories about some of the stories I have told or people I have met during my career, so far. Each one taught me something about life and the profession)

Bill Dean was a character and he told me something one day in the newsroom that I will never forget.

Bill was my news director in the late 1970’s at WTHR in Indianapolis. He was a veteran who began his career working with Al Primo and the original Eyewitness News in Philadelphia. Bill was eccentric. He scoured the newspapers for stories and ads for vodka on sale. He drove a Boss 302 Mustang and he kept the keys in his pocket. In fact, it was the sound of those keys jingling that always told us Bill was nearby. His nervous energy was transferred to the hand in his pocket where he shook those keys constantly. Bill Dean was a gem and he would have done anything for us.

The newsroom was filled with reporters, some veteran but most of us were young. This was my second job out of college and I was honored to work in the 24th TV market in the nation. I had to work hard every day just to keep us with the others who had years of experience. Bill was always there to help me.

It was late afternoon on a Thursday and I was at my desk in the open newsroom. We still used typewriters to compose our scripts and I was struggling to meet my deadline. I don’t remember the specific story, but it was complicated and my notebook was filled with names and numbers. I had to, somehow, distill it all into a TV news story in the next 90 minutes. I was panicking.The newsroom was frenetic. Reporters, producers, photographers and the support team were racing to get the news on-the-air. I was the only one, it seemed, who was sitting still and staring at my notebook. I was frozen, my fingers were on the typewriter keys but they were not moving. Then I heard his voice. Bill Dean had come out of his office and was standing near the newsroom door behind me. He yelled, “Becker! Are you gonna make the show?” That’s all I need, I thought! Now I have the boss pressuring me, too. I yelled back, “I hope so. It’s a complicated story.” Then Bill spoke the words I will never forget and that I share with young reporters. He said, “Becker, don’t confuse me with the facts, just tell me a story!” He turned and walked away.

I took a deep breath and thought about what he had just yelled across the newsroom. “Just tell me a story”, he said. OK, I can do that and I began writing. As I did, the words just flowed and I began weaving in the information and facts I had spent the day gathering. It was a story, not a report. It had people in it and a plot. Bill had freed up my mind to get past the facts and create something that would help viewers understand the issue.

I now consider them magic words of advice. They worked for me that day in the WTHR newsroom, they work for me today and I have had some of my colleagues with whom I have shared this story say those words of wisdom work for them too when they get stuck. “Don’t confuse me with the facts, just tell me a story!” is a quote that inspired me to call myself a storyteller.

The facts are crucial to every story. We must get them right and they must be put in context. But, it is also our job to weave them into the story that viewers and readers can understand and appreciate. That is what Bill Dean taught me with his words yelled across the newsroom.

(I am writing stories about stories I have covered, so far, in my career. Each one has taught me something about myself or my profession)

Once you see something horrible, you can never erase it from your memory. In 1984, I worked for KCBS in Los Angeles and didn’t know that the images and stories of what happened in Mexico that November Monday morning would stay with me forever.

When I got to the newsroom, I was immediately told to get ready to fly to Mexico City. A huge liquified petroleum gas facility near Mexico City had exploded and the fireball created burned through a nearby slum neighborhood. It was horrible. The death toll was rising by the hour.

When we landed, we discovered it would be a 45-minute drive to the disaster zone. The boys selling newspapers on the curb along the way were yelling the headline, just two words, “Fuego Mortal”, or “Deadly Fire.” 40,000 people lived in the town of San Juan Ixhauatepec, a poor suburb of Mexico City and home to the largest liquified petroleum gas plant in the country. Most of the men living in town were either farmers or they worked at the gas plant. As we got closer we were forced to stop and walk. The roads were jammed with people. Some were walking out with shocked and stunned looks on their faces. Some carried knapsacks or blankets tied at the top. Others were walking with us heading into the fire zone. They were scared. They needed to find their loved ones. We came over the top of a Hill and saw the valley below. There was no color. Gray smoke was billowing from the fires still burning at the plant in the distance. The neighborhood next to it was gone except for the walls of charred homes. These were not big houses, they were adobe shacks with wooden doors and plywood roofs.

Police were trying to keep people away, but it was no use. It was imposible to secure the huge area and local officials told us they didn’t know how they were going to get to and identify the dead. This was a huge crime scene, but we were waved on in and that is when the story changed. We didn’t come to the story, it came to us in a very dramatic way.

We started walking down one of the burned out streets. Everything was touched by the flash fire. The trees were black and bare. The cars were gray and gutted. Even the seats were gone. Just springs remained. We walked up to a man sitting on the curb in front of one of the houses. We asked him in Spanish, “Is this your house?” He said no, it was his brother’s house. “Where is he?”, I asked. He said he was inside and gestured me to walk in the front door. There was no door. It had been burned from the hinges. The man followed behind me and my photographer led the way. As we approached the end of the hallway entrance the photographer stopped and turned to the room at the right. I slipped behind him and saw a family frozen by fire. The sofa was just a metal frame and on it were 3 bodies. They were black, charred remains of three humans caught in the conflagration. They had no time to move. The fire came like a flash flood.

