The Bear

There had never been a pitcher who'd thrown as hard as her.

Some , including myself, stood right up in the bleachers at Fairport's Lyndon Road Little League Fields, when they realized what they were seeing. She was ten, but she was throwing with the intimidating velocity and drive of a varsity player.

Even her wild misses against the backstop looked l ike they hurt. Her catcher could not catch her.



Imagine what the Mets were thinking.



The score in the bottom of the fifth didn't even seem to matter, even though the hometeam Metropolitans were leading the fireballer and her team by two runs. But even the Mets seemed to sense scoring for the evening was over.

 

The fireballer... Emily was her name.... ripped strikes past a couple of Mets. Then she walked a few. And then to the plate came The Bear.



 Clare had always been known as The Bear not for her ferocity, but, for her cuteness: Clare Bear. She was also what her coach called the Mets "closer." She'd already entered in the top of the fifth as the team's pitcher and struck out the side.

And Clare, like Emily, had been trained in pitching. Eight weeks of Saturday mornings that winter at the Perinton Rec Center learning the mechanics had started Clare on her pitching journey. She pitched half as fast as 

Emily, who looked like she'd started that journey years before. She was two years older than Clare.



And so, Clare took her place in the batter's box. Emily, who as she had been doing all inning, toed a spot on the mound not on the rubber, but four feet behind it. It was a good sport gesture on her part to be fair.

 And then....

WHAP!



Little leaguers not used to standing in against a pitcher who knows how to pitch can dream up a lot of terrible places where a hard thrown ball can hit them. The head. The back. The knee. Thirty-eight years of being around little league and not once have I heard of a kid fearing, or ever actually getting hit, square in the stomach. 

Until Clare took her first pitch from Emily.



 

The Bear howled in pain and immediately doubled over. Parents on the Mets sideline gasped.

Mom was there by the time she'd reached the bench, surrounded by coaches with ice and water at the ready. Clare's teammates seemed stunned. Alyssa, next up, looked angry. She swung hard at three high pitches to end the inning in an apparent effort to avenge her fallen teammate.

 



"I'm going to have a huge bruise on my stomach," said Clare in a half sob, still wincing on the bench. Dad came to the bench and asked: "Clare, do you want to go back into the game and show them how tough you area?" Clare's coach echoed the question and said she could go out and pitch again.



And so out Clare trotted. 

As soon as she began her warmups, she returned to the same broad windup and form that made her a pitcher that caught coaches eyes. Three strikes later, she'd retired her fourth straight batter. A tap back to the mound, and Clare had tossed to first for the second out.

 Two batters would reach on walks, including Emily, who'd waited out an 0-2 count. Then Clare dispatched the opponent's last threat on strikes and a cool spring evening came to a close.




Clare left the dugout with the game ball signed by every teammate and Mets coach. She didn't know it, but she'd enjoyed a night of a lifetime. For how often do any of us get to teach so many people at once life's most important lesson.



That is, when you're knocked down, get up and keep going.

Your News Now

9:03PM. March 24, 2009. T-minues 9:57 minutes to launch.

The word comes from an attorney hired by Time Warner Cable to secure the naming rights to the Local News Division's new 24 hour news channel. The brand is ours.

YNN.

Several years ago, a North Carolina businessman copyrighted those three letters as a name for a newsletter he created. About the sock industry. Your News Now. It hadn't been used in that way for years. The newsletter sunset. Its copyright remained.

YNN became the the name of choice for TWC's newest news channel months back. We could not tell people about it until launch day. The Buffalo News actually broke it in a story it ran on the eve of our first newscast.

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/617291.html

In the final days of preparation for this new way to do 'round the clock news, every member of the organization worked as hard as they ever had. By the final hours before launch, keyboards clicked and airchecks sounded in the newsroom, while Chinese food cooled and the clocked rolled to launch day. Buffalo's mayor and Erie County's chief executive will help us cut the ribbon on the operation.

To the 20 people who'll form YNN's first staff. Good luck. And as you know, I'm glad you're here.

So many people to thank. The entire TWC staff at Chicago Street. Thank you for letting us in.

Joe Truncale, Mike Chan, Brad Shapiro and the entire IT/Engineering staff of NY1, EP Jeremy Bitz, Upstate Coordinator Anthony Proia, and the news directors from TWC's New York News Channels: Bernie Han, Gary Holmes, Ron Lombard and, especially, Ed Buttaccio, who's managing the new channel with me. Pat Obermeir and Scott Christiansen, for their creative senses, Maria Hancock, for her dollar sense, Hector Reyes, Byron Folgar and Tara Guttridge, for their sense of people. And for Steve Paulus, for sensing someone who really wanted to do a job for him.

My brothers and their families, and my parents have been constant support during this transition to a new life.

My children: Katie, Clare and Caroline, were willing to let Dad be a kid again and commit to something he believes in.

