Aaron Paul Vogel

It's been five days that I've been here, and two on the job, but so far my major area of concern with the town of Sacramento isn't the complete lack of terrain or the oppressive sun - that I swear is two stops brighter here than anywhere else I've been - but rather what am I going to eat? Thus far I've found a bar/coffee house /restaurant called Capital Garage that not only has free wifi, coffee and a decent bar menu, but serves up New Belgium brews and apparently has a wicked Sunday brunch that includes all you can drink mimosas! AND it's about a ten minute walk from work!

At the moment I'm writing at my latest find while carving my way through a crepe stuffed with spinach, tomato, avocado and sour creme. Crepe Village has a wide selection of both lunch and dessert crepes, though a woefully small number of beers on tap. I shall, however, be retuning for the California, as my current meal is called, despite a nearly unpalatable side of what they're calling potatoes.

As for the real reason I'm here, work is going well so far. I've spent the last few days getting to know the place, taking care of administrative details and meeting people. I've already helped Allen LaGuardia at the capital bureau capture and edit a couple of clips and tomorrow I've be video taping an interview one of the sports reporters is conducting for a long term project she's been working on doe over a year. My editor, Manny should be back either tomorrow or Thursday, so that should bring in a slew of new projects for the week. After that is anyone's guess.

I'm really enjoying the newsroom environment so far, but then I haven't really been IN it yet. Ask me in two weeks. Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

So, my first video work at my new internship was posted yesterday on The Sacramento Bee's entertainment section website, SacTicket. The video was a companion piece to an article written by staff art critic Edward Ortiz. Edward is a really nice guy to work with and I had fun listening to the work of the four composers he profiled.

So far, two weeks into it, I'm having a great time. It is a little odd having a management structure that I have to work through instead of just deciding for myself what pieces I do and do not want to do. This is one that I probably wouldn't have even known about if Manny hadn't been on top of it. The next months I'm here I'll be trying to get more in touch with the reports so that I know what's possible before the articles are written.

The Bee is still getting their program going, but Manny and all the other staff are terrifically enthusiastic about the prospects. There's clearly the will to make their website and particularly their multimedia much greater than it is currently.Hopefully that will will find a way.

Here's a link to the story:
http://www.sacbee.com/music/story/294244.html
And here's the video I produced:

This is the second same-day turn around video I've done for The Sacramento Bee while on internship. I used tape gathered from a live news feed from the funeral and two other video shooters as well as my own tape to put together a short piece.

CHP Officer Scott Russel, 46, a 22-year CHP veteran, was killed Tuesday July 31, 2007, after placing a spike strip in the path of a driver who had led officers on a 30-mile chase. He was standing on the median of Highway 50 near Shingle Springs when he was struck and killed.

This is the first same-day turn around video I've done for The Sacramento Bee while on internship. I went with reporter Christina Jewett to video her interview with the former DJ's of morning radio show The Rave on local station KDND. The pair were fired in January after an on-air contest, where contestants drank water until they couldn't hold their pee anymore - dubbed Wee for a Wii, turned fatal. After the contest 2nd place winner Jennifer Strange died of water intoxication at her home in near by Rancho Cordova.

The pair insist that they were made scape-goats for a management mistake; that they believed the contest had gone through proper channels to be approved - including being okay'd by parent company Entercom's legal department - and thus had no reason to stop the contest despite callers to the show insisting that contestants could die.

Last night I had a lengthy conversation from a good friend and fellow intern. She was bemoaning the number of things her editors were piling on her plate on top of already frenetic photo assignment schedule. Once they found out that she - one of two at the paper - knew how to do audio slideshows, they assigned her to compile audio slideshows for a number of other photographers currently working with her at the New York fashion week events.

This particular friend of mine is a quality over quantity kind of person, like myself, so I could completely understand why she spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking and refining two slideshows. What was astounding was that her editors, when told that the third would have to wait until tomorrow, couldn't understand why things that look good take time. My friend was unsure what to do as she'd already been working incredibly long hours and was paying with her health for doing so. You see, she has Lupus, and despite fending off the germs and struggling her way through arthritic joints thus far, The Wolf has finally caught up with her in the form of a cold. "I've touched subway railings and moments later eaten out of those same hands and been fine so far! Why now?"

