Re: WTAG coverage of Fire

["Marc Lemay" <mmkc@msn.com>]

...Serious snippage....

>the News Director
> had a pager and numbers for all news personnel were posted in all the
studios
> in the building with instructions on who to call if there was a big local
> story.  I'm not sure what would happen on a Friday evening, but I would
> expect any news person worth their salt would come to work as soon as they
> heard about a big story like the fire in Worcester.  Its not just duty,
but
> the chance to feed reports to the network can earn you a little extra
money
> and some good material for your audition tape.

Couldn't agree more.  As a former ND (no, not just News Director - ND stands
for News Department) - I was a pager away if any of the folks on the FM
sister station heard the scanner squawk.  Also had some friends/station
listeners who were scanner bugs - and would give me the heads up if
something came over that I might have missed...sort of a news tip line.

And (maybe I'm a bit overboard with this one) but I had a scanner at my
house - programmed to all the local police and fire freqs.  Granted I lived
in the community, and granted I was a one person news department (with a few
interns), but even as background noise - the loyal scanner listeners knows
when something is cooking and when its a dud.

Then again, that's when I was in Haverhill and Fall River...would it be
different in Worcester?  I'll probably never know.

Marc Lemay