Details at Ten Read Free Page A

and viewed by a writer and tape editor. Then I write the story and read it back over that same signal, a process called tracking, and the writer and editor put together a long story called a package. Normally I would do all this later, but we were doing a live shot for the newsbreak.
    I had about twenty minutes to the newsbreak, so I pulled out my makeup. My sister, Peaches, says I look like an overdone French fry—toasty brown, tall, and lean. I rushed to put on eyeliner because my large chestnut eyes are my pow feature. My hair? Simply put, it was wrecked, getting puffier and puffier by the second. Sorry to say but I was hopeless about the head this day and there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it. I grabbed a clip and pulled my hair back. I didn’t look great but I did look presentable. There wasn’t a lot of time to fool with myself. Even though this is TV, the story comes first with me.
    I put my cosmetics away and began to practice how I would lead into my big story. I was talking it through to myself out loud, “I’m Georgia Barnett, live on the South Side where a neighborhood block party turned into a frightening scene of violence… .”
    Zeke gave me an internal feedback device or IFB, a little earplug that lets me hear Nancy and the director back at the station. Through the IFB I heard them ask me for a mike check. I counted down for them. My audio was good. I saw that the little children who were on the corner were now crowding around me. They were anywhere between the ages of six and ten.
    “We wanna be on! Hip hop hurray-hey, ho-hey!” one of them shouted and the others joined in waving back and forth at the camera.
    “Hold it,” I said. “I’m working and I can’t put you on television doing that. This is not a music video. So there’ll be no ‘hip hop hurray-hey, ho-hey!’” I sang it and did the little wave part, too. They got a kick out of that. Even Zeke laughed. “You can stand behind me and be on air but no waving and yelling, okay?”
    They agreed, then lined up with starburst smiles in a curbside class picture.
    “Coming to you in ten,” the director said in my ear through my IFB. I got focused, looking straight into the camera.
    “In five, Georgia!” He counted me down. I relaxed my face a little bit. Then the director cued me: “Go!”
    “I’m Georgia Barnett, live on the South Side where a neighborhood block party turned into a frightening scene of gang violence. Five people have been shot—”
    Suddenly I heard somebody yelling in my ear from the control room back at the station. The director? No. The producer? No.
    It was Bing!
    He wolfed, “Ask the kids something! Use the fuckin’ kids!”
    How could I think and talk live in front of thousands of people with Bing yelling in my ear?
    “Get a bite from the kids, Georgia!”
    I struggled to finish my thought without stuttering live on-air. “There were only a few people outside cleaning up when the drive-by occurred—”
    “Use the kids! Now!!!”
    I turned to the kids behind me. “Did you see anything?”
    A cute little girl with fuzzy-plaited hair was standing in front. She was wearing a faded pink and white sleeveless cotton dress. Large eyes brimming with excitement focused on me. The little girl grabbed the mike and said, “I seent a car. This real dark black boy with a scar, he was dressed all in yellow, and just shooting his gun!”
    An ashy hand belonging to a little boy with a jealous heart grabbed the mike away from her. He shouted, “Let me talk some! They were shooting, I was running! Bang! Bang!”
    Now the rest of the kids went off the deep end, too: “Bang! Bang!”
    Bing was in my ear again, yelling, “Wrap! Wrap!”
    “Again, there’s been a drive-by shooting on the South Side. Five people shot. We’ll have a report from the scene and from the hospital. Channel 8 News will have all the latest details at ten.”
    I stood very still until I knew I was no longer live on the air, then I threw