Interning in My Sixth Decade

I've been taken on at my former arch rival as a geezer intern.  It's been almost ten years since I was at KTUL, the ABC affilate in Tulsa.  Now, May 26, 2015, at KOTV, I'm at the CBS affiliate, wondering if they would welcome me or string me up, and the ceilings are high in their beautiful state-of-the-art new media megaplex.

I find myself doing a fellowship sponsored by the Oklahoma Associaiton of Broadcasters to help prevent college professors like me from becoming obsolete, you know, like teaching Morse code instead of Tweeting. Have I been left in the dust of a new media stampede? 

Hey, wait a minute, now.  All good stories still have at their foundations good writing and good video.  I'd go so far as saying those two fundamentals are not only the foundation, they are the walls and roof of the house, too.  But the wiring has changed, and the windows have changed.  Now, you can look out all of the windows at once and the news will come to you. News will find you wherever you are, and it must be fed every minute.

News Director Ed Trauschke could not have been nicer.  Tuesday was the mega-meeting day when many of the mid and upper managers from the slightly bigger KWTV in Oklahoma City travel 90 miles to the co-owned KOTV in Tulsa to share plans and build teams across the markets.  Such is the design of owner David Griffin, who has build a statewide media powerhouse centered in the two largest cities in the state.

Ed let me hear secret campaigns they were about to spring on the competition, including my old station.  It was four meetings in one day, and all I could think of is how nice and trussting they were to include me, and, also, how much I hate meetings.  Insert chuckle here, please.

 I was happy that I had contributed to the morning story meeting with new information about a firefighter who had lost his life by being sucked down a drainage pipe in nearby Claremore, Oklahoma, after rescuing six children from their flooded home. I had worked the story for NBC News as a freelance field producer, and ended up sharing inforation with Tony Russell, the KOTV reporter on the scene Sunday. 

In my first day at KOTV, I met a lot of new people and ran into two of my students who now had good jobs at KOTV.  I let them know we at Rogers State University were proud of them.