As I was covering the South Plainfield, NJ fire, I took a couple behind the scenes pictures to share.
The first I title 'How many reporters can you fit in a den?'
While covering the South Plainfield, NJ fire, there was only one person with video of the 3am fire. His name was Ivan, and Ivan lived right across the street from the home. Well, of course, all the media wanted to see the video so Ivan was kind enough to invite us into his home to watch it on his television.... all 20 of us. It was a stream of cameras, tripods and equipment bags pouring into his den, packed in pretty tight for the viewing of the video. It was very kind of him to allow this, and he looked a little overwhelmed at the time, watching the line of reporters seem to get longer and longer coming into his home, but I think he really helped us better our stories by allowing us to see what happened from his viewpoint.
The other picture I have for you today I call "Microphone Jenga".
When there's a press conference with a podium, there are plenty of places to clip on microphones or put up a stand, but that is not the case when the press conference in the middle of the street. This is what happens. You only see a part of the pile here... In all there were probably 20 microphones and recording devices piled in this stack. Only about half of of the microphones you see here are actually cliped in or attached to a stand, the others are balanced. And when it comes time to add a new microphone in, you have to balance very carefully because it doesn't take much for the pile to get top-heavy and tip. Usually one of us would hold the pile as a new mic was added to make sure the whole thing didn't tumble over. But even we are not perfect at Jenga. There were a couple times the pile started to go over and we had to reset the mics.
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