Sweeps starts next week. We're down one News Director, two reporters, we have no interns, and our chief photographer just quit. That means we've got like, ten people running two newscasts. I've already worked over forty hours this week, and it's only four o'clock on a Wednesday.

I was actually afraid of what might happen when I had to deliver the 8,430th piece of bad news to the executive producer last night. News like:

The live truck broke! My tape deck broke! Camera five broke! Okay, now the tape deck in the live truck is broke! With a tape we needed inside it! The live shot won't work because it's on the 11th floor and no one has enough cable to wire the cameras all the way up there! That news car you sent out to cover a story about a thirty car pileup of cars stuck in ditches got stuck in a ditch! The satellites are all broke!

I filed a Repair Request Report that read:

Item needing to be fixed?: Newsroom.
Item location?: Newsroom.
Description of problem?: Can't make news.

I was not allowed to submit this report. I had to fill out several smaller, more specific reports. It took forever.