Headline Shooter

Dennis “Denny” Bossone began his career in 1911 as a twelve year old copyboy at a Philadelphia newspaper and eventually worked his way up to a darkroom soup boy and then shooting on the streets. When the dirty thirties rolled around, Bossone was a newsreel cameraman. After the newsreels faded away with the rise of television, he jumped to shooting news for KYW-TV. By the time he retired after a seven decade career behind a newsreel, still and television camera, Bossone had shot just about every major story in his market: the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, the arrest of Al Capone, the Hindenburg disaster, beauty pageants and countless thousands of minor stories forgotten to time.

Bossone’s colleagues from the newsreel era recall him shouting at Queen Elizabeth II, “Hey, Queenie, turn this way so we can take your picture.” The queen complied with his demands as did her father years earlier when Bossone pulled the same stunt. He knocked out a gangster with his camera for insulting his mother and took the life jacket off a corpse as a souvenir from another story among other activities frowned upon today but considered normal in the hard-driving, cigar, whiskey and fedora era of news gathering.

After the Hindenburg disaster, Bossone was sent to cover the aftermath and recalled in an interview, “I shot them pulling all the bodies out from under the airship. They brought them into a hanger. Boy that place stunk to high heaven. They told us not to take nothing, but I managed to stuff some pieces (of the zeppelin) into the case of my tripod. The Fox Theater put together a whole movie on the Hindenburg. My stuff was put on display outside the theater. It was a big success.”

Bossone died in April of 1993.

“Everybody look what’s going down…”

At least two of my readers found themselves Monday at a former Greensboro Woolworth’s where the first sparks of a tumultuous decade of fighting for equality were kindled two generations ago. While many protests were peaceful, some turned violent.

In those days, photogs were very visible targets for the frustrated, and those frustrations were occasionally taken out on them, landing some in hospitals with injuries. Marked station vehicles were burnt and cameras ripped off of shoulders and smashed.

In the midst of potential hostility towards white crews and hostility from police who believed that coverage of rioting would either prolong it or present a poor image of the police, a couple journalism organizations laid out guidelines for coverage of the events. Among the guidelines that were generated and publicized according to this list in this ye olde broadcast journalism book:

• Riots are to be fully covered
• Militants without a substantial following are to be regarded as publicity seekers. Newsmen subjectively determine what constitutes a substantial following.
• Camera crews should stay out of neighborhoods where trouble seems to be brewing, but violence has not yet broken out.
• Wherever possible, camera crews are to remain inconspicuous.
• News personnel who go into riot zones must wear hard hats and, weather permitting, padded jackets.
• News personnel are to say and do nothing to encourage further depredation. They must not linger, waiting for something to happen.
• Don’t be a hero. Run scared. Stay close to police or national guardsmen when you can.
• Dark clothing is advisable. Avoid wearing a coat and tie.
• Travel in pairs if possible. If it is safe to drive into the area do it with two men – one driving, one taking the pictures.
• Be mobile. Keep your equipment to a minimum so that you can move fast if a mob starts after you. Strap an extra lens to your belt and stuff extra film in your pockets.
• Don’t carry firearms or Mace.
• Use telephoto lenses whenever possible so you don’t have to get too close where danger exists.
• Tape windows of your car to avoid being cut by flying glass.
• Tape down the light switch on your car door so that when you open the door, the light doesn’t go on.
• Avoid getting into a dispute with anyone. Treat everyone with respect.
• Keep in touch with the office.

And the worse thing my two readers had to experience on Monday compare to the dangers their predecessors faced seems to have been a mild case of pack journalism and some rather chilly ambient temperatures.

Quotable Quotes – 2/3/2010

Two quotes from the “golden age” of television news as food for thought against the background of the upheavals in today’s television newsrooms.

“If there is a million-dollar fire in the middle of town, all of the stations in the area will have film of it that night, and it will all look pretty much the same – unless somebody had processor trouble. And chances are most of the reporting will be pretty similar. The same thing is true if there’s a plane crash at the local airport, the mayor resigns or a local bank is held up. The flashy, obvious stories are easy to cover. So the station which is determined to be outstanding in news coverage must push above this common level and press for a higher standard of excellence.”

- Richard Buddine, 1969
News Director of WSLS-TV, Roanoke, VA

“Let me play consultant for a moment. The reason you are being taken is that the answer to your news problem is right under your nose. In the first place, why buy someone else’s idea? Don’t you know what sort of person your neighbor’s like? Don’t you know better than any outsider the tastes of your friends and acquaintances? If not, I suggest that maybe you ought to be the one to move along. You’re suckers for a fad: editing by consultancy.”

- Water Cronkite.
December 1976 RTNDA speech decrying the rise of news consultants.

Silent Scrum

Early 1920s scrum of newsreel photographers interviewing Calvin Coolidge.

Adios AT&T

This post is mainly for the benefit of Chris Weaver’s curiosity a while back on Twitter about his station’s past relations with AT&T.

In the era this then clever piece of engineering/eff-u to AT&T between the three (then) ABC affiliates in North Carolina occurred, newsrooms if they wanted to share video had to lease broadband lines between the two stations from AT&T at the rate of $0.55 per mile per hour with a minimum one hour.

AT&T in this era, to protect their revenue stream, also was fighting hard against the then new technology of SNG. As we all know now, they lost that battle as well.