Tasting The Grass On The Other Side At CBS

Happy Thursday, everyone.

I was fortunate to have sat in on last night's live broadcast of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and I was stunned.

Why? Well, sometimes we print people forget about what goes on on the other side of the glass. And without fawning over broadcast people -- or saying the obvious, as in they work hard -- I'd like to say that I learned a lot in those 22 minutes.

For starters, we print people often forget about the time element. Sitting in the control room, I watched an orchestration -- choreography, really -- of events through the broadcast. Wires in ears at all times, things always changing last minute, keeping cool on camera. There's really no "hanging up the phone."

Man, it's easy to ignore everything from the newsroom, isn't it?

There's no grand lesson here besides this: journalists should every so often check out what their fellow reporters/producers do. Print journalists should stop by the TV studio during a live broadcast, TV producers should stop by the newsroom (at close!), both should stop by the radio booth and radio guys should see what the other two do.

It sounds simple, but we get wrapped up in what we do and we forget that we really are one family with seriously different styles. We're all in this together -- so why should we only see each other on Romenesko?

Just a thought.