Even Worse Than We Had Hoped
    By Paul Spelman

Wilmington Star News writes about EWTWHH

Star-News Online

Bookmarks, October 8th, 2009

“Even Worse Than We Had Hoped”

by Ben Steelman

From 1994 to 1997, Paul Spelman worked as a newscaster for WWAY-TV3 in Wilmington, covering beats in Whiteville and Wilmington. (Jon Evans, now at WECT, was his boss.)

Spelman went on to work with WATE in Knoxville, Tenn., WPIX in New York, KTLA in Los Angeles, the Washington, D.C., bureaus of  Tribune Broazdcast and Hearst, as well as the Tech TV cable channel. He recalls it all in his new memoir “Even Worse Than We Had Hoped: A Journey Through the Weird, Wild World of Local TV News” (Meshomac Press, $15.99 paperback.)

As Spelman puts it, he sometimes felt like he wasn’t a real reporter, just playing one on television.

In Whiteville, Spelman was what we know in the business as a “one-man bureau.” One-man band was more like that. Spelman had to carry and set up his own cameras. Once, trying to kick open the door at the Columbus County Courthouse, he missed the door lever and hit the glass instead: “Shards of glass rained down, slicing my pants in several places. When I went in and reported this, I was bleeding so profusely that they were more concerned that I might not make it than about the fact that I had just demolished their door.”

They’re nice folks in Columbus County. The downside was, Whiteville was kind of slim on night life, there weren’t that many other eligible singles under the age of 60 and — this being the Bible Belt — folks kept asking Spelman to come to church with them. (He’d grown up in New York state, in an non-observant, half-Jewish household.)

Spelman is no Ted Baxter. He has a sense of humor that he’s not ashamed to turn on himself, and he’s not stupid. (Hey, he graduated from Colgate and later worked his way through law school at the University of Maryland.) Few people get the sense of the local newsroom so well:

“Only in a TV newsroom will one person yell out, “Who’s got the lawn mower accident?” while another is reciting lines from “The Godfather” and a third person is calling the sheriff to ask whether a boyd flating in the river with arrows in its back evidences any signs of foul play. All of thiw while the police scanner at the assignment desk is broadcating such impossible-to-resist scoops as “Caller says she popped a large boil and is now worried about blood coming from her forehead.”

“Even Worse Than We Had Hoped” (a reporter’s actual, unfeigned response to a tornado) gives non-journalists a vivid, inside view of what TV journalism is like — notably, how hard those poor kids in suits are working for so little pay. (Spelman, who lasted here through Hurricane Fran, made less than $18,000 a year in the Wilmington market.)

Spelman is now a Washington lawyer and lives with his wife and sons in Silver Spring, Md. You can order his book on Amazon.com.  

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