Good Question Is Hard
So this is my third night doing Good Question, and I’m exhausted! It’s hard work. My hat is off to Ben Tracy for doing this for two full years, day in and day out. I get into work at 9:30 a.m., and have a meeting about which question we’re going to answer. (tonight we’re doing one that Alexa e-mailed me directly— how do traffic lights know when to change to red?) Then I get on the phone and try to line up an expert.
We wanted to get into the control center for the 800 Minneapolis traffic lights, but then a tanker truck fell over and those guys had bigger things to do. So we went to St. Paul, where we had a lot of fun with Bob. You’ll enjoy tonight’s story.
First, I recorded a very funny video e-mail which you can also watch in the video viewer. We called the guy who submitted a Good Question on the phone. Very Letterman-esque.
Then we did the interview with Bob at about 11:30 a.m. Then we talked to some people in downtown. Then we had a quick lunch. We got back to the station at 1:40 p.m., where all the reporters and anchors had a meeting with our new news director. (Meeting message: We’re doing well. We can do better. I agree.)
At 2:30 p.m. we had an all-station meeting to give our employee-of-the-month award (congrats Maranatha!), where I enjoyed a Fresca and a slice of cheesecake.
At 3:00 p.m. I started looking at the tape we shot today (45 minutes worth of interviews). I had my story written by 4:30 p.m. It’s now in editing. I’ve spent the past hour chatting with my boss, replying to e-mail, writing the web story that will post at the wcco Good Question site, and squeezing out this blog post.
So it’s 5:40 p.m., and anyone who thinks that Good Question is an easy gig is wrong.
If you have thoughts on how GQ is going, and they’re positive, you can click this link and e-mail management. If you think I’m doing a horrible job, you can e-mail those directly to me. Tune in at 10, and I’ll be back tomorrow!
