Photo by Jim Coit

Mac Heald, Michael Tuck. Holzman brought in new talent: the irrepressible Ted Leitner, and later, smooth, good-looking Michael Tuck, both from Philadelphia; Mac Heald from Indianapolis; Allison Ross from Phoenix.

When Bob Sioss strides into the Channel 8 newsroom this cloudy morning in March, the radio scanners are already blaring. It’s just before 7:00 a.m. The metallic gabble of the city’s police and fire dispatchers has been intruding upon the stillness in this room throughout the night, before the lights were turned on, before anyone arrived today.

Assignment editor Bob Sioss says he jumps at ideas suggested by Channel 8’s reporters, since the reporters tend to work most enthusiastically on their own ideas.

Photo by Jim Coit

The radio noise echoes around Sioss as he takes his place at the head of the empty newsroom, and it’s a reassuring noise, like the sound of one’s own heartbeat. It feels like the presence of a friendly spirit — the spirit of hope, of imminent news — and it counterbalances the inimical, relentless countdown of the clock.

Jim Holtzman:“A tornado is a TV-type story. Two guys on horseback who get stuck in some quicksand up in Del Mar — that’s a good TV story."

Photo by Jim Coit

In just ten hours, more than a third of the people in San Diego who are watching television at that time will turn to Channel 8. The music will swell; the anchor people will smile; they’ll begin reading from their scripts. But right at this moment, those scripts don’t exist. The only hint of them is a pencil-marked sheet of paper, which Sioss is staring at glumly.

Bob Rockstroh. Saunders and Rockstroh, as the two shows' producers, have the job of organizing all the raw material available to go into the 5:00 and 6:30 newscasts.

Photo by Jim Coit

Sioss, an aloof thirty-three-year-old former Marine, is Channel 8’s assignment editor. This daily process begins with him. Other members of the team that assembles the station's five o’clock newscast make more money than Sioss does, yet no one else wields such power over the particular content of tonight's show. Today eight general-assignment reporters are scheduled to come in between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m.; another will report to work at three.

Gene Cubbison and Michael Tuck. Mac Heald and Gene Cubbison co-anchor the 6:30 show.

Photo by Jim Coit

Sioss must dream up two story ideas for each of them — and those stories will make up almost half of the hour-long broadcast. (The rest will be consumed by more than sixteen minutes of commercials and more than fifteen minutes of weather, sports, and other standard features.) Today is a Thursday, usually a bountiful day for news, but today Sioss’s list is scrawny. Every time the radios squawk, he listens intently, expectantly.

Frank Miholer is acting as floor director. He signals the anchors which camera to look at, how much time before they’re on.

Photo by Jim Coit

He had started that list yesterday in the late afternoon. Next to the assignment editor’s chair is a file cabinet which contains a drawer full of folders, one for each month plus one for each day of the current month. Into them the newsroom staff deposits ideas for upcoming events. So yesterday Sioss began by checking the folder for March nineteenth.

“The CBS News with Walter Cronkite is next. Thank you for being with us. And have a good evening.”

Photo by Jim Coit

He read through material clipped by his assistant, Barbara Lange, who spends her days reading mail, taking calls, looking for interesting stories in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Daily Transcript, the New York Times, and in smaller daily and weekly papers around the country. Sioss says he jumps at ideas suggested by Channel 8’s reporters, since the reporters tend to work most enthusiastically on their own ideas. He hates to discourage any source of inspiration, but most of the task of generating ideas falls on him.

The first idea, which he had jotted down yesterday, was something called in by a viewer. The viewer had noticed bulldozers out on Fiesta Island and had contacted the station to find out what they were doing. When Sioss called the city, he had learned that the dozers were creating a nesting area for the endangered Least tern. A reporter could do a story about this, he had decided. He tags the assignment “Fiesta Terns.”

Next comes “French/Solar,” inspired by a press release which notified Sioss that a group of French architects, builders, and developers would be visiting solar energy installations around the county this day. The next idea he nicknames “Treasure Hunter,” referring to the fact that a scuba-diving treasure hunter from Florida will be speaking and displaying some of his golden discoveries at the ongoing convention organized by investment counselor Howard Ruff. Another, almost automatic, story idea springs from the scheduled annual return of the swallows to San Juan Capistrano. Sioss has also received word about three separate meetings he thinks reporters should be able to milk for some action: one a city planning commission hearing on condominium conversion at the Oakwood apartment complex in Pacific Beach, one a meeting relating to San Diego River flood control, and the third another government hearing on health.

In the “future file” he found an idea, suggested by reporter I. J. Hudson, about a conference on Japanese investment in San Diego. So Sioss assigns Hudson to cover that, as well as a story about a South Bay company which is building equipment to be used in the launching of the space shuttle. Sioss received notice of a press conference to be given by the Sweetwater Teacher’s Association at 3:30. But that had exhausted his mine of topical ideas, forcing him to turn to a separate supply of idea reserves, from which he fished out one suggestion for a report on a San Diego man who physically resembles Abraham Lincoln and who regularly gives presentations on the former president to local school-children. “I’ll have [reporter] John [Culea] do a little feature on that because he’s good with kids and he’s good with features,” Sioss decided. The reserve file had yielded an idea which Sioss calls “Garden Boom.” “Apparently, across the country there are a lot of people starting to grow their own gardens. I guess they’re even running out of seeds in some places,” he explains. He’ll have a reporter try to find a local angle on this — unless some better story mercifully allows Sioss to scrap it.

By the time he had left the office about six o’clock in the evening, he had assembled a tentative list of enough stories to occupy almost every reporter the next day. “I don’t even begin to think that I have all the best ideas. But I have to have something for them,” Sioss says. “They can’t just sit and twiddle their thumbs.” He also knew it was likely that as many as half those stories could drop off the list as events developed. However, the morning hasn’t yet obliged him much.

This day he rose at his usual hour, 5:30 a.m., and glanced though the San Diego Union and Los Angeles Times for some hint of breaking news. “But there wasn’t much,” Sioss says in dismissing the newspapers, “particularly not in the Union. Most of the stuff that was in ’em I had already read in the Tribune last night. No matter what Gus Stevens says, it’s still the same old bullshit.”

