1.) Bring a large bag of quarters with you when heading out to the hurricane. Upon arrival, immediately use it to empty out the hotel hallway vending machine before all the other journos get there.

2.) Never leave the hotel. If you must leave, then never leave the crew van. Satellite trucks are preferred vehicles. They don’t blow over too easily. 

3.) Satellite truck operators always stash extra rain gear in truck. Steal it when they’re not looking. 

4.) If you can’t bring yourself to steal stuff, barter for extra rain gear with booty from vending machines. You’ll need it. Snickers bars are most valuable.

5.) Bring extra AA batteries and extra dry tube socks (men’s). Use for currency to get first feed priviledges from sat. truck operator if only one truck is operational for entire country’s network news providers. 

6.) Don’t look in other journos’ hotel rooms. You want to be able to say you know nothing when all of you are returned to civilian life. 

7.) Make friends with the fattest first-responder in charge first. They won’t want to have to walk anywhere either, and they may offer you a ride in their super-duper motorized whatever. 

8.) Bring drugs, beer and ice. Share only with those who’s hotel rooms have all four walls left.  

9.) Law-enforcement will lie their butts off to journalists. For sport. Never trust them for start/end presser times. Or for directions. 

10.) Everyone around you will wig-out from stress and sleep-dep long before you do because they all think they’re too important to the disaster recovery effort for sleep. Get your 8-hours and they’ll make you president by Week 2.  

11.) Stay on-scene post-hurricane as long as you possibly can. Milk the post-disaster scene for all the dopey, cliched features you can. Your paycheck, once you load all your OT onto your time sheet, will do the happy dance when you do get back.

12.) Never drink until you’ve fed everything to NY. And the sat. truck has powered down. If NY desk calls you to feed something after you’ve started drinking tell them the sat. truck has to save gas for the morning shows. 

13.) Buy the hotel bar a round by first or second night on scene. During a hurricane it’ll just be full of other media. They’ll get you back when you’re all still there 10 days later.  

14.) Don’t forget to get your mean, grouchy, sleep-deprived cameraperson to get the final shot when all is said and done.

• EXAMPLE: When Dr. Bob Sheets finally left the broadcast desk at the National Hurricane Center after two solid weeks of around-the-clock coverage before, during and after Hurricane Andrew (in which his own home had been destroyed) one veteran network news producer had the great cinematic sense to order his cameraman to get the shot of Sheets laying down the lav mic and walking away.

15.) Try not to swagger in front of the desk jockeys when you get back to the newsroom. 

As I’ve died and gone to Atlanta media circus heaven lately it’s been hard to break away to play ringmaster by providing the necessary, critical blog posts. Facebooking and Twitter alone are about to do me in.

Honestly, I’ve been having too much fun sitting back with my peanuts and cotton candy watching from here in the cheap seats. But someone’s gotta play local TV news farm media critic in this town, other than @RichardsDoug; and there is, of course, no one better qualified to do so than me.

Thus, let me take a moment to pry open the laptop and reflect on just last night’s Atlanta local TV media hightlights and lowlights before I go back in for more. (Thank goodness for that new, 4-5pm block from Channel 2, eh?)

Last night WSB-TV, or WizBee or Death Star Two as it’s called in the biz around here, was on disjointed fire! When they open a 6pm with longtime, hysterical crime reporter Mark Winne (his Facebook fan page is here) rest assured we’re going to be served drama.

The local TV news station that can’t do ‘em some news drama, in a city as ragingly dysfunctional as Atlanta, is just dead to me. Otherwise, why bother to exist? Anyway… getting to the point.

Winne led-off with pretty good shrieking over the hilariously mule-headed refusals by a few implicated (now kinda sorta fired) APS school administrators to… go down without a public fight. I think they were bellowing for a publicized *hearing*, whatever the heck that is. Good luck with that tall order.

The best part was a replay of Winne grilling, weeks ago, one of the most mule-headed APS admins fingered in the whole royal cheating mess, Tamara Cotman.

Low and behold, Cotman was, once again, right up in our living rooms. Still looking slouched down and bloated from all the investigatory stress and educator cake she’s been consuming over the years, defensive and sliding down a slippery conference room leather chair slope of no-where-else-to-go prayer.

Cotman was posed in the classic ATL local TV media perp tableau – lawyer on one side, Mark Winne leaning in with a question on the other. Talk about media places you never want to be seen in this town.

Bless her tired, stressed, cake-laden heart. I almost felt sorry for her, as, so far, Jesus has yet to come to her emotional or otherwise rescue. Maybe next year. Keep those prayers and cards and letter coming, Atlanta!

Then Monica Kaufman Pearson Kaufman, Atlanta’s longtime news reader with the lively hairdos and the hay for brains, reported in from her Bev Hall-tagging Maui boondoggle with… an apology! For going all the way across the Pacific to, like, do her job and stuff.

She actually apologized to sad sack Doc Hall, on sneaky cam, for attempting to commit journalism on her. I think I may have rolled onto the peanut-strewn floor and howled at that point. Never, EVER, Channel 2, send Monica off to do Mark Winne’s job.

