The Evening News Read Free

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    In the newsroom, Ernie LaSalle suddenly sat up straight, attentive , startled . About a minute earlier, the Dallas bureau chief had excused himself from the line on which he had been talking with LaSalle to take another phone call, Waiting, LaSalle could hear the bureau chief's voice but not what was being said. Now the bureau man returned and what he reported caused the national editor to smile broadly . LaSalle picked up a red reporting telephone on his desk which connected him, through amplified speakers, to every section of the news operation .” National desk. LaSalle. Good news. We now have immediate coverage at DFW airport. In the terminal building, waiting for flight connections, are Partridge, Abrams, Van Canh. Abrams just reported to Dallas bureau-they are onto the story and running. More: A mobile satellite van has abandoned another assignment and is en route to DFW, expected soonest. Satellite feed time, Dallas to New York, is booked. We expect pictures in time for inclusion in the first-feed news .”
    Though he tried to sound laconic, LaSalle found it hard to keep the satisfaction from his voice. As if in response, a muffled cheer drifted down the open stairway from the Horseshoe above. Crawford Sloane, in the studio, also swung around and gave LaSalle a cheerful thumbs up . An aide put a paper in front of the national editor who glanced at it, then continued on the speakerphone, "Also from Abrams, this report: On board Airbus in distress are 286passengers, eleven crew. Second plane in collision, a private Piper Cheyenne, crashed in Gainesville, no survivors . There are other casualties on ground, no details, numbers or seriousness . Airbus has one engine ripped off, is attempting landing on remaining en- gine. Air Traffic Control reportsfire isfrom the location of missing engine. Report ends .”
    LaSalle thought: Everything that had come from Dallas in the past few minutes was totally professional. But then, it was not surprising because the team of Abrams, Partridge and Van Canh was one of the crack combinations of CBA News. Rita Abrams, once a correspondent and now a senior field producer, was noted for her quick assessment of situations and a resourcefulness in getting stories back, even under difficult conditions . Harry Partridge was one of the. best correspondents in the business. He normally specialized in war stories and, like Crawford Sloane, had reported from Vietnam, but could be relied on to do an exceptional job in any situation. And cameraman Minh Van Canh, once a Vietnamese and now an American citizen, was noted for his fine pictures sometimes shot in dan gerous situations with disregard for his own safety. The fact that the three of them were onto the Dallas story guaranteed that it would be well handled . By now it was a minute past the half hour and the first-feed National Evening News had begun. Reaching for a control beside his desk, LaSalle turned up the audio of an overhead monitor and heard Crawford Sloane doing the top-of-the-news tell story about DFW. On camera, a hand-it was a writer's slipped a paper in front of him. Clearly it contained the additional report LaSalle had just dictated and, glancing down and ad-libbing, Sloane incorporated it into his prepared text. It was the kind of thing the anchorman did superbly.
    Upstairs at the Horseshoe since LaSalle's announcement, the mood had changed. Now, though pressure and urgency remained, there was cheerful optimism with the knowledge that the Dallas situation was well in hand and pictures and a fuller report would be forthcoming. Ch uck Insen and others were huddled, watching monitors, arguing, making decisions, squeezing out seconds, doing still more cutting and rearranging to leave the needed space. It looked as if the report about the corrupt senator would fall by the way after all. There was a sense of everyone doing what they did best-coping in a time confined, exigency situation . Swift exchanges, jargon-loaded, flowed