Shooting News

This is a new page for archiving my posts on shooting TV news — the stories that I’ve done and posting on this site, as well as my blogs about what I do as a TV news shooter and one-man TV news reporter. This may expand into other things as well. I’ve had several people ask me lately about what my next book will be about and whether it could be about how I do TV news, a field that they are very interested in themselves.

If you have any thoughts or interests in such a book — especially if you’d be someone who would actually buy a copy! — please send me a note.

I’m also on Facebook and welcome hearing from people, what your interests are and if you visit this site and how often.

Many thanks — and more to come –

MIKE

Eclipse Update – Video Highlights

By
Eclipse Update – Video Highlights

The Solar eclipse was one week ago today. On that afternoon KCRA-TV in Sacramento, California, broadcast 90-minutes of live coverage from 5-7 o’clock, with a half hour for NBC Nightly News at 5:30-6 P.M. As I detailed in last week’s blog, I operated the “Eclipse Cam” for the entire coverage of the eclipse, including feeding a continuous shot to the KCRA website, which continued streaming until the end of the eclipse at 7:30, resulting in some of the highest number of hits that the site’s had in the past year. When KCRA Reports at 5 O’Clock came on with...

Read more »

Covering The Eclipse

By
Covering The Eclipse

News is not a regularly scheduled thing. Sometimes things happen on your days off and a call for volunteers is put out. I’ve always been fascinated by astronomy, the planets and alignments — so eclipses are something I’ve never experienced first hand. So when the station, KCRA, announced plans for extended live coverage of the solar eclipse and a call was put out for an extra shooter to man a camera that would be trained on the sun for the duration of the eclipse, that sounded unique. The best place to cover the eclipse in California was in Redding,...

Read more »

U.S. Army “Wounded Warriors” Practice Yoga–KCRA Story

By
U.S. Army “Wounded Warriors” Practice Yoga–KCRA Story

This is a TV news story that I shot, reported, wrote and edited that ran on KCRA-TV’s Common Ground on Saturday May 19, 2012. In daily news we live under very strong time constraints of stories not exceeding a one minute and twenty second running length. Audience attention span is short and impatient so we have to keep our stories shorter, more to the point, and faster paced in order to hold the viewers. On the flip side of that, at KCRA we are extremely fortunate to have a once-a-month magazine program called Common Ground where we can run...

Read more »

KCRA Chinese Delegates Visit Sacramento — Expanded

By
KCRA Chinese Delegates Visit Sacramento — Expanded

A month ago I reported a story KCRA Channel 3 Reports about a delegation of Chinese businessmen and government officials from Funan County in the People’s Republic of China coming to Sacramento to look at a facility for a distribution center for their imports. They make furniture and baskets from bamboo and other products, all green materials. The location they were visiting was Jon’s Furniture, a 40,000 square foot structure, on Stockton Boulevard. Jon’s has been a family-run business in Sacramento for over 50 years before closing the doors last year due to the economy. When I first moved...

Read more »

KCRA Chinese Businessmen In Sacramento

By
KCRA Chinese Businessmen In Sacramento

A delegation of Chinese government leaders and businessmen from Funan County in China are visiting Sacramento, considering setting up a distribution center here for their products — baskets and woven furniture. I’ve seen woven baskets and rattan and bamboo furniture from Asia since I was a kid, but I never imagined that it could provide so many jobs. Also, it’s completely green, relying on renewable plants as the sources for the products. It’s also inexpensive to purchase and last for years and years. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of my reporter-photographer packages for KCRA, but yesterday...

Read more »

Good Deeds Open Doors At Goodwill

By
Good Deeds Open Doors At Goodwill

The last day of 2011. New Year’s Eve. KCRA reporter Brian Hickey and I are sent out on assignment to cover people making last minute donations to get breaks on their 2011 taxes. Last year Brian Hickey had gone to the Deseret Industries thrift store and done stories and morning live shots at their drive-up donation area and it had gone very well, so we headed over there. This time, however, we were told that all media requests had to be submitted in writing and would be sent to Salt Lake City, Utah, (Deseret Industries is operated by the...

Read more »

KCRA – SPCA Adopt-A-Thon Preview 11-11-2011

By
KCRA – SPCA Adopt-A-Thon Preview 11-11-2011

I’m rushing to post this story this evening to help promote the Sacramento SPCA 11-11 adoption drive that begins tomorrow, Friday, November 11 — 11/11. On an average day the SPCA adopts out 25-35 pets a day. On Friday, 11/11, their goal is to get 111 pets into new homes. It typically costs around $100 to adopt a dog and $85 to take home a cat from the SPCA. But on Friday, 11/11, you can adopt a dog or a cat for only $11.11. The SPCA has seen a huge number of animals who had been family pets relinquished...

Read more »

Portraits of Protest – Occupy Oakland General Strike

By
Portraits of Protest – Occupy Oakland General Strike

You never know what people are going to like. I was crossing the newsroom where there was a news meeting going on and one of the managers said, “We really liked the pictures you got at the protest yesterday.” At first I thought he was talking about the stories that I shot with KCRA reporter Mallory Hoff at the Occupy Oakland protest in downtown Oakland yesterday (Wednesday, November 2, 2011). Then he said he was talking about the snapshots I’d taken and sent back. Someone else asked me what camera I was using because they were so cool looking....

Read more »

KWCH – Runners Photo Essay 1984

By
KWCH – Runners Photo Essay 1984

I’m posting this as an historical artifact. It isn’t great television, in fact, it’s the kind of story that I don’t think anyone does anymore. This story is significant for one major thing in my life, however. It’s the first time my name was mentioned on TV. KWCH Runners 1984 from Mike Carroll on Vimeo. First off about this type of story. In today’s TV news climate many people could say that this is not fitting for TV news. “This isn’t news. This is a music video. You’ve taken a news event and reduced it to MTV.” “This is...

Read more »

KWCH Roadside Kansas Documentary 1987

By
KWCH Roadside Kansas Documentary 1987

The general notion about Kansas is that it’s long and flat with not much to look at besides corn and wheat. I drove straight through the state a couple of times on my way to and back from California and tried to time it so that the eight hours it took to traverse the 400 miles from the eastern to western border could be done at night. I have to say that once I started living there, I was dead wrong about the state. In the mid-80s Kansas geologists Rex C. Buchanan and James R. McCauley wrote a book...

Read more »