Telling The Story

Challenging. Adrenaline-pumping. Riveting. Exhausting. These words barely begin to describe working at a local TV station during a story so large it compels round-the-clock coverage. We experienced it in Atlanta last winter during "Snowmageddon", where a few inches of snow-turned-ice led to massive back-ups on the highways and left people stuck in their cars for hours. Local TV journalists in Buffalo went through it last month, when the region was pelted with a different kind of snowstorm. A seven-foot kind of snowstorm. The historic snowfall -- even by Buffalo standards -- created massive issues across the region, and its NBC affiliate, WGRZ-TV, replaced its regular programming with non-stop news coverage. Anchors, reporters, producers, photographers, and staffers across the board worked extra-long shifts -- outdoors, too, for the crews in the field. Situations like these often stretch a newsroom to its thinnest. In this case, half of the WGRZ newsroom was not there. So says longtime reporter Claudine Ewing: