The last words uttered by a decorated local broadcast journalist en route to the Manhattan base after a live shot on March 19th, 2015 for WABC-TV’s Eyewitness News This Morning. Her truck driver/photog got out in the middle of traffic, stopped an oncoming FDNY ambulance in moving traffic, banging the door, forcing them to take her over with another patient saying she would die. Well honestly she was basically brain dead regardless, the family pulled the life support plug on the 20th and passed away officially 8 years ago today.
According to New York Post’sPage Six her living mother told the management who attended her funeral in her then residence of Stamford, Conn. that “you made my daughter work herself to death”. Following the Page Six expose, both parties of the family and WABC-TV denied the exchange, and each party covered up one another, but let’s be honest, the management was shady and we who know the industry could trust this Page Six story.
On a very cold Friday lunch hour in Lower Manhattan, a large boom was heard amongst 50,000 locals at the World Trade Center Complex in New York City. Reports say it occurred around 12:15 local time. An explosion occurred at the garage level of the complex, with extremists intents. The goal was for the terrorist to knock off one of the pillars and if you took one down the rest could topple down.
The initial reports was a transformer explosion. Consolidated Edison, or ConEd the city’s electric company reported they didn’t have an outage, nor did they cut off power. Transformers step down voltages of power, many customers do not need high voltage energy. Transformers explode in neighborhoods, and are often one for every few customers. Any explosion wouldn’t carry up 110 stories… this initial report was debunked later in the day, but it was probed by the Channel 2 anchors.
6 people died, 5 initially reported, the 6th soul was found a few weeks later into mid March. Channel 2 reported just before the 5:00 news that they got confirmation a 9-1-1 call was placed just minutes before the bombing with a “foreign accent” said then correspondent Chris Jogensen.
Days later, more information came out, the Feds were on top of the case, and found the Ryder rent a truck’s Vehicle Identifier Number or VIN from a damaged effect of the said truck. Fun fact, VIN numbers are replicated throughout various parts of a vehicle, so it’s not just a sticker on the side door. They tracked down the VIN, finding it to belong to a local Ryder site in New Jersey, one of the co-conspirators came back to the place with the Feds hiding and caught the man.
Congress seat holder, George Santos, from New York, recently elected, but I cannot use the phrase “disgraced” because he is still in office despite, lies, upon lies, deception upon deception and phony stories upon phony stories that makes the Brian Williams scandal at NBC News seem like child’s play. I use BriWi because it’s the closet thing I could recall of a major figure in an institutionalized world that did a lot of over embellishing.
The day or two after New Years, Maggie Haberman from The New York Times said some strong words about the local New York market loosing its credibility to CNN. Not too long after, Charlie Sykes from The Bulwark Podcast characterized the failure in “the New York media ecosystem” a phrase that’s kinda like a cliche to Sykes vocab, not to offend him or anything.
As much as I am bummed still getting over the feeling that Jaisol Martinez left WHDH-TV’s meteorologist late in the year; she has since announced she has joined the news at WLS-TV, the ABC O&O in Chicago. As I am writing this, their 7:00 pm CT streaming newscast is on, and it’s not just it’s first anniversary (I guess the WCIU days are gone, as they did air off hour news that station) but Jaisol’s first night.
I did a vlog on how ESPN could’ve handled the breaking and heart-shattering news of the collapse of Buffalo Bills player Demar Hamlin, and the decision to “suspend” the game.
A judge set bail Tuesday for a homeless woman accused of giving birth in the woods and abandoning her newborn on Christmas night.
Alexandra Eckersley, 26, appeared in court by phone from a hospital and pleaded not guilty to charges including second-degree assault, endangering the welfare of a child, falsifying physical evidence and reckless conduct.
I can say raunchy things. I could be a creep at times. I could invade personal lives of journalists. I could say “you’re a fake news artist” if I wanted to. But I don’t because I respect the work and the job. I bet it’s not easy. It’s not to say that I disrespect the ones who disrespect themselves. Today that’s Amy Coveno from WMUR-TV in Manchester
Coveno who has a history of favoring “heroes” such as first responders has not been a punishable offense. In 2016 she was caught in a public email defending the Manchester police department after a mass department situation.