This little anecdote brings up two points that I think are important for interns to think about. First, a complicating factor in her problems is her Lupus, though more so that she didn't remind her editors of her limitation after accepting the internship offer (she did state it on her resume), nor did she bring it up when it began to become apparent that her photography assignment schedule was exacerbating the problem. Had she been up front and built a rapport with her editor where she could let him know when the assignments were causing a problem and he could be ready for such a situation, the problem of her burnout may have been avoided. As it is she's worked herself sick.

The second half of the problem is unreal expectations by her editors. This is not, sadly, an solitary incident of an editor that's out of the loop. Instead it is a single example of an problem that is endemic in the industry: asking too much of too few people. There is, of course, something to be said for interns busting their butts to prove themselves and produce increasingly better results within their capabilities. It is an entirely different story when unreasonable expectations are placed on any staff member. As 30 year Daily News veteran Frank Van Riper writes in the August 2007 issue of Digital Journalist:

"The danger, though, is what happens when – in an increasingly bottom-line-hungry climate in which deadlines are constant – news organizations (or, more correctly, the suits upstairs who call the tune) feel they can pile various jobs onto a staffer who is in no position to complain, and still expect to get professional quality results in both words and images."

In the end I advised my friend to do what I think she knew she had to: stand up for herself and her body, and tell her editor what he can expect from her. With only 3 weeks left in the internship they're not going to let her go because of it and she won't come home three-quarters dead. She may not get a glowing review if another paper should call, but from what it sounds like, her editors didn't really pay much attention to her before this, so what kind of review would she get otherwise. Besides, if she (read WE) don't stand up for ourselves and our time now we (she) can't expect our editors to suddenly expect a reasonable amount of work. Once a precedence is set, particularly in new media, that's where the bar will always be. So in the end busting your ass and setting unreal expectations is not in your best interest

UPDATE: I got a little iChat update from my friend last night:

"[I'm doing] much better. Long story short I had a good talk with the editor. Said my quality work takes time, either give me that or I make so so slideshows faster. He appreciated my honesty and gave me 2 days off to recoup. He said I'm too valuable to him this week."

If you haven't heard of Discovery Channel's hit show Deadliest Catch you're clearly not paying attention to some of the only good television on these days. I'll spare the details for those of you in the know, and give everyone else a link to check it out for themselves: Deadliest Catch on Discovery. take a look and come back.

Well, it turns out that the brave souls who started and continue to film (they have extra camera now, but continue to work themselves) the show are Sacramento locals. Well, relatively local. One lives in Auburn and the other in Lotus. Sac Bee did a story on Doug and Todd Stanley a couple weeks ago. I'm praying I can talk to the guys about what they do, and maybe, just maybe, get them to come out and talk to Brooks NPPA about their gig. That would be amazing.

I spent the day helping out the other Sac Bee video shooter Andy Alfaro at the Sacramento Kings media day. It was a crazy, busy day! We arrived at the training center in Arco Arena around 12:30 in the afternoon to setup our lights and backdrop. An hour later we were ready to sit and wait for the players to show up. It was an interesting scene with easily two dozen different media outlets in attendance. One wall was covered with 3 different green screen setups, another with various photographers' dyna-lites and backdrops. With a half hour before the players arrival I took the opportunity to take a second camera to interview Manny (who was also there shooting and helping with sound) and Andy about what we was going on; kind of a behind the scenes thing.

This is a video I did to accompany a written piece about the Real McCoy ferry's pending retirement.

I feel I should redo the voice over and the FLV compression looks horrible.. but a friend wanted to see it. So here is the rough draft.

I was given the chance to photograph at Arco Arena for my first ever basketball shooting gig. Well, not so much gig as tagging along with Carl Costas, another Bee photog who was shooting for daily. Carl is an awesome guy, and would be fantastic to tag along with more often. Sadly I'm not here for photography, and I'm outta here in two days. So there goes that idea.. oh well, maybe some other day.