This week, hundreds of people lost their home and a woman was killed when the storms blew through and knocked a crane into an apartment building. Naturally, a bunch of reporters showed up to shove microphones into people’s faces and ask them how this made them feel.
Loyal Scaiaholics will recall this ranks near the bottom of my favorite parts of the job.
On one hand, a professor at Ball State back in the day explained that “man on the street” interviews were a last resort. A man on the street is literally [he frequently spoke in italics] the opposite of news, he’d say. As the name implies, a random person is not making news.
On the other, sometimes people, through no fault of their own, wind up becoming news makers. Many times, they can connect with people listening because they don’t talk in rehearsed soundbites, saying things like they’re still alive by the grace of God. They tell you how it really is.
For the second straight day, I was dispatched to the community center across the street from the apartment building to accost people walking in for information about their hotel or new apartment.
The first couple of people declined, saying they talked to reporters yesterday. Around this time, a TV crew arrived, so the reporter and I decided to accost people together. This way, our theory went, people trying to rebuild their lives would only be hounded by one group of reporters instead of multiple individual reporters every few steps.
This morning, however, few people were going into the community center. The volunteers were expecting crowds later; people could start picking up their refunds in the afternoon and some would be allowed back in once more to pick up belongings.
Instead, I was sent to East Dallas to accost people waiting for their power to come back on. Because a power failure is a minor inconvenience, I was happy to chat up people there.
One woman walking her dog just asked me to walk with her for a bit, saying she was glad to lose her electricity during an unseasonably cool week. A gentleman from Europe says he found the thunderstorm exciting because it was his first time.
Oncor had subcontractors pruning trees along power lines. One landscaping crew was parked, looking forlorn in a neighborhood along Grand Avenue. When that woman, her dog and I were walking down the street, someone in the crew held up jumper cables and asked if I could help.
You’re kind of a big deal!
— Brigitte Cummings (@BrigitteTweeted) June 11, 2019
I was quite pleased to get such kudos from co-workers and associates on Twitter, especially given that my participation in this project was limited to turning my truck around.
