It's not as good once you try it

Today I covered an interesting story today.  I tagged along with reporter Julian Grace and we were sent out to a small town called Whitestown, Indiana.  There was a report from our partner newspaper in Lebanon (about 15 minutes away from Whitestown) saying that a Major in the Whitestown Police Department was arrested for a theft of a vehicle.  Now, the vehicle was already with the police station because it was taken because of a homicide investigation.  Once we arrived, the Chief wasn’t really telling us anything.  He was very upfront with us, but he said he was advised to not tell us anything until he had his investigation meeting later that day.  He did tell us that we could pick up the probable cause report from Lebanon at the courthouse.  So, we headed to the courthouse and when we asked for the report, they informed us that the initial hearing for this case was happening right then.  We hurried to the court room to figure out what the details were, but got there just before it ended.  Although we couldn’t figure out any information, we did get the Major leaving the court room and our reporter was able to ask a few questions from his lawyer.  The lawyer (who has a track record of being upfront with the media) told us that he doesn’t really even know the whole story.  So from gathering all of this information we couldn’t really make a story.  So, the reporter told the courthouse to fax him the report because they said it still wasn’t in due to the fact that the court hearing had just ended and the judge hadn’t turned in the copy.  The significance of this story is that this was the first time I got a taste of “failure” in the reporting world.  Because the court’s delays, Julian was not able to do a standup because of the lack of facts.  The plan for that day was that Julian will have to make a package without a standup (which the news director hates).  I see that not every story will go according to plan.  Reporters not only have to be smart enough to cover a story, they have to be flexible and adapt to change.