After several wrong turns, a hair-raising few minutes going the wrong way on I-405, and an illegal U-turn, he had gotten them back to Channel Four. With five minutes to spare.
This morning they had been out again, first to retrieve Cassidy’s car from the impound lot, then to interview a few of the Boy Scouts who were now canvassing the area near Katie’s house. They had also shot B-roll—footage without a narration sound track that would run while viewers listened to Cassidy or one of her interview subjects. The B-roll added dimension. While Cassidy talked about the Boy Scouts, the B-roll would show them knocking on doors and handing out fliers.
You always shot more footage than you could use. But to be able to decide what part of the tape to use, you had to log it—record exactly what was on the tape and the time it appeared. Logging narrowed things down, weeded out the unusable. It allowed you to save time in the long run, searching for that elusive shot. But in the short run, it was tedious and time-consuming. Just one of the thousand little tedious tasks that put the lie to the “glamour” of being a reporter.
As she took another sip of coffee, Cassidy used the knob to shuttle through some footage she was sure they wouldn’t use. At the upper right was a time code that showed how far into the footage that particular scene started. She took notes about what was in each scene. When someone was speaking, it was impossible to take down every word, so she only wrote down the first and last few.
There was Nicole, clipping the microphone onto her collar. Cassidy turned up the sound and listened to her friend say, “We’ve realized that during our first canvass many renters did not disclose that they had other people visiting or living with them. Sometimes there were two names on the lease, and six people living in the apartment or friends of friends who had been visiting. And some of these people have turned out to be fugitives of one kind or another.”
Nicole went on to explain law enforcement’s version of Cassidy’s grunt work. They now had to identify as many individuals as possible who had been in the area where Katie disappeared, and then either clear them by obtaining a valid alibi or gather enough information to justify a search warrant.
“We also are locating and interviewing every registered sex offender who lives in the area,” Nicole continued. “But that’s going to take time. There are approximately nine hundred registered sex offenders with Northwest Portland addresses.”
That was her next angle, Cassidy realized. She could profile a few of the worst of those nine hundred. With luck, she could track down old victims who might be willing to talk if their faces and voices were altered. That kind of footage was actually more dramatic than filming the actual people, in Cassidy’s opinion, so it was a win-win all the way around.
Next came some shots of Cassidy standing next to a poster of Katie that conveniently looked weather-beaten. It allowed her to pontificate about whether people were already forgetting about the girl. Cassidy watched her on-screen self critically. Had she talked too fast, swallowed consonants, sped past important points? Had she been clear, credible, and comfortable?
After all, this could be her big break. Did she really want to stay in Portland forever? Los Angeles sounded marvelous after months of gray skies. But then again, was she still young enough to make it in LA? Every time she saw her parents, they reminded her that she was, as her dad put it, no spring chicken.
Cassidy was so deep in thought that she didn’t see Jerry, the station manager, until he was close enough to touch.
He cleared his throat.
She jumped and then tried to hide it. “Hey, Jer. What are you doing here on a Saturday?”
“Looking at these. Did you see the overnights?” He waved a printout under her nose.
Ratings haunted Channel Four. Theirs was a “metered market,” which meant Nielsen had put meters in a sample of Portland’s households to automatically measure viewership. But ratings were like getting a report card without any explanation from the teacher. You knew what you had, but you had to guess at the why.
But this time Jerry seemed to think he knew. “It’s the Katie Converse thing. People are eating that up,” he said. “Last night’s program delivered a 9.7 household rating and a 15 percent share in the metered-market overnights. That’s up 45 percent from a year ago. Forty-five!”
Cassidy was stunned. Such a huge jump for a news broadcast was nearly unheard of. More and more, people turned to the Internet for the news. A TV news broadcast was practically an anachronism, filled with “news” that people had already learned about hours earlier. The only way to fight back was with news that was more than just a recitation of dry facts. News that was more like the stories she had been doing about Katie Converse.
This was it, Cassidy realized. Really and truly it. The Katie Converse story could make or break her career.
And right now it was making it.
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