Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Making The Best Of Weather Stories

The Bane of Many a Reporter's Existence Also Offers A Chance to Show Your Chops With a New Spin on the Tried and True
When it's an unseasonably warm day or an unexpected cold snap arrives, the smart reporter knows to hide. For that's when the city editor comes a courtin', looking for you to get out to the nearest ice cream shop to see which flavors are moving or calling the local Home Depot to see if people are rushing in to stock up on road salt.
We've all done these stories as reporters because we have to, or we just didn't look busy enough.
But you can derive small satisfactions from these journalistic facts-of-life when you can actually find something different to say. To wit, this dispatch from Sabra Ayres at the Anchorage Daily News, about how fog is keeping lawmakers from their appointed rounds in Juneau:

In Sitka, [Senate Majority Leader Gary] Stevens and the other passengers were unloaded and instructed to wait out a weather break. Several took the opportunity to indulge in the Sitka airport's famously good pies.
"I highly recommend the banana cream pie," Stevens said.
More waiting. More pie slices were brought out. Finally, the passengers were given a choice to take a flight to Ketchikan or wait out their luck in Sitka.
Stevens and his wife headed to Ketchikan, where they were held for three more hours, this time without the pies.


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