LITMIR.BIZ

      I rarely had a need to go to Epping as a television reporter in New Hampshire. To me, the signpost merely meant halfway to the ocean or halfway back to the station after a live shot. But after one hour on the story, I knew it would change my life.

      Sunday afternoons are deadly quiet in newsrooms everywhere, deadly for the young college graduate-cum-television producers who have to fill thirty minutes of news at 6:00. I had been blessed (and that’s definitely the way we viewed it) the previous two Sundays with breaking news. A week prior there was the murder investigation in which one woman in the mountain town of Tamworth stabbed another woman to death at a party in a fight over beer money. The weekend before in the woods of Alstead, a closeted-homosexual shot his roommate and chased another man through the forest with a handgun, all after smoking one-third of a marijuana cigarette. It’s these examples of stupidity and tragic miscalculation that give reporters “happy feet” and make producers high-five one another.

      The assignment desk had little for me and my videographer to do when our shift began at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, March 26, 2006. Indiana Senator Evan Bayh was speaking at a campaign event for a democratic state senator. No one comes to New Hampshire to speak at a political gathering who isn’t running for president.

      WMUR-TV, an ABC affiliate, is the only network station in the state. Channel 9 wields a lot of power within New Hampshire’s borders and beyond. It’s the big fish, small pond dynamic that has suited it well. Dozens of television reporters have made the jump from New Hampshire to Boston (where starting salaries are tripled and anchormen and women can still earn a million dollar paycheck). Some WMUR alumni have gone on to much greener pastures, such as Nannette Hanson on MSNBC or Carl Cameron on Fox News. Even Chris Wragge, former Entertainment Tonight host and former husband to Swedish model and Playboy playmate Victoria Silvstedt, once did the weekend shift at channel 9 as a sportscaster.

      I had no intention of leaving WMUR anytime soon. But I really wanted to get off of weekends. It was murder on my family life. I had too little time with my five-year-old daughter and the hours were fraying on my wife.

      I was not the typical TV reporter. I spent ten years in radio and I never got the shtick out of my blood. I was sent to fires and blizzards and car accidents, but my niche was feature reporting. I had no problem doing funny stories. Getting clocked playing dodgeball, singing karaoke in the shower, getting sacked by the members of an all-woman’s football team. No stunt was off-limits for me. Viewers loved it. I loved it.

      But the face of television news was changing, even in secluded New Hampshire. There were fewer reporters, but they were being asked to cover more stories in a single day. We seemed to be doing less politics, fewer stories on education or health. The greater emphasis was being placed on the sexy, the sensational. As one videographer said to me, “We used to do stories about people. Now we just do stories about victims.”

      I was in a funk. I considered myself a storyteller; it was why I was recruited out of radio to fill an open position at the TV station. I didn’t like the direction my job was going. I needed something that was going to shake up my career.

      The Evan Bayh event moved at a glacial pace. Bayh shook hands with every alderman and selectman who could someday become a presidential campaign worker. His big political blunder was, of course, not talking to me. I was the one who was going to be putting him on television and introducing him to thousands of presidential primary voters. Instead, I was standing off in the corner, sneaking mozzarella sticks from the hot buffet.

      My cameraman for the day passed me his pager: call newsroom ASAP.

      Ah, holy hell, I thought. What grief am I getting myself into now? I sneaked outside to place a call.

      “Newsroom,” someone answered.

      “It’s Kevin. I got your page.”

      “Where are you guys?” the assignment editor asked.

      “Still at Bayh. He’s running long.”

      Pause. “Do you have any sound with him?”

      They’re rushing this. What’s going on? “We’re waiting for his speech to finish up before we can get a sound bite.” Behind me, I could hear applause. Bayh just said something I assumed I should have been there to hear.

      “Okay.” I could tell she was turning over the information in her head, calculating something. “We’re going to pull you out of there and send you to Epping.”

       Oh, fuck me up the ass.We’ve been standing here this long. We’re this close to getting the sound bite.

      “What’s shaking in Epping?” I snapped.

      “There’s a search for a missing person,” she said. “And it could be a homicide.”