Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 5, 1993 TAG: 9301050025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Greg Edwards (staff)
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
REPORTER WANTS NO PART OF PACKS
Working as a reporter has its rewards (the paycheck not being at the top of the list), but sometimes I find myself in situations that make me wonder if forestry school wouldn't have been the better choice after all.A recent trip back home set me to wondering again.
I grew up in Norton, a small city within the borders of Wise County. Before coming to the Roanoke Times & World-News more than eight years ago, I was a reporter and then managing editor for a dozen years of The Coalfield Progress, a twice-weekly newspaper published in Norton.
On the morning of Dec. 7 as I commuted from Roanoke to Christiansburg, an Associated Press bulletin on the radio jolted me out of my I-81 catatonia. A coal mine, the announcer said, had exploded six miles north of Norton. Eight miners were trapped inside.
I stopped at our bureau office across from the New River Valley Mall long enough to make a few preliminary phone calls. Then photographer Alan Kim and I headed off on the 2 1/2-hour drive to the mine.
Before I left, I never had a chance to pack so much as a toothbrush. For the next four days, until the fate of the missing miners had been determined, I dressed myself a cheaply as I could from the shelves of the Norton Wal-Mart and depended on the charity of the Holiday Inn across U.S. 58A for a razor and comb.
But wardrobe wasn't important (except for the insulated underwear). Most of my time was spent in the mud and cold along a railroad track near the mine, trying to gather information from family and friends of the trapped miners and from state and federal officials. The rest of the time I spent trying to warm some feeling back into my feet as I sat in our old company car.
Local rescue squads, volunteers, the Salvation Army and the telephone company did their best to make the wait a little easier for the families of the trapped miners and, incidentally, for the two dozen reporters drawn to the mine by the disaster.
But despite the Good Samaritans, the waiting place by the train track - soaked with grief and sorrow and an occasional icy rain - was not a pleasant place to be.
For me, though, because Norton was home, there was some compensation.
At the mine and elsewhere around the coalfields during the week, I ran into several old friends and acquaintances, some of whom I hadn't seen for many years. One was the deputy sheriff I played rock 'n' roll with nearly 30 years ago; another the former high-school classmate who now is a federal mine inspector.
The worst part of the job that week was being part of a pack of reporters involved in covering a story important enough to bring out the national network guys.
I don't like journalistic packs and try to avoid them whenever possible. As in most any crowd, a kind of mob psychology seems to take over, and journalists begin doing things you hope they wouldn't do as individuals.
There was the pushing and shoving and jockeying for position so you could hear what was said when mine safety officials came to brief the press on the progress of rescue operations.
And it was funny and a bit humiliating watching reporters trying to work as they watched their colleagues and competitors out of the corners of their eyes. If it appeared one reporter was getting a jump on the others, the pack would come running to see what was up. This led to a lot of silly false alarms.
Some of the reporters handled themselves poorly around the grieving family members, thrusting microphones and cameras into their unwelcoming faces and generally showing a lack of sensitivity that often gives reporters a bad name.
After one cameraman nearly got into a fight with a family member, police used yellow crime-scene tape to seal off the bus area where families were waiting.
One name from my past, Ralph "Butch" Bradley, broadcast live from the disaster scene for WNVA, Norton's radio station. Butch normally does live sports reporting for the station. He wasn't familiar with the group behavior of a journalistic pack and was, consequently, appalled by what he saw.
Butch didn't hesitate to tell his listeners about his disgust. He spoke his piece within full earshot of the offending reporters.
In his live broadcast, Butch had a forum to say what some of the rest of us were thinking about the undignified spectacle of pack journalism.
That was his soapbox. This is mine.
Greg Edwards is a reporter in the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River Valley bureau.