Sorry to see Joy Reid's show canceled, because I like her A LOT. She's VERY smart and very insightful. But this kid Ronan Farrow brought very little to the table (except for a pretty face), and hasn't paid his dues! It just always bothers me when somebody gets moved into a plum job over the heads of the many other deserving people with more experience and who've put in more years and struggled more, and haven't been handed any of the glamour jobs, (and/or don't have famous parents) and are left behind, toiling in the back of the vineyard.
I feel the same about Luke Russert, but at least he's out there, finally, chasing down people on Capitol Hill, trying to build relationships with sources that might pay off now or count someday, working and earning his way - the hard way. Being a reporter is a LOT tougher than being an anchor or host. At least you get to sit at your desk or in your anchor booth in the air conditioning with your makeup person making you look great and assistants coming up to hand you rewritten copy or script updates, and you don't even break a sweat.
AND you don't have to fight traffic to get to the next assignment or press conference or crime scene, and you don't have to circle for 10 minutes looking for a place to park or cough up 20 bucks for the downtown parking lot where City Hall and the County Court buildings are. You don't have to try to fight your way in through the gang-bang (sometimes, when I was out there working, it was referred to as a pig-fuck - the scrum of reporters and cameras and microphones and paparazzi surrounding a news subject or following them down a crowded hall in a crazed pack, or trying to grab a soundbite while the competition sharks are circling or some handler is trying to interfere, impede your work, stand in your way, block your shot, or grab the newsmaker away before you get your question in). And at the same time you have some supervisor back in the air conditioned bureau yelling in your earpiece about how you screwed up, why didn't you ask this or that, why did Competitor X, Y, or Z get the shot you should have gotten, why did you ask THAT question, and why didn't you call in in time for the top-of-the-hour newscast (which you DID, but somebody in the scrum knocked the phone out of your hand and you had to scramble around on the floor between 15 pairs of moving legs to retrieve it), why aren't you already finished filing the tape, writing the story, phoning in the report, and already setting up at your next assignment all the way across town. There was one time when I was days away from going off on maternity leave and I got caught in a crowd of pushing, shoving reporters, lost both of my shoes and some of my equipment, and damn near had my microphone knocked out of my hand as we pushed and shoved around some newsmaker trying to avoid us while walking down an unending hallway into a courtroom.
SHEESH, that's damn hard work!!!!!!! Field reporting is murder! That part of it I do NOT miss. And that's when you don't have to cover an earthquake, high-rise fire, or plane crash. And assuming the weather's cooperative...
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