There's been a lot of building going on in our area for a long time, residential and commercial. I bring that up because not far from here they're building a new gas station. I bring that up because they are building it catty-corner from the Conoco station where I generally fill up. I bring that up because the man and wife who own and operate the Conoco have become friends. Their names are Gerry and Cheryl Topper. I bring that up because I'm going to tell you a little about one of them and a lot about the other. Gerry is a former "Dead Head." There's a picture of Jerry Garcia above the cash register. You talk about a conumdrum. Gerry has given up tie-dyeing for the entrepreneurial life. He was one of the first to wire little TV's into pumps so you could watch CNN while you stared at the rising price of your fuel. In recent days he's added a philly-cheese steak deli inside the station. He's from that part of the country (Philly) and really misses what he calls a REAL cheese steak. I think he told me he ships all his ingredients in from Philly. He's super high energy. You can't miss him.
Nor can you miss Cheryl. And here I have to digress. Sorry, I know this is way too big a buildup for a normal BLOG. But you'll agree when I'm done this will be no normal BLOG entry.
If you're in the TV news business you're going to understand this part better than most. In most of the last two decades the effort in most TV newsrooms has been to humanize the news. Don't just put the Governor or Police Spokesperson in your story. Find the people affected. Look for victims, witnesses, people impacted, people who have something to say. And then of course ask them to say it. Hang on, I'm getting there.
Well we had one of those gas price crisis stories one day, and Photographer Jim Weis and I were sent out to get to the bottom of it. Well we just happened to be in the vicinity of that Conoco station and we decided to stop in for a bite. I know what you're thinking. They were going for a Philly Cheese Steak. But no! We were looking for a sound bite from somebody affected. We asked Cheryl Topper's permission ( we didn't always do that) to talk to customers. She nodded yes and then added, "you want to know what I think?" And you know we did? She took a swipe at the oil producers, the refinerys, the middle east cartel, taxes, government regulations, the weather, and every once in a while throwing in, "andthis is all coming from someone who considers herself an environmentalist." That turned out to be a story that, thanks to Cheryl, told itself.
Well about a week later there was a major power outage in the same area because they were laying fiber optic cable which no one asked for or wanted. (That's a story for another blog)
"Jim, why don't we go ask Cheryl what she thinks about this?"
"Good idea."
Cheryl told us she knew all about it. She'd been talking to some of the workers coming into the station, and she'd been handling complaints from people without power.
This is a guess. I think she said, "I don't think we even need all this fiber optic cable now that we've got satellites."
When most reporters talk about soundbite machines they are talking about a politician who has mastered the art of putting everything in his head into a ten second time frame. These politicians practice the responses and get rid of all the uhms, and ers. But Jim and I discovered those guys are the Saturns of the sound bite world. Cheryl is the Mercedes. And she never needs to practice.
I suppose I was being more than a little mischievous. I knew I was a year away from retirement, and thought it was time to have some fun. It didn't make any difference what story I'd been assigned. If we were in the area we had to find out what Cheryl thought. As far as thinking and talking Cheryl has never had a down day. Writer's block would not be in her vocabulary.
At first Jim Weis was my sole accomplice, but as time went on most of the photographers were in on it. Cheryl commented on the weather, on a major construction project, on the building of a multi-million dollar wildlife center, driving in the mountains, the prices of housing, interest rates going up, interest rates coming down, growth, light rail, fire danger.
One of my favorites was Cheryl on the exploding rabbit population in the area.
"Well you know its all this construction. We driven the coyotes and all the other natural predators away, and we're not allowed to touch them. Not that I would. They're so cute."
She is the ultimate sound bite machine. You put a dime in her and out a comes a whole slew of soundbites. The odd thing was she is so good at it, nobody caught on. Unless, of course, I told them. I did tell the other reporters in the newsroom, and they told other reporters and photographers at other stations. So it became a guessing game of seeing when Cheryl was going to pop up in a Reinertson story. One reporter asked if I would will Cheryl to her when I retired.
One way in which we kept producers from catching on was the way we identified her on screen (CG'd or fonted to the hip). She could be Cheryl Topper, Mrs. Topper, Gas Station owner, Environmentalist, Area Resident, Interstate Motorist.
One day we got behind and couldn't get to our live shot quick enough to get Cheryl on tape, so we politely asked her to walk in front of the camera at the beginning of my liveshot. She did and also did it at the end of the liveshot.
This is one of my favorite stories. Reporters often are asked to do several stories in one day. Well on this day we were responsible for two packages (different stories), one in the five, and one in the six. Pushing our luck we put Cheryl in both packages. Why run all over town looking for sound bites when you are sitting in front of a machine. She'd have somethng to say about both subjects. Well the two stories ran, seperated by a little over a half hour, and no one picked up on it. In fact one of the producers walked by while I was logging Cheryl's sound bites and commented, "she's kind of cute." He'd probably seen her 30 times in his show up to that point. She must have been growing on him.
Counting story re-runs, Jim Weis and I feel we got her on the air close to a hundred times in that year. Her friends knew it, her mother has tapes of them all, and a bit tipsy at my retirement party I confessed all. So now everyone knows, even you.
This is a delayed apology to my producer friends who might have been offended by my chicanery. You are incredibly busy and shouldn't have to ride herd on who is saying what. It's what she said that made the stories, not the number of screen credits she got. And since you read the scripts and approved the edited stories, you at least subliminally agree with me. She's pretty good. And she makes a pretty mean Philly Cheese Steak, too!
So anyway, the next time you see a lot of construction going on in your area, think about Cheryl, will you?
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