He refers to the Tribune's television critic, two of whose recent columns currently hang on the newsroom bulletin board. (One, for example, castigates Channel 8’s “brief, shallow presentations in the finest TV news tradition . . . five-second rip-and-read jobs.”) Stevens, who says, “I wouldn't watch local news if I weren't paid to do it.” elaborates about the medium: "You see a lot of fires, a lot of car wrecks, a lot of people being shoved into police cars. The newspaper attends city council meetings and meetings of the board of supervisors and court sessions because we know that important decisions are being made there that affect all our lives. But TV won’t do that. If they can get in a helicopter and take some picture of a fire burning, that makes them happy.”

To the suggestion that a television station should make greater efforts to pursue the kinds of stories that run in the daily newspaper, Sioss reacts with asperity. “First of all, we’re a visual medium. If I’m going to put a reporter on a story, it helps if he or she can get pictures of that story. . . . There are stories that are very visual and very action-packed that work well on television. A crash, for example, or a confrontation. The less visual they become, the more they lend themselves to reading rather than television.

“You take politics and trials and things like that, something like the C. Amholt Smith trial. You might see something like that in the paper every day for thirty days. You’d see a lot less of it on television — because I don’t have a page fifty-seven I can put it on. I’ve got an hour and the space is valuable.”

Jim Holtzman, Sioss’s boss, advances this argument even more forcefully. At thirty-three, Holtzman is the station’s executive news director, the wunderkind who came to his current job at Eight three and a half years ago, and whose transformations in the station allowed it finally to reclaim the ratings lead which Channel 10 and Harold Greene had snatched from KFMB-TV back in the mid-Seventies. Holtzman argues that several critical elements differentiate television from newspapers — and thus the kind of stories that each best handles.

First, he says a daily newspaper carries far more stories that a daily newscast and has far more reporters to gather those stories. That means television news directors can’t spare people to do painstaking coverage such as that of county government done by daily newspapers. Secondly, Holtzman argues that some stories are too complex to be presented well by the fleeting, electronic medium; viewers can’t digest material at their own speeds or go back to reread a given paragraph. he says.

Finally, Holtzman contends that the two media simply excel in different areas. “Television is a visual medium” he repeats. “A tornado is a TV-type story. Two guys on horseback who get stuck in some quicksand up in Del Mar — that’s a good TV story. But a lot of long, drawn-out court cases, or stories about Congress or city government — unless you can show what it means — are print stories. You take elections. We cannot show them everything that’s being discussed. Or you take a visit by Jerry Brown to San Diego. No way is a reporter like [Channel 8’s] Liz Pursell, who’s very good, going to be able to go out and analyze all the nuances of what that visit means. Just as no newspaper reporter will be able to describe a tornado in a way that equals what thirty seconds of pictures on television can do.”

So this morning Sioss didn’t even consider assigning a reporter to do a story on the city council’s deliberations over preservation of undeveloped urban canyons, which was the lead story on the Union's local page this day. He admits that stories in the newspapers do, more than occasionally, inspire TV news stories, hut he claims his reporters must try in those cases to gather some new material. En route to the station offices on Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa. Sioss also listened to KSDO’s all-news radio, then in the newsroom he checked with the producer of the Sun-Up newscast, who arrived about six in the morning. She had already called the police, the coroner, the fire department. Now Sioss also checks stories that have come in on the wires services; nothing catches his interest.

He still needs a second story for reporter Jesse Macias, who will drive up to San Juan Capistrano to cover the swallows’ return, and decides to have Macias stop in at the county school-bus depot in Oceanside to check on maintenance of some mechanically troubled buses. “Maybe I’ll also have a reporter call the city school bus people to see what they’re doing. Maybe they have a guy go through every morning checking for fumes or something,’’ Sioss says, dreaming of the possible pictures.

He then begins depositing notes explaining all his various story ideas in cream-colored folders throughout the large open room. It’s a warm and comfortable place, with walls of light yellow and gold and chartreuse. The mottled turquoise carpeting looks like it’s consumed a few cups of deadline coffee. Glass-walled offices for the anchor people line one wall, and Holtzman occupies an enclosed office at the rear of the room. But most of the reporters work in the open central area at five banks of desks constructed from file cabinets painted, alternately, bright azure and green, and topped with slabs of brown formica.

Sioss returns to the front of the newsroom, where a magenta plastic bat dangles overhead, suspended front the ceiling. Seated directly beneath it, he faces the reporters like a teacher at the front of a classroom. Electronic equipment and maps and telephone numbers cling to every conceivable surface around his desk, which in contrast looks naked in its lack of clutter. It’s the desk of an organization addict.

Sioss got his first taste of news when he worked as a public information officer in the Marine Corps. After leaving the service he attended San Diego State University’s journalism program and began working for Channel 8 as an intern. He moved up the news department’s organizational ladder steadily; last August he became assignment editor for the five o’clock show. He says he enjoys the job but doesn’t know how long he’ll last in it. “A lot of people burn out,’’ he explains. Yet “burning” isn’t a word one associates with the controlled, methodical assignment editor. He is unemotional, stolid, a committed workaholic.

The phone rings at 7:20; it’s reporter Liz Pursell calling in sick. “That just put a cramp in my list,” Sioss comments, reaching for his assignment sheet. He decides to send photographers alone to the health hearing and San Diego River project meetings he had planned for Pursell to attend. Writers at the station can piece together the stories. A few minutes later the phone rings again. It’s a viewer asking about today’s weather. “That’s another of our duties,” Sioss says dryly. “Also telling people what was on the news last night.”

By 8:30 the first reporters begin to arrive: John Culea, I. J. Hudson, Loren Nancarrow. Ray Wilson, who worked for more than twenty years as Channel 8’s anchorman and who now handles a variety of administrative tasks, is already busy at work sorting videotapes. As more reporters trudge in, Sioss explains to I. J. Hudson the story about the South Bay space shuttle contractor. “We tried to do this several weeks ago but they didn’t really have anything to photograph. Now they have some parts and stuff. It should be okay. It’s a big contract for them.”

“By the way, do you know that the Aero-Space Museum is dedicating a Navy Skyhawk [airplane] today?” Hudson offers. Sioss isn’t interested. “We’ve already done something on it,” he says.

