One of the coolest things I've ever experienced

I work in Trenton, and a large amount of the folks in this area commute to NYC every day, so 9/11 in my newsroom was as crazy as in other places, but for us it hit over the next few days, as our news writers turned into glorified obit writers, and I remember a couple of them just completely losing it. It was zombie-ville in here for about a week or two after.

Kudos to the folks in Roanoke, one of the classier things I've heard of, but I'll echo what others have said. I hope I never see one of those boxes in my place.

 

Unfortunately, some of the most invigorating moments in the career of anybody in the news media probably comes during a story when other people end up suffering.

I had a crisis PR situation a few years ago that had me going from basically taking an afternoon off in one moment to the craziest stretch of time during my many years in the field just moments later. Just like covering a big story, I went with my instincts an did what I thought best. Years later, I can look on that awful event as being one of the most rewarding events of my life simply because I think I handled it very well.

As crazy as it was, I sure would have liked a bag of Twizzlers and a couple of Ho Hos to have been sent to me by a colleague.

Kudos to Roanoke and whomever started the sad tradition.

 

I hope I never have to cover one of these because I'm not a fan of massive loss of life.
But....mmmmm, Moon pies!

 

Grimy... sweaty.... chaotic.... desperate..... utilitarian.... all the walls between departments evaporate in half a heartbeat....

 

Is it possible this is why Stu Bykofsky wrote that "we need another 9/11" column in the Philly Daily News? Someone send him a couple of moon pies and see if he changes his mind.

Kudos to the Roanoke staff - very classy gesture.

 

If you're a network affiliate and a big thing happens, you usually get a lot of food from the network for helping them with footage, etc.
I know, for example, the USAir crash near Pittsburgh in 1994, KDKA's newsroom got a huge spread from CBS a couple of weeks later (this was long before being owned by CBS). I'm also told by more than one person who is still there that this still goes on a lot in television newsrooms.
We sometimes need to be a lot less cynical about our industry.