I just stood there not believing my eyes. I turned to the man who we met outside and he nodded and said in Spanish, “That’s my brother and his family. They had no were to run.” Back outside again, we kept walking and found children looking for their missing parents. We found women sifting through the black dust looking for mementos. In virtually every house or back yard we saw bodies. They were burned beyond recognition. It was hard to tell if they were men or women. We could tell the children only because they were smaller. The real story I want to share is what I saw in the eyes of those we met wandering the streets here. They were emotionally stunned, just like we were. They were seeing death everywhere and becoming immune to it.

There is no accurate count of how many died in this industrial accident. The initial number was 248 people killed. We went back to the neighborhood several years later to investigate reports that the government buried more than one thousand victims in a hillside nearby. The houses were being rebuilt. The people were moving back in and, surprisingly, the huge liquid petroleum plant was still there, back in operation right next door.

(I am writing stories about some of the stories I have covered, so far, in my career. Each one taught me something about myself and the profession)

Sometimes it better not to know the risks before you dive into an assignment.

In 1976, I was working as a reporter for WFRV-TV in Green Bay. It was summertime and that means fire season in the millions of acres of forest in the viewing area. A fire broke out in the upper peninsula of Michigan and I was sent to cover it. I got there Ok. I got the story, but I nearly didn’t make it home.

We usually worked in teams at WFRV. The photographer would handle the film gear, camera and lights. I would do the reporting, but this time I was a “one-man band”. The assignment desk arranged for me to fly in a chartered plane that would land at a small airport near the fire and then I would rent a car and get the story. It was going to be my first time in a small prop-driven airplane and I was excited.

The flight to the story was exciting and smooth. We landed at the small airport and I even shot film of the giant smoke plume from the fire as we were turning to aim for the runway. I only had a few hours on the ground to get the story and when I returned to the airport, the pilot was waiting. He was a young man about my age, early twenties with a “flat top” haircut. He was very quiet and very focused on his job. He checked out the plane and went through the safety procedures with me. I was in a hurry, of course, I had a deadline. It did not seem to matter to this young man. He asked me to sit in the front seat with him instead of in the back. He was all business.

As we took off it was sunny and clear, but he told me over the headsets that we might run into some weather as we get closer to Green Bay. It was about a two-hour flight, so I settled in and began writing and organizing my story about the fire. My mind was racing. We had to “soup” the film (develop it using a machine), and then I would edit it using a film viewer and glue. We had to make two reels, one for the video and one for the sound. They would roll at the same time on two different projectors and the director would switch between them to make the story look complete on-the-air. That is why we still call it an “A-roll” and a “B-roll”.

About an hour into the flight, the pilot said, “Ross, would you help me with something as we prepare to land”? I said, of course. He wanted me to take out my notebook and listen carefully to what the air traffic controllers were saying to him. He said, “write it all down, it’s critical”. Outside the window of the tiny 4-seater airplane it was milky white. The clouds had enveloped the plane and it was beginning to rain on the windshield. I looked over at the young pilot and his eyes were as big as poker chips. He was focusing on the dashboard and glancing out the front window even though there was nothing to see. He was flying using the instruments only. Pilots are trained to do that, and I hoped he was good at it.

Each plane has an ID number. The one I was in was N2287B. I had headphones on with a built-in microphone and I was listening for that number. It was my cue to write down the info and make sure we didn’t miss anything. That air traffic controller was our eyes, since we could not see anything inside the plane. “Cessna Nancy 2287 Baker, turn right 15 degrees and maintain heading”, crackled in my ears. I pressed the microphone button and asked the pilot of he got it. He said yes. I glanced at him and he was sweating. He never looked back at me. “Nancy 2287 Baker, you are 3 miles from the runway begin your descent”. The pilot reached over to the throttle levers and began to slow the plane down. He pointed the nose down and I could feel myself slide forward slightly in the seat. We could see nothing out the windshield. It was white. It was an eerie feeling. Then the radio crackled again and this time the tone in the voice was urgent. “Cessna N22877, what is your altitude”? and the pilot answered immediately. The air traffic controller came right back and this time I could tell he was flustered. “Make an immediate right turn and drop to 7000 feet”. The pilot shouted to me over the intercom, “Did he say 7000 feet?”. I said yes, and the pilot yanked the yoke to the right and pulled back on the throttle lever. We turned and headed down, quickly.

Now I was sweating, too. It was frightening. The tone of the air controllers voice is what scared me the most. We were clearly in danger, but we couldn’t see anything. The controller came back on the radio using our call sign and said, “you are on the same path as a jetliner coming into the airport and I need you to keep dropping quickly or you will collide.” What? I heard it! I looked out the windshield and all I saw was fog and rain. I looked at the pilot and he was pale. We both sat there waiting to be obliterated by a jetliner heading the same place we were heading.

