FIND SOMEONE TO TELL YOUR STORY

Every home, business, school, and organization has stories to tell. And someone needs to tell them so neighbors, parents or customers can make a human connection.

For example, inside Bridgepointe at Ashgrove Woods, a senior living community in Nicholasville, Kentucky, days can be fairly routine. Donald Moore and Bobby Gene Combs eat meals together at the same table every day, three times a day.

In late 2023, Combs found himself alone at the table after his wife of 67 years died. A few months later, Moore, also a widower, moved to Bridgepointe.

“He came and he took my seat,” Combs joked, “and I said, ‘I’ve sat there for over a year. They told me that was going to be my seat.’ And he looked around and said, ‘Well, I like it and I think I’m going to make it my seat,’ and he still sits there.”

Moore laughed, saying he liked it better than the other seats at the table.

Despite that awkward start, the two hit it off right away. It was as if they already knew each other. Over many dinner conversations, they discovered they both had been drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953. They had trained to go to Korea, but the armistice was signed just before they had to go into combat. So, both were assigned to Greenham Commons, an air force base in southern England.

“We knew we had been there at the same time, and we couldn’t figure out why we’d never met,” Combs said.

Just before Veteran’s Day 2024, the staff at Bridgepointe’s Adult Day Care Center, which is next door to the independent living facility, asked Combs to get some of his photos together for a display.

“So, I went back and pulled out all the pictures I had and started going through them, and I kept coming back to one that showed three people in it. But I didn’t recognize any of them but me, so I just brushed it aside,” Combs said.

But after going through his stack of photos several times, he flipped that picture over and saw the subjects were identified. He had written that the man in the middle was “Donald Moore of Kentucky.”

“And I couldn’t believe it.”

Surely, he thought, that wasn’t the same guy he eats meals with every day.

“So, I pitched it down on the table in front of him and said I needed some help identifying some people. Without bending over, he said, “The one in the middle is me.” After he looked at it awhile, I finally I told him, “Well, the one standing beside you is me!'”

Both men, who are now in their 90s, marvel that they crossed paths when they were barely 20 years old, nearly 4,000 miles from their Kentucky home.

I was happy to find that simple story that proves sometimes it can be a very small world. It’s the kind of thing Steve Hartman of CBS News does every week. He’s one of the best storytellers on television.

Hartman used to do a segment called “Everybody Has a Story.” He would throw a dart at a map, go to the city where it landed, and randomly pick a name from the local phone book. His challenge was then to find that person and pull an interesting story from them. He did it, week after week, producing simple stories that made

the viewers think, laugh, or cry.

Businesses need to work more at finding stories about their employees or customers. Often their websites list off sales figures or services offered, but seldom do they offer “real people” stories. Hospitals can introduce readers to special patients or volunteers. Churches have fascinating parishioners.  Schools have students with amazing hidden talents. Tell your stories!

LANDING A JOB IN TELEVISION NEWS

The secret’s out. I had a neat job, and it seems everyone wants it. At least, that’s the way it seemed when I spoke at career days or checked out enrollment in the broadcast programs at colleges and universities.

I’d like to think that the throngs of students who signed up for my sessions at school seminars do it because I’m a mesmerizing speaker. I suspect it’s because they saw me at the anchor desk and realized any clown can get a lucky break now and then.

Certain questions always came up. Do you use make-up? Do you wear pants behind the desk? How much money do you make? The answers are yes, usually, and not enough.

The truth is lots of people have potential to work in a television newsroom. I grew up on a farm in Grafton, W. Va., and my high school didn’t have a closed-circuit TV system, a speech team or computer lab. Broadcasting there meant reading the morning announcements over the intercom. But I had teachers who encouraged good writing, and a yearbook advisor who made to want to work long hours to make every page look a little better when you thought it already was the best it could be.

My interest in broadcasting was born at a career day, much like the ones I’ve spoken at over the years. After four years at Marshall University and two years in the graduate program at Ohio University, I thought I was ready for the big time. My first commercial job in TV took me to Paintsville in eastern Kentucky. I was a bureau chief for a station in Charleston, W. Va. and the job was anything but glamorous. Basically, I had a car and a camera and was expected to cover stories in a six-county region.

I was a one-man-band. That means I did my own camera work, writing, editing, and gas pumping, The trickiest part of that is stand in front of the camera, shooting video of yourself while trying to avoid cutting your head off in the frame. At first, it would take 15 or 20 takes to get it right, while pretending not to notice all the people who thought I was talking to myself.

The job also required me to drive my stories to Charleston three times a week (nearly four hours round trip). And all for an annual salary of $14,000.