Now the phone is ringing frequently. Sioss fields many of the calls: from the CBS news bureau in Los Angeles, from Channel 8’s news stringer down at the county courthouse. At the same time, reporters have begun racing to set up interviews and to cull information by phone for the stories assigned to them. “The earlier you can start calling, the better.” explains Nancarrow, an amicable twenty-seven-year-old who came to Channel 8 from a New Mexico station about a year ago. “Even if you reach the people you need by phone, you have to remember that probably fifty percent of them won’t want to go on camera — either because of their views on television news or because of stage fright or some other reason.” At the moment, Nanearrow is encountering other frustrations: he’s having trouble finding nurseries that can give him any information on the “Garden Boom.” A little after nine he departs with his cameraman, hoping to sniff out local seed shortages on the road.

At a nearby desk, veteran News Eight reporter Jim Gordon has hit a snag on his assignment regarding the Frenchmen’s tour of the solar plants: he’s learned that the tour’s publicist has scheduled his contact with them at a luncheon. “Yeah, yeah,” Gordon is saying to the man on the other end of the phone line. “You know that one luncheon is the same as any other! We won’t even be able to tell that they’re Frenchmen. All we’ll know is that they’re not Africans.” The publicist agrees to call back later with a location where the Frenchmen will visit later that afternoon, a site which should provide Gordon with more action.

Up at the assignment desk, one of the radios next to Sioss breaks in with the voice of a cameraman driving in one of the station’s cars. “Unit X. There may be an accident that just occurred on southbound 163. I’m coming right upon it.” The voice continues, “No, it’s not an accident, but it may be one real soon. Car abandoned in the number-one lane on southbound 163 just north of 15.” Sioss reaches for the phone and dials the highway patrol to warn them of the obstruction; a moment later the dispatcher’s voice sounds over the CHP’s radio frequency, sending an officer to check out the hazard.

The producer of the half-hour noon broadcast is now standing in front of Sioss’s desk, waiting impatiently. For the most part, her show depends on a replay of some of the stories that ran on the previous night’s eleven o’clock news, but she also crosses her fingers in hope of the morning’s reporters supplying her with fresh material. Today the pickings are slim. Sioss offers her “sort of a business feature on Japanese investments” (to be done by Hudson), some new pictures of a fire which burned part of the Belmont roller coaster the night before (when reporter Dave Cohen prepared a report for the eleven o’clock newscast), and something on the health hearing.

But a half hour later the cameraman assigned to shoot the health hearing calls in to inform Sioss ttyat the hearing won’t take place for two more days. Now the assignment editor is really scrambling. From his file of tepid story possibilities he doggedly retrieves a notice that some San Diego Chargers will be meeting with disturbed children at 11:45 this morning. “We’ll do a little voice-over. They’ll be having a good time together,” Sioss mutters. He rethinks his decision not to cover the airplane dedication at the Aero-Space Museum, and assigns a photographer to the event. “I think we did it before on a Saturday, when it was delivered. But this’ll help; we’ll get a bit more material,” he rationalizes.

By 10:05 all the reporters have left the newsroom, now relatively quiet except for the endless chatter of the radio scanners. Sioss’s assistant is listening to the static-clouded interchanges as she opens the morning mail, so Sioss goes off to buy a carton of orange juice and a granola bar from the station’s lunchroom. Then he returns to take advantage of the lull and look forward to the next day’s stories.

“Booooop,” sounds a tone on the fire department radio. “First alarm, ringing alarm at the La Valencia Hotel,” the dispatcher says.

“Oh-ho!” breathes Sioss. His face noticeably brightens. But two minutes later the dispatcher announces that the alarm was false.

A third of the day is gone and Sioss is still the only person with a rough idea what local stories are likely to fill this evening’s newscasts. Usually he informs other key newsroom personnel about what he’s got cooking in a meeting which takes place about this time. Before that group can assemble, however, reporter John Culea calls in on the radio. He’s out at the Oakwood apartment complex in Pacific Beach, where the manager has just kicked him off the premises and told him that today’s planning commission hearing on the condo conversions (which Sioss has assigned Culea to cover) has been canceled. “Can you find out if that’s true?” Culea implores Sioss. Before the assignment editor can do so, he gets another call from one of the cameramen. Sioss had dispatched him to the SDSU and UCSD campuses to get pictures of local swallows in San Diego, a little detail which Sioss had imagined would nicely complement the San Juan Capistrano swallows story. But the cameraman is up at San Diego State, announcing dolefully that he's found “no swallows, no nests, nothing.” The assignment editor reaches for the telephone and a directory of city hall numbers. He tries one. The respondent doesn’t know what Sioss is talking about. Culea has overheard the interchange between Sioss and the cameraman about the uncooperative birds, and Culea gets on the radio and interrupts Sioss again to suggest that the assignment editor try calling a particular dean at UCSD to ask if there are any birds up there. Sioss tries a second city hall phone number, then a third. Finally, he connects up with someone w ho asserts that the planning commission hearing on Oakwood condominium conversion has not been canceled. Then Sioss dials a number at UCSD. “Have you or any of your people noticed if the birds are building nests up there yet?” he asks gamely. Now three technicians are fidgeting in front of his desk, as is Bob Rockstroh, the five o’clock show’s producer. The technicians want Sioss to test the station's microwave link on Mt. Miguel. A game show is playing on a tiny television mounted in a panel to Sioss’s right. The phones are ringing almost incessantly now.

The assignment editor’s assistant interrupts. She’s just heard over the radio that the police are seeking a twenty-one-year-old suspect in last night’s roller coaster fire. But Sioss is off to photocopy his list of story ideas for the meeting. Holtzman and Chris Saunders (the producer of the 6:30 p.m. news show) are already waiting in Holtzman’s office. Sioss finally joins them, along with the five o’clock producer. So do Mac Heald and Gene Cubbison, who co-anchor the 6:30 show.

They’re remarkably informal young men to be shaping the news that 180,000 people will hear six hours from now. Holtzman and Cubbison both are bearded; Saunders wears blue jeans. No man here is over thirty-three years old. Rockstroh, in fact, is just twenty-eight.