And for Sara, who's used to carrying me, but never had to carry the family the way she's had to the last 11 weeks. Words can not meet my feelings for the sacrifice you've made. Love you, Do.

So here we go. Launch was a climb. The summit's ahead.

Let's see what we can see.

Meet The Band

Introducing: The men and women of Time Warner Cable News Buffalo.

Seated from left: Jennifer Bernstein, Reporter; Samantha Lordi, Sports Reporter/Anchor; Nicki Mayo, Reporter, Molly Hirschbeck, Assignment Desk Editor.

Second Row: Josh Borisoff, Operations Supervisor, Kassata Edwards, Anchor, Katie Bogey, Reporter, Anne Lithiluxa, News Assistant, Katie Morse, Reporter/Anchor, Giselle Phelps, Reporter/Anchor, Ben Arnet, Sports Reporter/Anchor; Bill McCarthy, Executive Producer, Jen Markham, Anchor, Jason Carroll, Operations Technician, Jim Aroune, Executive Editor.

Back Row: Jason Torreano, Reporterl; Allison Minto, News Assistant, Doug Ruffin, News Assistant; Kyle Johnson, Senior Assignment Editor;

They'll hit the air at 7 p.m. on March 25, 2009.

Got Your Back

Five more joined the ranks of the Time Warner Cable's new 24 hour news channel in the final week of February. And in this age of the backpack journalist, some of ours arrived with plenty of backpacking experience

Allison Minto has already backpacked through some of Buffalo's most at-risk neighborhoods to give citizens not used to having a voice the opportunity to explain why things are the way they are where they live.

Another arrived after backpacking up Mount Sinai to see the sun rise. Anchor Jen Markham considered it more of a vacation because.. well.. it was. She returned from Egypt and started a day later in our newsroom.



Still another, Jason Torreano, can tell you stories of his backpacking experience working with children in sub-Africa. that was before he worked as an anchor and reporter in Bismarck, North Dakota.

And with Doug Ruffin, Nicki Mayo, Samantha Lordi and Kassata Edwards, they doubled our staff in a single day. The final members of the news channel in Buffalo arrive in the next week.

We're set for a vigorous three-week crash course in a Dalet newsroom system that will help us get on the air before the end of March. The system delivers A-Z, from assignment to archive, CG to ENG, edit to air. When we're working on delivering the news, it has our back.

As we set the foundation for our news organization; from the completion of the primary anchor set to the gathering of news stories to be aired when we hit the ground running, we are hearing from a lot of folks excited about our arrival.

The intensity of this new endeavor will pick up exponentially in the coming weeks.

Can't wait.

On Board

In their previous lives, they'd merely been journalists.

Now (from left) Jason Carroll, Josh Borisoff, Katie Bogey, Bill McCarthy and Jenn Bernstein (below) can say they are trailblazers too.

 They were the first in the door of Buffalo's new

 24 news channel and that meant beginning to build the routines and the systems that would help a new group of people serve a region through electronic news gathering available on Time Warner Cable in Buffalo. 

The six will always remember their first weekend together in western New York,

responding to the crash of Continental Flight 3407 in Clarence. By summer, they'll 

realize that the first organizational steps they took in the third week of February are the ones that'll help them and the rest of the station's staff succeed.

To be fair, our two Operations guys, Jason and Josh, have been down this road before. Both have helped launch news channels. For Josh, it's the second with Time Warner after helping our Binghamton operation get off the ground.

 But every one of the half dozen will be leaders in their own way, reinforcing our methods as the group comes together.

Another half dozen staff members arrive in the final days of February. The rest, the following week. Two-thirds have local roots, like Bill (Angola), Molly (Kenmore) and Katie (Jamestown) One-third are from within the Time Warner Cable news division.

By then, we'll have three weeks of hardcore technical training before we start our news wheel turning at the end of March.

Coming Together

Sleep had lasted 20 minutes when the call came.






R News' nightside anchor, Amy Young, was on the other line. The plane crash in Buffalo. It was more than first reported. Much more.




In a queasy daze, CNN came on with a fiery orange, Skyped image. "They were gone."

The next call went out to our new Operations Supervisor. "Josh, we have work. A plane's gone down in Clarence... I'll meet you."

Perhaps two hours after this Buffalo News photo was snapped near the crash site of Flight 3407, Josh and I met with Time Warner Cable News' other crew , R News Casey Bortnick and Scott Barstow at the command site for the response, less than a mile away from impact.

With the adrenaline injection you get from covering a lightning bolt story like a plane crash, you learn a lot about who you work with. With Josh, I learned that while he could be industrious at a disaster scene and rugged enough to stand on ice for hours in frigid temperatures on no sleep, he couldn't necessarily stand watching, or listening, to me dry shave in a car.

Three days of coverage later, joined by a half dozen brand-new Buffalo news channel staffers, and R News' regular staff of veteran news people, we'd come together to cover the tragedy. Coordinating with TWC's news division, we delivered all the crucial information on the response.

