Want to laugh at media folks? Here ya go…

Well, this kinda cracked me up:

Even though we’re looking at something that’s definitely of a certain time and place — the era of smartphones and social media — I could identify. It’s not all that different from being a reporter in the distant past.

Remember that picture I ran (again) of me and Howard Baker during the Iowa caucus campaign in 1980?

That was taken by the photog who accompanied me on that trip, Mark Humphreys. I always enjoyed working with Mark because he respected my photography skills enough to hand me one of his Nikons when we were out on assignment together, so we could get different angles of the same event.

One night, we were trapped at the general aviation airport in Dubuque by an ice storm. Waiting for Baker’s campaign plane to get clearance to fly back to Des Moines, Baker — a serious amateur shooter himself — and Mark got to talking about the craft, and next thing you knew the two of them were out on the tarmac in the blizzard shooting pictures of each other.

Here’s them embarrassing part… I went out to shoot a picture of them shooting each other — figuring it would make a fun shot for our story — but it didn’t come out, according to Mark. My only excuse is that, back in the days of manual exposure, it was really, REALLY hard to get decent photos in a snowstorm with Tri-X black-and-white film.

Technology changes, but the goofy moments spent waiting for news to happen are pretty timeless…

2 thoughts on “Want to laugh at media folks? Here ya go…

  1. Brad Warthen Post author

    Oops…

    I just realized that I didn’t post that old picture of Howard Baker and me on the blog the other day… It was in an extended back-and-forth with several editors and reporters out there back on Saturday:

    Old journalists never die — they just can’t remember where they posted stuff…

  2. Barry

    Can’t beat Doug McKelway of Fox News who has been camped outside of the Red Hen restaurant for 2 days.

    Fox has to drive this story for all it is worth.

    But, his patience paid off as this evening a Trump supporter threw a bucket of chicken droppings on the outside of the restaurant and was arrested.

    Now Doug has tweeted photos of anti gay activists protesting the restaurant.

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