Saunders and Rockstroh, as the two shows' producers, have the job of organizing all the raw material available to go into the 5:00 and 6:30 newscasts — both the local information and pictures gathered by the teams working under Sioss’s direction, and the information which has come in over the wire services (and which will simply be rewritten and read by the anchors). Saunders' presence at these meetings is relatively recent because the station just initiated the 6:30 show in mid-March. (Now Channel 8 presents an hour of news from five to six, followed by the network’s half hour of news from New York, followed by another half hour of the local reporting.) Sioss and the reporters for the most part prepare material with the thought that it might go on either local broadcast (or possibly both, although hopefully in slightly different form). The producers divvy up the material at these morning conclaves. But first Sioss must describe that material.

“French/Solar,” he reads from the top of the list. “Eighty or ninety French builders and architects are in San Diego today touring various sites where they use solar energy. Solar energy is becoming very popular in France. Fuel is so expensive that it’s a cheap alternative,really.” No one questions him.

He continues down through the list, describing “Oakwood Condos,” "Shuttle Hoist,” “Japanese Investment.” “Living Lincoln,” he reads. “This is a little feature on a guy who looks exactly like — you got it — Abraham Lincoln. He’s been on different television programs before.” “We did him before,” Holtzman says flatly. "Didn’t you do him, Mac?” “Noooo,” Heald replies thoughtfully. “Noooo. I wouldn’t get close to it,” he deadpans.

“To a Living Lincoln?” Sioss asks disingenuously.

“Noooo. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot rail,” Heald says.

“I’ve seen this clown before,” Holtzman persists, but he doesn’t suggest that Sioss should abandon the idea. Holtzman reads on, ”Garden Boom.”

Sioss says, “Uh, across the nation, particularly in the West, people are being forced by economics to grow their own gardens. There are seed shortages in some areas, and we're taking a look at our areas to see how popular gardens are. And there are a number of community gardens, a few of which we visit today.”

Holtzman reads again. ”Coaster Follow.” Sioss explains, “A little voice-over that we can lead into [reporter Dave] Cohen’s nighttime package on the coaster fire.” “Are we going to use his package again?” Rockstroh asks with a touch of disapproval.

“Yeah,” Sioss answers.

“I don’t know,” Rockstroh says. “When I watched it last night it raised a lot of questions that we should really follow up on and have new information on for tonight. Barbara [Sioss’s assistant] says they have a suspect.”

“They don’t have a suspect. They’re Just looking for somebody,” the assignment editor says. “The thing is, I don’t know where I'm going to get another reporter to do the coaster follow-up.”

“Why not hold the garden story?” Holtzman asks.

“Loren’s already done it.” Sioss muses. “But why don’t we hold it. I’ll talk to him about holding the garden story and trying to get a daytime follow-up on the coaster.” Sioss moves on to explain that he's just received word about a press conference to be given at three that afternoon by some hotel employees complaining about sex discrimination. “Cohen’s going to be busy then. We’re going to have to send someone else. I was kind of thinking of sending Allison Ross,” he says tentatively.

“Allison Ross what?” asks Holtzman. “Send her out on the sex discrimination suit. It’s at three; she should be in by then.”

Someone says dubiously, “I don’t know.”

“Well, let me rephrase that,” Sioss says. “She’s supposed to be in by then.” Sioss resolves to try the assignment, then moves quickly through the items at the bottom of the list. Holtzman asks about the day’s installment of the “Mac Heald’s San Diego” feature.

Heald says brightly, “We’re scrubbing for surgery today.”

“Ah ha!” Holtzman sounds interested. “In a veterinary clinic.”

“Ah ha.”

“To do a profile on this woman who is the equivalent of a physician’s assistant to a veterinarian.”

Dead silence. Then the news chief asks, “Is there anything more to it?” There isn’t, frankly, and amidst genial chuckles, the men hurry to consider the next items. Holtzman announces that the 6:30 show’s new feature, a critique of television programs, will take a look this week at the new CBS detective series, Riker, “and how rotten it is — even though it’s a lead-in to our eleven o’clock news on Saturday night,” the executive news director says wryly.

Looking over the aggregate. Rockstroh advises the group that he’ll have one more story than he needs to fill the Five o’clock news show. “So Chris can have Living Lincoln,” he offers.

Saunders says, “God, what I don't need is another feature.”

Holtzman cracks, “He’ll trade a surface ship for a county bus, and a Least tern for a swallow.”

“That’s assuming that we get the surface ship story.” Sioss says over his shoulder as he rushes out to call Nancarrow and inform him of the change in his assignment.

Using one of the station’s walkie-talkies, he learns that Nancarrow is already downtown at the Convention and Performing Arts Center’s Golden Hall, scene of the Ruff Times convention. Things have gone well for the young reporter today. First he and Tom Warren, his photographer (the station’s nonsexist substitute for “cameraman”), had tried to ferret out evidence of the “Garden Boom” at the Gemco on Balboa Avenue in Clairemont, but the store was closed. However, at the community garden sponsored by the Cedar Community Center downtown they’d come upon several photogenic retirees who’d been delighted to talk about their new-found gardening pleasures. Nancarrow and Warren had returned to the Gemco, where the nursery personnel failed to report any seed shortages but testified to the popularity of gardening. When Sioss calls, Nancarrow is just about to interview the treasure hunter, who stands in a guarded second-floor room containing display cases of gleaming booty.

The reporter asks the subject (a retired mailman) how he developed this offbeat hobby, and the treasure hunter, obviously accustomed to media attention, glibly launches into his story. Nancarrow quietly signals Warren to begin photographing the monologue, which continues, nonstop, for perhaps six minutes. That’s a hefty chunk of uninterrupted videotape. Warren and Nancarrow will have to pare it down to about a minute and a half, the standard length of Channel 8 news “packages.” But except for the static pictures of the gold, this story offers little visual diversion, so Nancarrow figures maybe it’s best to get longer “bites” of the videotaped discourse.

If he hadn't been assigned to follow up on the roller coaster arson, Nancarrow would now be in splendid shape, with two stories in his pocket and even a few minutes left to the morning. Optimally, the teams try to return to the newsroom between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m., allowing themselves plenty of time for the writing and editing process. But the photographer says, “You can get back as late as four, really, and still be okay for the five o’clock show.” And Nancarrow seems eager to tackle the arson assignment, the chance to try and track down information that resembles actual news more closely than his morning’s endeavors.

He and Warren cross the street from Golden Hall to the building that houses the fire department’s “community education department,” where Bill Pitts, a sympathetic young spokesman for the department, tells them that arson investigators right down the hall are interviewing a suspect. “But I don’t know if they’re going to arrest him or what. It could take several hours before I’ve got anything definite,” he says.

