Live TV will always truly be LIVE TV

As another snowy night hit New York City -- and the entire Northeast for that matter -- Diane Sawyer lead ABC World News with snow stories. Not only that but she did this portion of the newscast completely outside! Clever.

But I doubt she expected this to happen during the live newscast in Central Park...

When Healthy Competition Becomes Unhealthy

In TV news, there's nothing like a little healthy competition. The few stations in each viewing area, or market, are always going to compete over every newscast, whether it's the morning show, the noon show, the 5, the 6, the 10, or the 11. Yeah. That's a lot of competition. It's all a matter of: Who had the better stories? Who lead with the better story? Who has the better graphics? And so on and so forth.

But in New York City, the biggest market in the country, two stations are competing over...wait for it...the weather!

Yes, the weather. While that might seem silly, it actually makes perfect sense. After all, most viewers tune into the news specifically for the weather and tune out immediately after.

Here's a closer look at the new mobile weather coverage over which WCBS-2 and WABC-7 are battling.

And while we're at it, a look at Channel 7's "exclusive" Road Cam. (To avoid bias, I tried finding a video of Channel 2's Mobile 2, but had some difficulty. Sorry!)

Fave news story of the day: what one mayor is doing for his city

It seems as though amazing acts of kindness and generosity happen sparingly nowadays. But one New Jersey mayor confirmed that they do happen.

Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker proved that in his line of business, he works for the people. And with help -- no less -- from social media. Booker has taken to his Twitter account to communicate with Newark residents, snowbound and immobile. And not only has he tweeted at and direct message'd a number of individuals. He's also showed up on their doorsteps, at their cars, and on their streets. The New York Daily News reports.

So you want to be in TV news?

This may be a silly video, but it is hilarious in that it's TRUE.

Spreading holiday cheer...from work

I know, I know. It's been a while. But I hope to re-ignite my use of this blog, when I have the time.

That being said, time as reporter, as I have learned, is quite limited. And that includes the holidays. During the holiday season, reporters must make sacrifices: they must choose which holiday they'll be willing to work in exchange for getting off for others. As a Jewish reporter, my sacrifices are less severe. How do I mean? Well, I don't celebrate Christmas. And being that I work in a small bureau alongside one other reporter, who is Christian and celebrates the holiday, I thought it was only fair to let him have the day off to be with his family.

So I worked 6 days this week, including Christmas Eve day and Christmas. (That meant no work over Thanksgiving or New Year's for me.) The work was easy. During the holidays, the stories are light, fluffy, happy, and easy to write and report on. But I'm not going to lie and say I didn't spend most of my shift thinking about all the families and young children who were at home, curled up near a Christmas tree unwrapping gifts.

No, I do not celebrate Christmas. Chanukah is my holiday, and that passed a few weeks ago. But like anyone else, I enjoy Christmas movies, the music, and the overall holiday spirit that comes along with December 25th. And that being said, it was difficult to work through the day. Not to mention being without my own Christmas family tradition: Chinese food and a movie with my family.

In addition to working on my story, I spent the day sending text messages and making phone calls to my friends celebrating the day. I took one for the team. I am not writing this post to complain, but I wanted to make note that even though, the world stops for most people on major holidays, it does not stop for us reporters.

So I worked. I had fun. I put together a nice story, and met some great people today. And maybe next year, I'll get off for Christmas and work another holiday. Maybe not. But that's what it's all about, people: making sacrifices and sending holiday cheer to the ones you love.

Merry Christmas :)

The Summer Slump

It's been a little over three months since I started working, which means I've really only worked full-time so far during the summer. I've covered a lot of interesting things this summer: homicide, marines returning home, festivals galore, hospital mergers, and the discovery of human remains.

But these kind of stories don't happen very often, at least not during the summer. In fact, news in the summer is extremely slow. This is what I like to call the Summer Slump.

It's something about kids and teachers being off from work, the weather, and vacations that make it increasingly difficult to find actual newsworthy things happening. In fact, the other day I called the Chemung County executive for an interview about a story I was working on. Unfortunately, he couldn't do it because he was on vacation in Martha's Vineyard. He did pass me along to his deputy executive. But allow me to note that even HE admitted how slow things are in the summer. Before I got off the phone with him, he said, "It's the last week before Labor Day, so I know there's really nothing going on. But I'm telling you, things will pick up once school starts."

And that got me thinking. Does the entire working world revolve around school, students, and education? Is that why (according to my sources) there's so much more happening during the school year instead of the summer months? Or is it just because of the weather, as people generally take off from work more often in the summertime and plan trips?

I'm not really sure which reason is the right one. But either way, it's been noted among my reporter friends and I that it is SLOW GOING in our area right now. I'm ready to move on from the Summer Slump and hope that come the Fall, we pick up the pace a little bit around here.

When Local News Becomes an Internet Sensation

The following news story was meant to be taken seriously:

For obvious reasons, it was not. It has now become an Internet sensation that's been edited into videos like this:

I can only hope to one day produce an original news story that becomes as hugely popular as this one has. Without all the notoriety and teasing.