I was please to see that the majority of the class had their still cameras with them this afternoon.  I do this every semester on the first day of classes and then randomly throughout the semester to see who is prepared to cover news.

I also showed off my “inexpensive mobile journalist kit.”  The Flip video camera from Pure Digital, my Samson Zoom H2 recorder and my Nikon D70(okay not so inexpensive, I bought it used a few years ago).

I didn’t stop covering news when I left the TV news business.  Once a journalist, always a journalist and so it was this evening.

To demonstrate my point – take a look at these photos I shot about an hour ago while running a routine errand to the pet store for dog food.

We heard a loud crash while shopping and heard sirens as we exited the store.  I grabbed my Flip Video camera and shot these short clips.  No one was injured.  The driver walked away and fortunately none of the employees inside the Movie Trading Company were near the registers when this happened.

This is a clip of when News Happens!

News Happens Clips # 2

But my video camera was short on batteries – I broke the GOLDEN RULE of all multimedia journalists – I didn’t put fresh batteries in my gear before heading out.  So when the video camera died, I just grabbed the Nikon and shot some photos.

I didn’t ask too many questions, I just wanted to gather these images to demonstrate that news happens when you least expect it and you should always be prepared.