Then a spell of dead-serious sanity set in, boo, with a far-too-sober Richard Belcher package, whereby news and not just wind was broken at the Atlanta Rotary Club. Hearing aids were turned to 11 to catch one of Georgia’s most notorious philanderers, Mike Bowers, talk about… cheating. Talk about your *wall of silence.* (Oh let’s go there! But some other time.)

Freshly verbated finger-wagging for the pleasuring of angry old white men by the state’s investigators, Bowers and Bob Wilson, was the main luncheon course downtown yesterday at Rotarian World.

Missing in media action since day one of the APS cheating was, alas, Atlanta’s famed ape-slayer, PI Richard Hyde, also part of the state’s investigative team.

I expect to be media-raptured if we ever get to see Hyde on-cam. Which, like Jesus coming back and walking the streets of the A, ain’t gonna happen, kiddies. But a gal who consumes local TV news media the way Caren West buys shoes can still dream, right?

Overall, Lori Geary was the real j-school honors student/adult in the WSB-TV journalism Big Top tent last night. She didn’t back-down, nor did she apologize for doing the job she was sent to do, when she sat down with the mayor for a one-on-one in a scary-looking parking garage.

Because we always pull-up a chair and have a nice chitchat in creepy, dank parking garages in the ATL. Let’s hope the tires squeal real good on the black SUVs when they come roaring in.

Geary grilled Mayor Reed on the wave of criticism (felt where I have no idea, except maybe on my Facebook Wall) he’s, the mayor, undergone for writing-up and pushing through some cheesy legislation long ago when he was a state senator.

Legislation he, Kasim Reed, hammered home to fruition/passage that gave Dr. Bev Hall moreorless absolute powers to get out there be the best darn bully she could be. So… she did. Success!

Mayor Reed was in no mood for journalism or journalists, and he was mad and agitated when refusing to apologize for *not being a psychic.* You gotta love when Reed is fired-up. He becomes his blazingly verbal best then, and he’s a sight to behold. The man is an angry rhetorical event just waiting to happen. Kasim don’t do nice as well as he does pissed-off. And we love him for that. Right? Right.

All in all, by 6:30pm on July 11, 2011 Atlanta had gone to Apology Hyperdrive. And I was holding on for the ride.

I do wish I’d had a chance to stop by the other TV news farms last night, but WSB-TV was rolling out so many big guns all over town I just couldn’t let go of the joystick.

WXIA always does a good journalism job though, and their ability to take a news block and write it into a cohesive, comprehensible unit is far and above the best in this market. Which isn’t saying much, but they at least try to do graceful and synchronized breaking news writing. Most don’t even bother.

That is what Peter Jennings was once able to do so perfectly that no one’s, national or otherwise, been able to master since - segue, write us, the audience, seamlessly and gracefully through an entire news block – while focused on one whopper of a breaking story. Without the jarring fits and starts and sputters and hacked news writing (and prompter-reading) that make local TV news such a circus-y fun parody of itself.

Yeah, I still miss Peter. On a big news day. And Atlanta’s having some deliciously big news days pretty much every day during this APS cheating *investigation.*

Try to keep up.

(Source: mostlymedia.wordpress.com)

Mayor Kasim Reed needs to stop diddling around with statewide Republicans (like they’re gonna do something, statewide, in the future for him… hahahahahah!), stop all this silly and premature campaigning (for a congressional run), and stay home like a good mayor and nanny APS. It’s sinking fast. And taking our reputation with it. Come back Kasim. We need you MUCH more than they do. 

10.) Neil Boortz - because he should always be right at the bottom of any list for making sub-par intelligence white guys over 50 believe that if they bellow something loud enough in a public space someone will actually care about them.

9.) Tom Houck - because every time you walk into Manuel’s someone’s at the bar yelling, *Well just fuck Tom Houck!*

8.) Aaron Gould Sheinin - because he can always be counted on for a complete Twitter over-reaction.

7.) Jeff Clark - because someone of such legendary, enduring douchebaggery should always be included somewhere on this list.

6.) Don Farmer - he retired from this market long ago, but his downright mean, ugly douchbaggery lives on. Just hopefully not in his adorable son, Justin.

5.) Ken Edelstein - because he was so socially inept he could insult even me.

4.) Joe Weber - because all the bird calls and bad on-air Bukowski readings can’t artificially inseminate coolness and youth into a personality loaded with all the charm of a Varsity naked dog accidentally dropped off the North Avenue bridge.  

3.) Don Lemon - because it really was a totally mean-girl thing to call Josh Lev *nerd candy*, on-air and to his face at CNN. (I mean, did you see the light just go out of Lev’s eyes right in front of us, or what?!)

2.) Josh Lev - because Don Lemon couldn’t tell a lie; Lev is indeed national nerd candy now. (How the hell did THAT happen?!)

1.) John Lemley - because his WABE show City Cafe is so insipid it makes the Lawrence Welk Show gals look like Tilda Swinton in a French art movie.

Quote Du Jour. *I’ve had clients’ man-boobs photo-shopped out before.*

Rita Skeeter hired to edit Murdoch and Jobs’ Daily daily. Entire operation overseen by Mrs. Coulter’s Oblation Board. http://bit.ly/bqOB6f

The Southern News Network Daily is out! http://bit.ly/a57ymG ▸ Top stories today by @mattstech @TVAmy @Lee_Leigh @TBD