Nancarrow asks a few questions, then he and Warren return to the car, where the reporter radios Sioss again. Sioss tells him that another photographer has already visited the roller coaster and gotten daytime pictures of the charred sections. Relieved of that responsibility, Nancarrow and Warren catch a quick bite at a Channel 8 hangout, the Travolator Coffee Shop on Sixth Avenue near Ash downtown. Across the street from the bustling eatery is a parking lot. “That’s where the station used to be before it moved to Kearny Mesa,” Nancarrow explains.

“Do we have a story even if they don’t arrest this guy?” asks Warren, a seven-year veteran of the station who started out as a writer, then switched to the camera work “because I wanted to make some real money.” (A nine-dollar-per-hour starting salary for photographers is not uncommon; writers, in contrast, can sometimes start at less than five dollars per hour.)

“Yeah,” Nancarrow tells him. They’ll just redo the story that ran the night before.

The two have returned to their cream-colored Chevy Caprice. They’re itching for something — anything — to happen, so they decide to drive over to Belmont Park anyway. “Can we get inside? Maybe there are mattresses around or something we could get a picture of,” Nancarrow wonders vaguely. As they drive, the two men break off talking every time an interchange crackles over their radio, which is programmed to scan ten different frequencies. “No matter how good your stories are, you’re always listening for something better,” Nancarrow explains.

The seat beside him holds a book filled with the frequencies for major two-way radio users throughout the city. Warren could easily program his mobile scanner to listen in on the transmissions emanating from his employer’s two competitors, Channels 10 and 39. Indeed, stories about mutual eavesdropping seem to circulate freely. Nancarrow. for example, relates a tale about how Channel 10 once broadcast a false report of a mass murder at a certain address downtown — to see crews from Channel 39 roar up and search in vain for the carnage. And whenever Sioss in Channel 8’s newsroom has a hot-breaking assignment for a reporter, he always switches abruptly from one of the station’s frequencies to another — or he conveys the information on the privacy of the telephone. “Some of the other stations may be monitoring directly or they may not be. But I think some of the stations may be getting tips from scanner freaks,” Sioss explains. He says by his interpretation of the law, such taking of another station's information is “a form of industrial theft.” As a consequence, he insists that other newsroom frequencies are “absolutely not on any of our scanners in here [the newsroom] and whenever I find ’em elsewhere, I tell ’em to stop. Not everyone agrees with me, ’cause I’ve argued it. But I find it unethical.”

Apparently Holtzman is one of those who agrees. Warren says the big boss has told photographers not to monitor other stations. “And that’s as strict as he needs to be,” confirms Nancarrow, referring to the strength of Holtzman’s authority.

They’ve reached the roller coaster, where city crews already have boarded up the damage. Warren doesn’t even try to shoot anything new. Instead, the two men turn around and head right back downtown. It’s almost two. This time they find Captain J. J. Hunter at the fire department along with Pitts. Both men look harassed and tense. Hunter explains that the San Diego city policemen who share the Metro Arson Strike Team office down the hall are being difficult. The cops have decided to arrest the suspect the team has been questioning — but they won’t release his name or allow any photographs to be taken. Reporters have been pestering Pitts and Hunter, who in turn have just been booted out of the arson office by the belligerent police. “Frankly, I’m getting a little pissed,” the fireman says tersely. Now the captain tells the Channel 8 crew that the only information he can disclose is that the suspect is a twenty-two-year-old Canadian who the police think may have committed several burglaries during his week-long stay in San Diego. Hunter also says two other men and a woman were questioned but are being released. The captain apologizes, apparently sincere. “You know I’ve never lied to you people and I never will,” he says. “It’s just that my hands are tied.”

The tension in the room is palpable. Nancarrow and Warren must bring back pictures of the suspect — they’d likely be the only ones in town to do so, and the fresh information and video would clearly justify the reuse of the arson story. They’re so close to the man that he’d probably hear his name if they shouted it — if ihey knew it to shout it. The firemen, though polite, are exasperated and the unseen police are openly hostile to the media.

So Nancarrow adopts a disarmingly soothing tone. He suggests that his photographer wait for him downstairs, and after getting a few more scanty details from the firemen, Nancarrow rejoins Warren. Their unspoken plan is to skulk just outside the open doors of the fire department garage in hope of seeing the police usher the suspected arsonist out of the building and over to the county jail. But the firemen inside the garage fix the two newsmen with dirty looks, and it’s hard to tell where the arrested man will come from. When a set of doors finally opens and several people emerge, Nancarrow and Warren scramble from one vantage point to another like actors in a slapstick comedy. The group looks like the young people who were questioned, but they are being released; only a man in plain clothes is escorting them. Running around the side of the building, Nancarrow yells to one of the scruffy looking youths, “What’s your friend’s name?”

The young man halts. “The one who set the coaster on fire?”

“Yeah,” says Nancarrow.

"Barry Adams,” the other replies, then the escort angrily pulls him into a waiting car.

Nancarrow and Warren don’t know what to do. The suspect himself is nowhere to be seen. And Nancarrow is already berating himself for not asking the three young people where they are being taken so he could join them and pump them for details. He and Warren deduce that the three will be released back at Horton Plaza, where they were arrested that morning, so the newsmen pile back into their car and cruise by the plaza. No sign of them.

“Well, that shows how much cooperation we’re going to get from the Metro Arson Strike Team,” Warren says.

Nancarrow’s tone is bitter. “We’ve done their little PR stories for them. They could have helped us out when it's real news.”

They drive to the police station on Market Street and don’t find anything. Then back to Horton Plaza. Then on to the bus station. The friends of “Barry Adams” could be anywhere — but Nancarrow and Warren can’t find them and it’s already approaching three o’clock. Finally, they give up and turn back to Kearny Mesa. Nancarrow comments that he’s also failed to obtain any “stand-ups” for his two reports (videotape of him standing with microphone in hand at the scene of the story). “I’m just not in a mood to do them today,” Nancarrow says. “Holtzman’s gonna kill me.”

