all cylinders
Today was one of those days when I realize how much I love being a journalist.
It wasn't because I got to today's big story first. (As best I can tell, that was KPSP, though KESQ says they broke the story.)
And it wasn't because I think I wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning story, though I think it was one of my better ones.
No, today was great because I felt like I was finally firing on all cylinders while covering a big breaking story.
I developed this metaphor a while back to describe what I needed to do better on stories where, say, I shot photos with my camera but didn't get any with my iPhone to send via TwitPic... or I got photos but not video... or I phoned in details but missed the opportunity to get things out quicker via tweeting.
Today, though, after some suspicious-looking luggage prompted the evacuation of the Palm Springs International Airport terminal, I pretty much did it all: newsy tweets, color tweets, a TwitPic, point-and-shoot photos, a video shot and FTP'd in from the field... and, you know, I also phoned in details for and wrote through a good old-fashioned text story for good measure.
Granted, I had plenty of time and a fairly captive set of sources with which to pull off this feat, and the balance of things could've been tweaked, but it was nice to use nearly all my different reporting abilities on one story.
And even though I was using a bunch of different tools today, I was focused on reporting all day, as opposed to Web producing.
I love both aspects of my job, but it's often tough to shift gears during the day or to try to do both simultaneously — and really well.
So all of today's activity, ironically, also provided a nice bit of oneness to my workday.