A Part Of The Story

Local television newsrooms have fleets of vans, satellite trucks and cars to speed their reporters to breaking news stories.

On Wednesday, one local TV station didn't have to leave its own building for much of the time.

The shootings at Cleveland's Success Tech Academy, which brought national media attention to the city all day, happened at the school's location - within sight of WKYC/3's Digital Broadcast Center at 13th and Lakeside. (And since we often refer to local media outlets by their physical location, those are words we've used here often.)

The Cleveland NBC affiliate used that location to its advantage to cover the story, writes station senior director Frank Macek in his "Director's Cut" blog.

Not only was it all happening across the street, some of it even spilled into the station itself.

A late afternoon press conference carried by all local stations, and national cable TV news channels, provided the latest details from authorities from a then-unidentified location.

Well, as it turns out, writes Macek:

Studio B of WKYC became the press conference center when Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Schools Superintendent Eugene Sanders held a press conference at 4 pm, along with members of the police department.

Kudos to the Channel 3 folks for not insisting upon putting a big "3" logo on the curtain behind the officials. We guess at one local station would have done that in this market.

The station also provided a meeting room for students and parents to find each other in the aftermath of the shooting. And WKYC is airing security camera video of an earlier fight outside the school that apparently involved Wednesday's assumed shooter - a video shot from one of their own security cameras right from the station's building.

The proximity of the story gave WKYC one other edge in coverage.

With another major breaking news story happening in Lake County, local stations had to split their helicopter time between the visual of the Success Tech campus, and a train derailment in Lake County, with spectacular overhead pictures to be offered at the latter location.

WKYC's helicopter stayed above the train derailment - the school shooting more than adequately covered by the station's own cameras on Lakeside Avenue.

Frank Macek's blog provided the pictures we've shared here.

And Channel 3 Akron/Canton Bureau chief and TWC Akron/Canton News anchor Eric Mansfield has much more on the timeline of the station's coverage on his blog as well.

All the local news stations threw out all the stops on a very busy news day, with extended live coverage, reporters in the air and on the ground, and live news conferences on two major stories happening at about the same time in two different parts of Northeast Ohio.

But only WKYC had one of the stories happen literally outside its own front door...