Stand-ups draw attention to the station's expensive stable of reporters — one of Holtzman’s goals when he took charge here three and a half years ago. Those were somber days indeed. Although Channel 8’s 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. local newscast had won top ratings for twenty years, in 1974 Channel 10’s 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. evening news, led by brash young Harold Greene, finally overtook Eight. As Ten’s lead tenaciously held, the management at Eight grew desperate.

One solution, they figured, was to air their show a half hour earlier, to coincide with the start of Channel 10’s newscast. However, Eight’s FCC license then required the station to present some news in the “prime viewing time” (which doesn’t begin until six o’clock), so the show couldn't simply move; to start at five, it had to expand (and run from 5:00 until 6:30). “They were attempting to do ninety minutes without increasing their staff or their preparation,” Holtzman says. “It was awful.”

He says Eight’s reporters in those days had grown accustomed to only preparing one report (or “package”) per day. “So they were filling an hour and a half with only seven or eight packages, and they were ail three to four minues long, and terribly boring. They had Bob Dale going on for four minutes at a time, and you’d see stuff like a minute forty-five on labor strife in Yugoslavia. They were using almost the entire CBS afternoon feed.”

When Holtzman quit his job as assistant news director at Ten to become executive news director at Eight in October of 1977, he says he was assured that the news would shrink back to an hour, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. He changed several other things almost immediately. He dubbed the show “News Eight” and informed reporters that they would have to do two stories per day instead of one, a dictum which eventually resulted in several resignations, he says. He aimed at including only local news, if at all possible. “We were followed by Walter Cronkite and the CBS evening news and I always felt they did as good a job as anyone in covering the country and the world,” Holtzman explains. “We were here to cover San Diego, and I think it’s been proven that people want to watch local news.”

He brought in new talent: the irrepressible Ted Leitner, and later, smooth, good-looking Michael Tuck, both from Philadelphia; Mac Heald from Indianapolis; Allison Ross from Phoenix; Clark Anthony from KFMB radio. Holtzman shortened up the newscast’s story lengths, reducing items read by the anchor people from thirty to fifteen seconds, ordaining that packages produced by reporters shouldn’t exceed a minute and thirty seconds in length unless the reporter pleads that the story deserves exceptional treatment. Holtzman’s defense for this is that it tightens up the writing. And if this kind of formula means that the same amount of time is automatically budgeted for some hackneyed Living Lincoln-style feature as it is for a serious report on the lawsuit over development of North City West — well, Holtzman says, “The only statement we can make about the relative importance of stories is where we’re going to place them in the show.”

Holtzman substantially increased the number of regular features in the newscast, initiating such offerings as restaurant, movie, and television reviews, consumer news, medical reports, and commentaries (homespun philosophy by aspiring comedian Larry Himmel and sports from Leitner). The news director concedes that these additions have been aimed, in part, at breaking the long association of Channel 8 with older viewers. And the effect of all these changes seems to have been successful. In November of 1979, News Eight reclaimed the top spot, which it has held on to ever since. (February’s Arbitron ratings, the most recent, put Channel 8 two points ahead of Channel 10 between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m., and three points ahead between 5:30 and 6:00.) During the last two years, the show’s demographics have also shifted, attracting the much-sought younger audience. Holtzman (who has a radio and television degree from the University of Missouri’s prestigious journalism school) says of the ratings, “These are sales tools. These are not news tools.” He also claims he doesn’t know how much money his department (whose annual budget approaches two million dollars) brings in through advertising. However, TV Guide recently estimated that local television stations earn thirty to fifty percent of their gross revenue from the early- and late-evening newscasts. And in San Diego a single ratings point on the five o’clock news show is estimated to be worth between $250,000 and $500,000 per year.

At the moment, less lofty thoughts are preoccupying Holtzman. The anchor people only write a tiny percentage of what they read on the air every day. The bulk of that task is handled by a number of other people, including Holtzman. (He usually writes five or six stories for the 5:00 p.m. newscast and about three for the 6:30 show, Monday through Friday.) Now he’s finishing up his contributions. Throughout the afternoon several stories have materialized beyond those reviewed at the morning meeting.

One of those earlier stories fell through — I. J. Hudson’s attempted report on the South Bay space shuttle contractor. Hudson had again found nothing to photograph. But fortunately, Barbara Lange, the assistant assignment editor, had heard a radio call for divers to fish a stolen safe out of the San Diego River, and when Hudson had driven to the salvage site, he’d encountered an amusing comedy of errors. Lange had also heard a report of another car crash, this one in Spring Valley just blocks from where Culea and his photographer were interviewing the Living Lincoln, and the two made it to the scene of the wreck in time to gather material on it.

Hours earlier. Bob Rockstroh, the show’s producer, began organizing all these offerings, and now they fill four Xeroxed pages known as the show’s “run-down.” It follows a regular pattern, Rockstroh says. Each night the sixty-minute show at five o’clock includes eight major segments, broken up by the commercial breaks. The first, usually about ten minutes long, includes the most substantial news stories, though Rockstroh saves one or two for the time right after the half-hour mark, when he hopes that new viewers will tune in. Today Rockstroh listed the arson follow-up first, followed by a report on the arraignment of the Las Vegas Hilton arsonist, a report on a rapist’s hearing, the Oakwood condo conversion story, the car crash story and another car accident follow-up, then a story about the morning’s space shuttle accident in Florida, then Hudson’s story about recovery of the water-logged safe, then a report on a welfare defrauder. Today Rockstroh plans to conclude the first segment with the swallow-return report (minus the abortive local bird angle). “Your first stories would always be a hard-news story — murder, robbery, crime, that sort of thing — then you try to go lighter and lighter and leave on a happy note or at least give ’em something to think about.”

Rockstroh explains that the second segment of the show usually contains more of the light stories and “maybe an investigative feature. . . . We’ll usually close it with the Unknown Eater or Himmel or something.” For today’s second segment, he plans the sex discrimination,story (done by Allison Ross), a story on a controversy between a woman and the VFW (run on the previous night’s eleven o’clock show), the San Diego River project story, and the story about the bulldozing on Fiesta Island.

The third segment contains the weather - and Ted Leitner’s “Son of Sports” offering. Today the six- to scven-minute-long fourth segment (which starts the second half hour) begins with two separate reports on disgruntled teachers (in San Diego and Los Angeles), followed by a story on the La Brea tar pits remaining closed, one on Rohr’s surface effect ship, two stories relating to taxes, and finally by the feature on the Living Lincoln.