Coveno, who is involved with CASA the local child’s rights organization per to her bio on the station’s website was assigned to the story of a 26 year old woman giving birth pre maturely outside of a Manchester neighborhood- homeless living in a tent and dialed 9-1-1. The premature child was found elsewhere and the woman is charge for felony for abandoning the newborn. The Boston stations added (via confirmation) that the woman, Alexandra Eckersly is the daughter to the recently retired NESN color announcer for the Red Sox
WMUR-TV decided to just skate past it. Now with that aside Coveno 5,600th tweet was this cringe (via a reply that another reporter that tagged her before the identity was released.
“First responder are in my heart tonight” tagging the Manchester, NH police department, the Manchester (UK) fire department (most likely inadvertent) and the AMR Manchester Twitter (the private sector EMS company for the city) Then yours truly felt he had to call her out
Leave that tweet to yourself. This this the kind garbage that would be a fireable offense if corporate knew your style of journalism. Fun Fact you were on WGBH-TV's air 6+ years ago for similar remarks https://t.co/ey5DENcGrQ
— Steven (The Sorta Stable Autistic Minifig Newsie) (@MinifigNewsguy) December 28, 2022
then she went classy…
of course I couldn’t let up for a few hours until the Merrimack outlets gas leak from falling ledge became the area story. In fact copters were flying by the base operations of @MinifigNewsguy but with my new iPad 10 arriving my priorities were different.
But there are so many ethical violations Coveno did. First why is she still assigned to stories involving law enforcement and second why is she allowed to do work that should be the responsibly of the stations Community Connection program? Third – the CASA conflict?
Also why is News 9 Investigates being used? This reminds me of the Hingham Apple Store event the local stations use their enterprise journalism branding as entertainment value. It’s like “New Development” a catchphrase to tag a different part of the same story on the same wheel of the same newscast.
I don’t worry anymore as 2022 closes if I’m a credible newsie. People IRL are completely unethical and are lacking a filter and I’ve always held to a higher standard that local media in the Top Ten market that have stopped to a low level of ethical trash. It makes me sick.
Before the days 615 Music became a juggernaut in the 1990s; before WMAQ-TV’s Newswire. or KGO-TV’s News One, or KPIX’s Battery, or WRAL’s In-Sink, or KCBS/KCAL’s Viacom News Package, there was their allegedly first theme, Let’s Get Involved. Long before the days of newer versions with say a Let’s Get Involved V2; WKRN and 615 Music except for 2 years in almost 40 years had been homies as I tweeted out Sunday night. Other stations in the market had used 615 Music over the years, and 615 Music as of 2022 is just a brand of themes composed before the big merger in the Warner-Chappell’s Production Music division.
WKRN is still using 615 packages, Propulsion has been used since the station did a dramatic rebrand in late 2016. Meanwhile part creator of 615 Music, Randy Watchler and his adult son founded 11/One Music and competing station WSMV had switch to 11/One from 615 Music earlier this year. It’s unclear if WKRN would switch to 11/One given Nexstar tends to be settling with Stephen Arnold Music for any new themes, and any station still using 615 Music/Warner Chappell will probably keep using it.
You don’t appreciate someone until they leave. Jaisol (pronounced hi-sol) Martinez is leaving WHDH-TV after 4 years. I haven’t watched many of the stations until I decided to do newsgathering again, so it would make sense to monitor the stations right?
I am skeptical of meteorology in local news; and it’s not the usual suspects of they over-hype, or it’s not accurate, or not relevant in my back yard. Lot of it as the excessive data without it being applicable to the average viewers. Or should I say “average” in 2005 standards when the viewers were a bit more intelligent, no offense.
In the last five years, I’ve seen local media go down the tubes in local weather forecasting. The worse offense is the “[X] days to [Y] event” such as “52 days to Daylight Saving” or “29 days to 8:00pm Sunsets”. Or 12 Days to Spring Training in midst of a mild winter. I understand the intention of meteorologists trying to spruce up the viewers especially with depressing and polarizing news. Local news is not the place for meteorologists to make people feel better.
