Insight: Practical lessons for budding journalists

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I recently saw a post on Linked In where a first-year journalism student from Nigeria posted an interesting question.

Ed Pierce covered this fire at a three-story
apartment building in Biddeford in 2018
which killed an elderly resident.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE 

He asked, “What’s one lesson you learned in your first year as a journalist that school didn’t teach you?”

For me that list was lengthy, but I answered his question by focusing on a mobile home fire I was asked to report on in the 1980s. I had just arrived for work at a newspaper that published twice a week in a small city of about 8,000 in New Mexico.

As I just sat down with a cup of coffee at my desk, the editor came running into the newsroom, looked around and saw I was the only reporter there. He told me he had just heard a call on the scanner for firefighters to respond to a mobile home on fire just two streets away from the newspaper office.

The editor instructed me to grab my 35mm camera and my notepad and run to the fire scene.

Upon my arrival there, a noticed that a crew of firefighters was already using a fire hose to try and extinguish flames shooting out from the overhang of a carport with a pickup truck parked underneath it. A tree next to the carport was also on fire and I could see flames and black smoke bursting out from a window in front of the mobile home.

Luckily for me, I had placed a new roll of 35mm film in my Minolta camera the night before, so I was ready to begin taking photographs as soon as I arrived on scene.

I walked slowly up the driveway, stepping over firehoses that the crews had laid down after connecting to a fire hydrant across the street. Although it was mid-morning, the dense smoke was making it hard for me to see just a few feet in front of me, But I continued to look through the camera lens and snap photos as firefighters did their best to extinguish the blaze and limit damage.

There did not appear to be anyone at home at the fire scene and I heard more sirens from additional fire trucks as I advanced to a point about halfway up the driveway.

All I could hear were the sirens, shouts of the firefighters, the sound of the water from the fire hose hitting the carport and an odd snapping and sizzling sound somewhere near me as a thick wall of smoke encapsulated my position in the driveway.

Just then I heard a fireman say to me in a loud and direct way,. “Don’t take another step if you value your life.”

I looked down at the ground and saw a live electric line leading to the house that had been burned through by the fire moving back and forth in the driveway and emitting sparks.

To this day, I do not know who that fireman was, but he saved me from being electrocuted and taught me an important lesson as a young journalist. I stopped in my tracks and cautiously backed out of the driveway, fortunate to be alive.

The lesson I learned that day and have carried with me for the rest of my career in journalism is to always ask public safety personnel for permission to enter fire sites or crime scenes.

Here’s another lesson I learned much later in my career. At a fire scene, never park directly behind a fire truck. Once in New Hampshire I heard a fire call on the scanner and knew I could get there in three minutes in my car by taking a shortcut of a few back streets to the scene.

Arriving a few doors down from the fire, I pulled up behind the first fire truck to get there. I got out and was instructed by the fire captain that I could take photos by standing across the road where it was safe.

In the meantime, four more fire engines arrived behind my car and a crew from the last one began laying an eight-inch fire hose up the middle of the street and connected it to a fire hydrant.

I was able to obtain some fantastic photos for the next day’s newspaper of the fire and interviewed an occupant of the house and some of his neighbors as the fire was extinguished. I was ready to get back to the office, upload my photos and write the story.

My car was blocked not only by the fire trucks parked behind me, but I was told by a policeman that I could not pull a U-turn and drive over the fire hose running up the street. I was stuck there for another 45 minutes until the fire trucks departed and the fire hose was rolled up and taken away.

It was another valuable lesson learned, even though I had been a journalist for many years by then. When going to the scene of a fire, always park a good distance away in the event you need to leave quickly.

As a new journalist, you should always strive for accuracy and fairness in everything you write but basic safety and common sense are equally as important. <