At the beginning of the VO Patrol shift, I pitched three different story ideas. None of them worked out. I talked with my producer and she suggested another story, but when I went to the location and to the offices, I found both locked. Down on my luck, I returned to the station at about 4 p.m., and then saw this story on the wire about Columbia Police errors essentially causing courts to throw out (or potentially throw out) more than 100 cases against local businesses who sold alcohol to minors.
I called the city prosecutor, who couldn't talk on camera because she had to leave the office early to pick up her car from the mechanic. But luckily, she gave me about 10 minutes on the phone, and she helped talk me through the story and fill in the information gaps from the AP copy. With that, I set out, the producers having given up on me for the 5 and 6 newscasts (they understood, they knew I was working hard), looking to put together something for the 10.
After two local liquor stores turned me down, I remembered that the city prosecutor had mentioned that bars and restaurants had been involved in some of the cases. So I tried the first bar I could think of: Bengals. I talked with the owner for about 15 minutes about her multiple beefs with the police, and then interviewed her on camera. I had a VO Patrol.
The story probably deserved to be packaged, but without a police or city source on camera, it wouldn't fly as a full-blown story. The producers and I agreed that putting me onset helps me represent the voice of the city prosecutor, the interview that I couldn't get on camera, to the viewers. We used vidsqueeze graphics to combine video with a list of relevant facts about the story. It was a long, strenuous, but in the end, a very rewarding shift.
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