The fifth segment is usually devoted to consumers. This week consumer reporter Paula Zahn is vacationing, but Rockstroh nonetheless schedules consumer-related items for the segment today: the story about Japanese investment, one about a possible cut in customs inspectors at the border, one about a possible new airport tax, and finally the story about the French people’s solar tour.

Leitner’s sports consumes the entire five minutes of the sixth segment, and the eighth segment contains a news and. weather update, plus the good-night. That leaves the seventh segment, which Rockstroh explains is “sort of a potpourri. . . . You kind of take whatever’s left and it goes in there.” It’s a good place to cut from or add stories to during the course of the actual broadcast, should something go amiss. Today Rockstroh plans for it to contain forty-five seconds of news “briefs,” a story about a local tumor operation, and the regular “House Call” medical feature.

By 3:48 almost all the crews have returned to the newsroom, which is now resounding with noise. Typewriters are clacking. Phones are jangling. In the background, the radios continue to crackle with half-unintelligible pronouncements. Several photographers wait impatiently to get into one of the station’s seven editing rooms, where they’ll transform their raw videotape into the glossy packages. At his desk, Loren Nancarrow pounds away at his one-page script on the arson follow-up. “The Metro Arson Strike Team believes it has the man responsible for setting the Belmont Park roller coaster on fire last night in jail today,” it begins. “News Eight’s Loren The Torch’ Nancarrow has the details,” he has typed mischievously.

He finishes the twenty-two-line script just after four. Since the arson story will be the first package to be used this evening, the photographer, Warren, is assigned to an editing room immediately. It’s a small chamber dominated by three machines. Two identical videotape recorders and monitors flank the photographer and an “automatic editing control unit” faces him. Warren will run raw tapes (shot at the fire last night, at the roller coaster this morning, and at the fire station this afternoon) on the machine to his left. Into the machine to his right he plugs a blank tape cartridge. It looks a lot like an oversized cassette, fat and sturdy.

Despite the word’s connotations, this type of “editing” doesn’t involve any actual snipping or splicing. Instead, the photographers merely locate the exact sections of raw tape they want to use, then they transfer those sections, in the desired order, onto the blank tape. The daunting central “editing control unit” merely helps pinpoint the action down to individual “frames” (one-thirtieth of a second) and can be programmed, in effect, to press the relevant buttons on the two recorders at the appropriate instant.

But first Warren must sit and review the pictures he has to work with. He’s captured remarkably clear images of the three other suspects released so fleetingly from the fire department headquarters, but he mutters that he should have thought to shoot one of the fire engine logos and the roller coaster sign. Nancarrow interrupts, talking to Warren from one of the soundproof “dubbing rooms” where he reads the script he's just finished writing. Whenever he flubs a line, he pauses and simply rereads that particular sentence (since Warren will transfer his words sentence by sentence onto the final tape). When Nancarrow completes the dubbing, he doesn’t join the photographer in the editing room. It’s Warren’s responsibility to choose the pictures which best complement Nancarrow’s words, and to assemble them into a smoothly flowing whole.

At 4:40 p.m. he does call in Nancarrow to assess the final product. The two have received word that their other story, on the treasure hunter, won’t be needed until the 6:30 newscast. So the pressure is off, although they say stories to be used in the second part of the five o’clock newscast commonly aren’t completed until after the show has begun.

Outside the editing room, pandemonium reigns. Normally, anchorman Michael Tuck would be here by now. He usually arrives sometime between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m., except on days when he’s covering some story or speaking before some group (tasks which claim his attention maybe twice a week). Tuck says that as soon as he reaches the newsroom he begins reviewing the stories he will read. “An anchor person, if he does his job right, is an editor. I really go over things as much as possible. I’m pretty picky, too.’’ He says he often sends stories back for rewriting or additional information, plus he rewrites some himself. “I’m sort of the last line of defense between what has been written by rookie writers or people who are just out of school, and what goes out on the air.’’

Tuck says when he finishes that, he reads the rundown and sees if he can make any suggestions to help the producer. He also tries to talk to reporters about the day’s stories because “the best ad libbing that talent can do involves adding information.” He’s usually on the air from five to six, then he goes out to dinner. He returns about eight or eight-thirty to prepare for the eleven o’clock show. The station’s other anchors all have different routines because each is assigned to different shows and different regular features. (Mac Heald, for example, normally anchors the noon and 6:30 shows and daily prepares the “Mac Heald’s San Diego” feature.)

On this particular day, however. Tuck has called in sick with a migraine headache, so Heald is filling in for him. Now Heald and Janet Zappala (the other five o’clock anchor) hurriedly glance at the last pages of their scripts, each underscoring particular words and marking the paper with slashes to help them read during the newscast. As they complete each page, assistants separate the pages from their five multicolored copies, depositing them in different piles: for the show’s producer, director, for the telepromptcr, and for the anchors.

“Where’s Mac’s pile?” someone cries.

“You got Mac’s pile?”

“Who’s got [stories number] thirty-nine and forty?”

“They were bumped,” answers producer Bob Rockstroh, who’s hovering nearby.

Someone snatches up the white pile of assembled script and scuttles down the hall to the studio, a large open room crammed with the sets for both the 5:00 and 6:30 shows. Overhead an inverted forest of lights hangs from bare pipe, and thick black cables attached to the four cameras snake across the floor. The white script goes to the teleprompter tucked into one comer at the rear of the room. There Angel Crayton takes the first sheets and lays them out on a small conveyor belt which runs in front of her and under a small camera. That camera electronically conveys the image of the scripted words over to the large studio cameras, where, through the use of mirrors, the words appear to be suspended in front of the camera lenses. The anchor people thus appear to be looking directly into the camera, while they’re actually reading the words as they roll by in front of the lenses. The person who sits at the teleprompter also faces two small TV screens, one displaying the moving words and one showing what’s going out over the airwaves. Like someone who turns the pages for a piano player, the teleprompter operator controls the speed of those words to suit the anchor’s reading style, which can vary from day to day.

This day Crayton is feeding the teleprompter and Frank Miholer is acting as “floor director.” They switch jobs every other day. The floor director’s job is somewhat less physically comfortable — throughout the show he or she squats down below the cameras — but it’s more interesting; the floor director signals the anchors which camera to look at, how much time before they’re on, and so forth. It’s the floor director who links the anchors with the control room.

