From PoynterOnline’s Al’s Morning Meeting (Al Tompkins):
“Monday morning, WTSP-TV anchor/reporter Janie Porter was on TV, reporting live from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on the run-up to this week’s national college football championship game. She didn’t have a big live truck accompanying her, or an engineer tuning in a shot or a photojournalist standing behind the camera and setting up lights.”
“Porter set up her own camera, opened her laptop, connected the camera to her computer, slipped a wireless connection card into her laptop, called up Skype and used her Blackberry to establish IFB (the device TV folks wear in their ears to hear the off-air signal). It all looked just great on air.”
So here’s my question: If a reporter didn’t know how to do what Janie did, why wouldn’t he or she make some effort to learn it? If you answered, “I’m not a TV reporter,” go to the back of the line.