Media at the funeral

There were a number of media outlets from Albany, NY to Springfield to Boston to Connecticut that came to capture the military ceremony of a young Marine who was killed in a training accident.

Marine Lance Cpl. Roger W. (R.J.) Muchnick, Jr of Westport, Conn., had ties to Lenox in family and friends.

They collectively captured the event live on camera, film and/or on several types of handheld computers and via notebook.

Representatives came from Time Warner Cable-YNN, WRGB, Channel 6; WTEN, Channel 10-all of Albany; Channel 40-WGGB-Springfield; NECN- Channel 50 Boston; and WVIT-NBC-CT Channel 30-West Hartford.

Also, staff members from The Connecticut Post of Bridgeport, The Berkshire Eagle, iBerkshires of North Adams and The Berkshire Beacon were in attendance.

Many of the reporters, camera personnel and their reporters lined up across from St. Ann’s Church watching the people enter the church. Some of the people came over and gave comments to the media on behalf of the family.

For the most part, it was a wait and see effort from the start of the service to the procession to St. Ann’s Cemetery.

One unplanned event was a woman, who suffered some type of fainting spell in the church and was taken out of the church to the waiting Lenox Ambulance. She was treated at the scene before returning to the ceremony at hand.

***

For me, it was a day to see a community come together and offer its solace and grace to a grieving family.

It was a day to see our town employees at work:

-The Lenox Department of Public Works cleaning up the street and adjacent areas, emptying the trash barrels.

-The Lenox Police, with its full contingent of officers, helping guide traffic away from the church and explaining the service to the unaware.

-Then the Lenox Fire Department’s display of the American flag from the top of its hook and ladder truck as a lasting impression to honor a solider, who died not on the combat field, but in training to protect America.

Then there were many of the elected officials some of whom know members of the family, others who came like many citizens to pay homage to this soldier’s his life.

It was a day for the community as individuals to acknowledge the Coakley family for their loss and honor their grandson, who was known as R.J.

***

Yet, it was a time to reacquaint myself with some of the reporters from my days at The Springfield Union-Republican, when I would be covering events with Ray Hershal from Channel 40. He did not recall me from the days of covering Holyoke Mayor Bill Taupier at city hall.

Most of the broadcast people from Albany are new since my time in the Pittsfield bureau for The Union-Republican.

The broadcaster I caught up with was Brian Brunell from NECN, who has worked the Syracuse, N.Y., market to Albany to Boston to Hartford, Conn., and knows the players both young and old.

This gave me an opportunity to inquire as to the Boston television and print publications, to Hartford and the Courant and the former members of Channel 3, WFSB-TV to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn.

The conversation brought back a lot of memories from previous times and was updated by the Newtown tragedy.

And noting that television personnel are always inquiring about print journalists and vice versa, the interesting thing was that TV crews can now communicate directly to their station with a uplink pack – much like a back pack. No longer does a television station need a fully equipped satellite truck with personnel along with camera crew and a reporter.

One or two people can operate the pack as needed for a visual, a commentary-intro, overview or complete spontaneous coverage. Marvelous would be my word.

Since I am a believer in print newspapers, I welcomed the media to Lenox.

I marveled, too, that there have been changes in print news gathering from the smart phones/iPhones to iPads to small laptop computers, but note-taking remains for the coverage of the scene or a quote.

Today, software makes it a lot easier to communicate and to layout and ultimately to build a file for the printer to produce an end product for your reading pleasure.

Posted by George C. Jordan III on April 4, 2013. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry