KINDERGARTEN...ALL
OVER AGAIN
By Mark Neuling
Photojournalist
The
news department was on life-support. The entire network
had been given 60 days notice, but it was news that took
the first casualties. The final newscast went dark
on a Friday. By the following Tuesday the staff was
cut nearly in half. There was no longer any
need for the reporters, assignment producers, web producers,
the Washington D.C. bureau or the managing editor. Nearly
overnight a graveyard of darkened computer screens populated
our once vibrant newsroom. The only ones left to
soldier on would be nine or ten of the producers, our talent
and of course the photographers. There were
still specials to produce and a weekly magazine show to
get on the air. And the shooters could now be farmed
out to other shows on the network. Why hire freelance
camera crews anymore, the countdown was underway.
In
a way I was lucky, I had jury duty. From May into mid-June
it stretched. It happened to be in the same courthouse
that the Scott Peterson case was being tried at. Day
after day the same camera crews waited outside, getting the
same shots; waiting for the same people to enter and exit the
courthouse. I was glad I didn’t have
to cover an event like this. |
Chris Leary, host of “Fresh Gear,” heading
for the final roundup of that show.
© Mark Neuling 2004
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Brendan Moran – Producer of the show “Fresh
Gear.”
©
Mark Neuling 2004 |
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Chi-Lan Lieu, producer and
hostess Stephanie Siemiller during the final taping
of “Fresh Gear,” in
San Francisco. The show is scheduled to resumed production
in Los Angeles.
©
Mark Neuling 2004 |
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Jessica Corbin and Dave
Koehn on a “Geek-Chic” shoot.
San Francisco, California.
©
Mark Neuling 2004 |
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Now
and then I would drop by work to check my emails and catch
up with the latest details of the sale. A couple
of the producers envied me and my days spent in court. Their
moral couldn’t be any lower. It was becoming
tougher for them to come into work each day. There
was no help. There was no managing editor to approve
scripts, no interns to log tapes, no administrative assistant
to schedule trips. As each producer finished his
or her project they too would pack their belongings into
cardboard boxes, send out a goodbye email and have their
exit interview. Still on the payroll but not needed
any more and each faced with an uncertain future. |
But
the shooters carried on. My time as a juror ended and
I returned to work. Even though we had been told that
we didn’t
have to come in if we had no shoots scheduled most of us stuck to
our regular
morning routines and arrived for our normal shifts. Shoots
got added and shoots got canceled, just like always. Most
days we left after five or six hours. There were no more day-of
stories or last second stand ups to shoot. No assignment editor
to answer to.
My wife and I had to consider our options. I had a job waiting
but it was part-time and the start date was still unclear. Our
first decision was to find medical benefits before our coverage ended. My
wife has never in her adult life been without full medical coverage
and she was worried. COBRA was an expensive option. So
we shopped around, we found an insurance plan that was reasonable. We
could afford the monthly payments only because of the huge deductible. Our
daughter and I were approved almost immediately, but there was a delay
in my wife’s approval. For two months we bought an emergency
plan good only for thirty days. Eventually we got word that my
wife had been approved and we could finally breathe a sigh of relief. We
have medical benefits now; but vision and dental will have to come
entirely out of our own pockets.
The countdown at work continued. Every week or so the IT guys
would check in on those of us still working to see who was left. The
vacated desks would be stripped of their hardware. The
computers and monitors would be placed on a gurney and rolled downstairs
to be stored in a morgue of sorts. There were dozens and dozens
of computers, keyboards, monitors, cables and assorted paraphernalia
stacked up.
As people left and departments closed down a garage sale of sorts
happened. Tables
sprang up in several places with” FREE” signs. There
was software, books, magazines, binders, mugs, shirts, and key chains – all
kinds of junk found new homes. The promotions department had
the fire sale of all time. The most popular
items were the martini glasses with the company logo embossed on
it. Dozens of these trinkets eventually found their way on
to eBay. One former employee was actually auctioning off his
company ID card.
| Word
came for us to ship our camera gear to the new owners in
Los Angeles. We had to tell the three or four producers
left that time was up; there would be no more shoots. One
morning we loaded our cameras, tripods, lights, monitors
and audio gear into their travel cases and drove them over
to the studio for shipping. Someone commented that
this amount of gear could outfit a small production company. “All
they’d need was a jib,” I said. Scott,
the youngest shooter on our staff, lingered for a few moments
over the small mountain of video equipment that we were
leaving behind. We had all wanted the chance to buy
some of our gear but we never got confirmation that we’d
be allowed to. It was time to just walk away. |
Dave Koehn and Scott
Stoneback prepare their video equipment for shipment
to Los Angeles.
© Mark Neuling 2004 |
|
I
had a month off. My wife and I each had more time to
exercise. Mostly
I swam and biked. The scale never budged but my pants seemed
to fit a bit looser; my shirts just a bit tighter. I kept
busy gardening or painting. My wife was glad to have me around
in the afternoons to help with chores. We had time to talk
with each other. I edited home videos and scanned old slides. I
took lot
of photos of my daughter with her cousins. The severance
check came sooner than planned; but the taxes ate up more of it
than was
expected. I was beginning to enjoy my “retirement” a
bit too much; my wife was getting anxious. I still had only had
a tentative start date for my new job and I hadn’t heard
much.
At the very end of July our daughter started kindergarten, it’s
a year-round school. She’s not even five yet. On
her first day of school she sat on the bench outside her classroom,
her brown eyes big with anticipation. She wasn’t afraid;
two years of pre-school have removed any trace of fear about school. But
it was a new school, a bigger playground, different rules and a new
teacher. She looked around for familiar faces from pre-school,
but her classmates were all new as well. I got to take
my little girl to her first day of school. For the parents it
was a grand photo-op. I shot ten or eleven minutes of video,
and even though it was only footage of my daughter's first day
at school, it will be some of the most important video I ever record.
The next day I got the call to come in and start orientation for
my new job.
For me each day will mean driving in a new direction to work, to
a new building with new access codes. There will be a new vehicle
to drive and maintain. There will be a different camera and tripod
each with its own unique quirks to figure out. There will be
new reporters and editors to work with; it will mean a different kind
of news with a different style of shooting. There will be live-shots
again, but this time the video signal will be beamed thousands of miles
to a satellite in the sky and broadcast throughout the country. There
will be computers and printers and email addresses to learn. I pay
for my cell phone now. And there will be the self-doubt to conquer
once more; can I rise to the level and expectations of the new job. It’s
a lot like the first day of kindergarten…all over again.
This isn’t meant to be a rant against the system. I’m
grateful to have another opportunity to work in this industry with
one of the industry leaders. But the reality for more and more
photojournalists, be they video or still, is that it is now a world
of freelance work. We will have to pay for our own insurance,
Social Security and retirement plans; there will be no more paid vacations. We may not even
work for the networks or stations that we shoot for. We’ll
work for the temp-agencies or production houses that they contract
out with. We
will compete with kids out of college for ever shrinking dollars. All
I know is that my wife and daughter are counting on me, and this sure
beats selling cameras at Wal-Mart for a living.
© Mark Neuling 2004
theneulings@juno.com
The opinions expressed are still, solely those of the author.
© Mark Neuling 2004
Email address is now – theneulings@Juno.com
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