Right now director Dave Holloway is striding into that control room, across the hall from the studio. He’s short, bearded, abrupt. Once the show begins, he'll confront a variety of elements, any of which could go out at that instant on the air: the pictures being taken by the three cameras positioned at different angles in front of the anchors; the “chroma-key” pictures which flash up behind the anchors; the many videotapes which must roll at just the right moment to synchronize with the anchors’ words; occasional live “feeds” (via microwave) from reporters out in the field. It’s the director’s job to select precisely which of these images shoots out over the airwaves. “A good director is like a good servant,” another of the station’s directors explains. “If he’s doing his job right, no one should notice his presence.”

“I understand the first tease looks like shit,” Holloway barks as he cases into his chair in the control room, which is divided into two sections. On the formica countertop in front of Holloway is a green copy of the script and two stopwatches to help him mark the exact seconds which will calibrate his work. Straight ahead he faces a glass wall which allows him to look into the forward section of the room, where two more technicians sit at huge consoles encrusted with blinking lights, glowing buttons, shiny chrome levers. Before them all, twenty-three television screens of varying sizes fit into the front wall. Different images dance on most of them. The moving, simultaneous detail distracts, dazzles the eye.

To Holloway’s right, producer Rockstroh has settled into his chair with his own stopwatch. For all the careful markings on his script, he still doesn’t know precisely how long each story is, so once the show begins he must note whether each item is exceeding or falling short of its scheduled length. Too many overly long pieces will force Rockstroh to cut some story in the latter part of the newscast; loo many short ones will require him to instruct the anchors to ad lib more, to run slower credits at the close, or to take some other such measure to pad the excess time. Now Holloway addresses the producer flippantly. “Okay, Bob, two things: one, I want a clean show. And two, I want to roll the credits ’cause my parents have flown all the way out here on vacation and they want to see my name.”

On one of the screens set into the forward wall, Holloway catches sight of anchor Janet Zappala settling down into her chair, which is bolstered with a phone book. She wears a shiny gold shirt, and the director gripes, “Jesus Christ, is she wearing that again?” In the studio, the floor director is shouting, “Thirty seconds.” The men in the control room can see Zappala on Camera 2 rechecking her make-up; they can see Heald rehearsing his lines on the paper copy of the script on the counter in front of him. At the floor director’s signal, Heald looks up and starts talking, as if to a neighbor. It’s five o’clock. “Coming up next, on News Eight tonight, a suspect is arrested in connection with last night’s fire at the Belmont roller coaster, and one man is killed during a trial run of the space shuttle.”

Zappala says, “Residents of a Pacific Beach apartment complex speak out about plans to convert it to condos, and we’ll take you to San Juan Capistrano for the annual return of the swallows.”

Heald chimes in, “These stories and more up next on News Eight,” then the music swells and the opening graphics flash on thousands and thousands of television screens.

Holloway is hunched over, intense, flipping the pages of his script and issuing a taut order every few seconds. “Ready [Camera] Two . . . Take Two . . . Ready One . . . Take One.” One of the multiple television screens displays only the illuminated titles which will appear on the bottom of home screens and identify reporters and speakers. As the moment approaches for each one to appear on the air, the director calls out, “Stand by to insert . . . Insert . . . Lose it.”

The stories slide past, as slick as satin: Nancarrow’s arson follow-up. the Oak-wood condos, recovery of the safe, the swallows. At the conclusion of the first segment, the anchors introduce three “teasers,” brief hints of stories to come, prepared by the reporters who will do those stories. But what’s this? Rockstroh shuts his eyes as, on the screen, I. J. Hudson appears in a shot next to the San Diego River, where workmen are fishing something out of the water. It’s the safe, and there’s Hudson promising to tell viewers all about it “coming up on News Eight,” even though the piece has just aired two minutes ago. It’s too late to do anything; there’s a collective sigh when a Safeway commercial flashes on the screen and signals the first commercial break.

The next segment brings another heart-stopper, however. As Jim Gordon’s minute-and-a-half long package on the Fiesta Island bulldozing begins running, Holloway exclaims, “Holy shit! I didn’t put on the signature slide. He told me to and I forgot.” He’s referring to a slide containing the reporter’s signature, which is supposed to run under Gordon’s image at the end of his report. Holloway dispatches a young woman assistant to try and retrieve it, but he gives the effort up for lost. However, seconds before the end of the piece, the signature appears on one of the multiple television screens. “Stand by to insert . . . Insert,” Holloway says with relief, as the white letters flash under Gordon’s image on the air.

Rockstroh knows that Gordon and his photographers at this moment are still working on a package about the French solar tour. A quarter of an hour later, in the fifth segment of the show, the producer still hasn’t received word of the tape’s completion, and during the minute-and-a-half package on Japanese investment which is scheduled to precede it, he gets a call on the phone mounted on the panel before him. It’s the newsroom. “Pull number forty-four out. It’s not going to make it at this time. We’ll do it later,’’ he phones the floor director in the studio. Not until just before the beginning of the seventh segment, with only a dozen minutes remaining in the show, does Rockstroh finally hear that the piece is ready. “We have French/solar now,’’ he announces. “We do have French/solar.”

Holloway answers, “Okay. Tell Mac he’ll read French/solar just after the (news) briefs.” Rockstroh relays the word and a moment later we see Gordon in a swarm of head-bobbing, hand-gesturing, animated French speakers.

With five minutes left before the red digital clock in the control room flashes “6:00,” Rockstroh announces that the minute and seven second editorial won’t run this evening. No time for it tonight. Then commentator Larry Himmel is spouting off on the screen and Holloway looks genial for the first time this hour. “Goddamn,” he remarks. “We’ll have speed two on the credits and everything. You're okay, Bob.”

“Stand by, one,” the director says. “Take one,” and Mac Heald is announcing. “They say we’re out of time for this edition of News Eight.”

“Stand by, two,” Holloway orders. “But there’s more to come at 6:30 and 11:00,” Heald concludes.

“Take two,” Holloway says.

Janet Zappala's face beams at the audience. “The CBS News with Walter Cronkite is next. Thank you for being with us. And have a good evening.”

"Roll Sony,” says the director. “Roll credits.”