It seemed like an hour, but it was only 4 minutes later that we broke through the clouds and fog and saw the end of the runway at Austin Straubel Field in Green Bay. The pilot aimed for the runway. We touched down and began rolling toward the hangar. I was exhausted and relieved. I asked the young pilot, “were your scared”? He looked at me and just shook his head. Then he said something I will never forget. He said, “I trained to fly by instrument, but until today I had never done it for real. That was my first time”! It was my maiden voyage in a small plane and, now I find out, it was the first time my pilot had ever flown by instrument. That is why he asked me to help him. I am glad I didn’t know that while we were still in the air.

When we pulled up to the hangar, I said thank you. We both looked at each other and started laughing. It was nervous laughter. We were glad to be on the ground.

In the few days after my crazy flight, I thought about the times in my career when I was faced with a challenge I had never faced before and I remembered the young pilot. He didn’t fail either. He did it and I was along for the ride.

(I have been writing stories about some of the stories I have covered, so far, in my journalism career. Each one taught me something about myself or the profession)

When you are covering a story, sometimes you don’t think, you just react. Only when the crisis moment is over, do you have time to reflect on what you did. I had one of those moments while covering the state funeral for President Ronald Reagan.

I was playing golf with a friend in San Diego when I got the phone call. Former President Ronald Reagan was dead. His age and his Alzheimer’s disease finally took him. My news director at KTNV-TV in Las Vegas said, “get home as soon as possible, we have you on a red-eye flight to Washington D.C.” It would be the start of 3 long days of work that would be filled with emotion.

We were set up in our “live” reporting location on the National Mall looking east toward the U.S. Capitol building. We were joined by hundreds of other reporters and photographers from around the world. The former president’s body would be brought to the Capitol and lie in state while thousands filed past the casket. The Capitol police were already setting up the barriers that would form the lines into the building. It was a maze of metal fencing leading to the doors of the building.

It was hot and humid. 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity and, occasionally, we would be drenched by a downpour. We were tired, too. Each day was filled with seemingly endless “live” reports in every newscast we had on the air. In between, we were interviewing people gathering to pay their respects to the former president. On the second day, we had just finished a “live” report for our noon newscast in Las Vegas. It was already almost 4:30 in the afternoon on the east coast. Suddenly, there was a buzz in the crowd of reporters and photographers and everyone was looking toward the Capitol building.

People who had been in line to see the former president were running toward us. They were scared. Hundreds of them were coming at us. Some women were carrying their children. Fathers, too. I grabbed my briefcase and yelled to my photographer, “let’s go!” We took off up the hill toward the building, fighting the crowd like salmon swimming upstream. Something was happening, but we didn’t know why everyone was so scared. I saw a capitol security guard running toward me. I grabbed his arm and said, “what is going on?” He said they are evacuating the Capitol because of an unidentified plane is in the area and it might be a terrorist attack. He turned and ran away. I kept running toward the building. We got to the steps and froze. The police had taken the metal barriers used to marshal people and turned them into a blockade. I tried to call the station in Las Vegas, but our cell phones were dead. The authorities had turned off the cell towers in the area to try to stop the possible terrorists. It was at that moment it occurred to me that while everyone else was running from danger, we were running toward it, along with scores of other reporters and photographers. We kept looking at the sky wondering if a jetliner flown by terrorists was going to slam into the building just like they did on 9-11. What the hell were we doing there? We would be killed! We never really thought about it until we were too close to do anything about it.
There were bells ringing and sirens screaming inside and outside the iconic building. There is a procedure for evacuating the Capitol and it worked. In a matter of minutes, the place was empty, except for a few guards, the body of a former president and about 50 reporters and photographers milling around on the steps outside. We just stood there looking at the sky, but nothing happened.

It was a false alarm. A small plane carrying Ernie Fletcher, the governor of Kentucky, who was arriving for the funeral was preparing to land at nearby Reagan National Airport. The plane had been cleared to land but had radio problems that prevented communication with the air traffic controllers. Air Force fighter jets were dispatched to intercept the unidentified plane and that’s what triggered the chaos, the evacuation and fear of a terrorist threat on Capitol Hill.

As we walked back to our “live” report location about two blocks away on the National Mall, everyone in our group was quiet. I was reflecting on what had just happened. What if this had not been a false alarm? I also found something out about myself and my colleagues. We didn’t even flinch when the people came running toward us, we started running toward them and the story. The potential danger didn’t cross our minds, until later. I was not alone. Reporters, photographers, producers and those who call themselves members of the “media” are first responders, too.

The rest of the time in Washington, D.C. was a blur of sweltering heat, patriotism, tears and pageantry as the funeral for the former president unfolded. I remember standing on Constitution Avenue in a crowd of people as the president’s casket rolled by. At that moment, 3 fighter jets flew overhead as a tribute. I wondered if they were the same pilots who had responded to try to keep us all safe just 24 hours earlier.