But big news happens in small places, and I had a lot of good stories to report in eastern Kentucky. I met great people and learned how to listen. It was common to sit on a front porch for an hour with a potential interviewee before pulling the camera out of the car and turning on the bright lights. It taught me patience and respect. It taught me to love ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Therefore, I turned in stories about a hermit who lived in a cave, a grandmother who learned to read at age 60, and a man who made a living selling home remedies. My editors loved it.

Budding reporters often think they’ll uncover presidential scandals, follow troops into war, or expose governmental waste. Some do, but most of us are just storytellers. And good stories can be found anywhere That’s what I learned in Paintsville.

After two years, I moved on to the Lexington market where I told stories for 38 years. Helping launch the FOX 56 Ten O’Clock News in 1995 was one of the better pleasures of my career.

Young people considering this career should know that one-man-bands are back. They’re now called “multimedia journalists.” As the corporations that own television stations grow larger, employees are asked to do more. There are more deadlines, along with streaming and social media requirements. Long hours and low pay are still the norm. But the need for good storytellers is just as strong as ever.

So, the kids at schools were right. I did have a neat job, and they always asked me how they could get one like it.

First, become a consumer of the news. It’s surprising how many people who want to “do the news” never read a newspaper, check out online news sites or tune into “60 Minutes.”

Secondly, get involved. Write for the school newspaper, the yearbook or ask to help at the local radio station. Get internships. Shadow people who do what you want to do. Yes, it takes a degree of luck, but you’d better have skill too. And perseverance. Don’t get into it for the money. There isn’t much when you get started. Don’t get into it for the perks, unless you consider working nights, weekends and holidays a perk. And know that the business is changing rapidly. This may not be your lifelong career but rather something you enjoy doing for a season.

Journalists do what we do because we can’t imagine doing anything else (and because we’re not good at math).

HOW NEWSROOMS FIND STORIES

“There are no slow news days— just slow news people.”

News directors love to tell their staffers that. It’s a way to shame you when you can’t come up with a story idea. And although the statement is probably true, it’s not exactly what you want to hear when you have thinker’s block.

I was often asked how we came up with our stories for a nightly television newscast. Sometimes, the decision is obvious. Everyone knows that tragedies such as a school shooting or natural disasters like a flood need to lead your coverage. Most days, however, the choices aren’t as clear cut. That’s when hard work and training pay off.

Typically, a news day starts off around 8:30 in the morning. By then, reporters and producers presumably have scanned the news wires and websites, local newspapers. and tuned in to network morning shows, CNN or the Fox News Channel. This is when everyone throws out ideas for consideration. Local angles on national stories are almost always good. For example, we knew a former press secretary for John F. Kennedy lived in Beattyville. So, we sought out his comments when JFK Jr. died in a tragic plane crash in 1999. More recently, when J.D. Vance was chosen to be Donald Trump’s running mate, we went to Jackson to talk to people who remembered him visiting family members there each summer as a child.

TV newsrooms get more ideas than they like to admit from local newspapers, but it’s impossible for them to have daily contacts in a forty-county coverage area. And newspapers just don’t do justice to some stories. Video and sound add a dimension that makes many stories come alive. It’s better to hear a six-year-old violin virtuoso than to read about her.

News managers also come up with stories by listening to police scanners for breaking news. They rely on press releases and get tips from viewers by email or over the phone.

The national stories are easy to come by with video feeds coming in all day from the networks and various services. Literally hundreds of stories are ready for download each day. Maybe a dozen of them will make it to air. Who decides which one make the cut? Usually, producers and news directors. Anchors have some input. And yes, the news gatekeepers look for the odd, strange, and curious— the stories they think will make you take notice and choose their station over the competition.

Despite popular belief, most operations don’t concentrate heavily on misery and gore. For every gruesome murder, they’re just as likely to have a story on a water-skiing squirrel. Before they sign off, stations want to make you smile and realize there’s still a lot right with the world, even though they’ve told you a lot of what’s wrong with it.

In recent years, there’s also been a trend to give more “news you can use.” That would include stories on how to get discount travel deals, how to find a good doctor, or how to get your whites whiter.

Reporters have a license to be nosy. We can ask questions just because we’re curious. Sometimes, it’s a simple as keeping your eyes open. If one day on your drive to work you see a lot being cleared, it may just take asking the man on the bulldozer, “What’s going on here?” Maybe you’ll get a tip about a new traffic pattern or pending shopping center. If you’re curious, everyone who takes that drive probably is too.

Reporters with good ideas often win the favor of bosses. It’s always better to work on a story you really want to do than have a dull one handed to you. In the winter, when you see a reporter shivering along the highway some freezing night telling you not to drive, that may be a night when that person had thinker’s block.