What a first assignment together. We've only had time in our off hours to absorb the sadness of this happening, and what it means to the community we will serve.

What we learned in that weekend was the job is the job, no matter where you do it. Stay on top of things, be curious, agile relentless. The news channel's first six-pack of workers pushed themselves in ways they'd never done. Videojournalists Katie Bogey and Jenn Bernstein both delivered live updates; Jenn became the first in the division to go live via Skype. Both were introduced to the old fashioned way of remote linear editing. Josh and his partner on our operations end, Jason Carroll, kept the video coming. E.P. Bill McCarthy had covered a lot of news in his career, but never a horror like this. And for Molly Hirschbeck, running the desk for the first time, she learned how to make things work for people in Buffalo and across the state.

And so, between live shots and news conferences and Skype feeds, we came together in a way we'd not expected. In the best of ways, by trusting each other and giving each other opportunities to succeed in a job we want.

None of what we did made air in the market we will serve. Most of the rest of the state saw it, and that's the way it'll be, until we introduce Buffalo to what the news division can do.

They're the boldest colors I've ever seen in a Time Warner Cable building. Whole Wheat, a warm, yellow-based earth tone, which those who study color's effect on people will tell you, brings subtle energy to those around it. Triumph Blue. Stability, calm, according to those same analysts. "It's science," Ron Burgandy would say. WNY'ers would say they're Buffalo Sabres colors too. A bonus. They're what news staffers in Buffalo will see in their office.

The paint's drying as the training begins to heat up, as we approach T-minus five weeks before launch.

The staff is complete. It is experienced in the most important places, and full of energy where it needs it. It's backed by the news division's top people and its statewide staff that in resources, rivals any TV news operation in the Empire State.

The channel has a place. Most will see it on Channel 9, though in the city of Buffalo, it'll spend its first few months on Channel 14.

And the channel has a name.

For that, and the names of those you'll see, you'll have have to wait just a bit longer.

Taking Shape

Scott Bucholz has been through this before.

The project manager for Time Warner Cable's newest 24-hour news channel in Buffalo helped build master controls and newsrooms in the Local News Division's other ramparts: Texas, Florida, North Carolina.

What's different this time around, in the division's final untapped market in New York State?

"Every one is different in its own way. This one, technically, has the least amount of infrastructure, but nearly as much capacity as the others."

Scott and his crew wrapped up installation and integration in the first days of Febraury. He agrees the Buffalo channel is, in one way, like a nesting doll compared to the larger parts of the set it belongs to across the Empire State. Rochester remains the most independent of the New York channels, Albany, which is the upstate hub for other markets, feeds other markets, as large as Syracuse and as small as Binghamton, Utica and Watertown. Of course, "the mothership," NY1, TWC's original 24 hour news channel, remains the largest in the set.

"The system we're using here (Buffalo) will really be able to do a lot with little." Scott said

A catchphrase that applies to the numbers that will make up the staff of this new channel. The numbers in the Queen City will be backed by the resources of the division's statewide news network. But be sure; this will not be an army. One person in the organization mused it would be more like a sleeper cell.

On the ground, each person in Buffalo will be able to fill any role: anchors become producers, become editors. News assistants will grab a camera to respond to breaking news, or, if they have to, report live from the scene of the story.

The jobs we have in Buffalo offer true security in a turbulent time in our industry, let alone the state of the nation's economy. Both are conditions that do not allow us to blow candidates away with contracts of a lifetime.

We've had the good fortune to meet a lot of media veterans shaken loose by the contracting mainstream media of Western New York. It's been a healthy mix of people with a great deal of experience and others looking toward their second or third markets. After a month of interviews with candidates, we have nearly completed our first staff.


We have been fortunate to find a promising group of emerging journalists. Backpack journalism is all they have known. They embrace it. And by our good fortune, the group may be the most diverse Buffalo television's seen on one news channel.

One-third of the group comes from the Time Warner news group family. Two-thirds of the group is from Buffalo and WNY. Three are from New York State. Another considering joining us knows Buffalo from living in southern Ontario.

They begin arriving this, the second week of February. By month's end, the group will be assembled.

How do you consider hundreds of applicants, interview dozens of them and know you've chosen the right ones to get something new off the ground? My experience has been about listening. Hearing what people want to do, what they believe works.. for them and for television news. Many have said "go with your gut." And maybe looking enough people in the eye helps you know whether they're up for it, or have "it" or even care about the opportunity journalism provides.

Were there close calls? Plenty. Did we find the perfect candidate for any of our jobs? Not one, (including the guy doing the hiring for the place.)

Thank God.

All we found were plenty of people with an entrepreneurial streak capable of checking their egos at the door and working together to get the job done and grow as journalists.

With that, we wrap up the first trimester of this baby. Hope there's no morning sickness with the next.