The Most Exclusive Club - My Adventures Shooting for Network Newscasts

Part of being a network news cameraman is that I to where others are leaving! That, and a side-story or two about chartered jets!

It's a departure from stories of being a network news cameraman.

It's one of the funniest short stories I ever read so I read it here and cannot fight breaking into laughter.

It's clean for all audiences, so listen along and lets have a light moment.

If you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard about some of my adventures in shooting news for the New York newsrooms of NBC News, CBS News, and ABC News. Now, for a little backstory to answer the question I would often get: "How do I get your job?"

When the NBC Network News Bureau for the Southwest United States was in Houston, I lived across the street. That was a time when the networks really covered space. The Johnson Space Center was not far away in Clear Lake. All the media had trailers across the parking lot of Building 9 at NASA. Building 9 housed most of the trainers. Between getting to know many astronauts and a teacher who was to fly on the Challenger space shuttle, I have stories to tell.

I cannot count the times when my life was in danger. Many times while working in newsgathering for the networks, many times while serving in Vietnam, and a few times when you expected life to be ordinary.

See my work at DonSmith.TV, my YouTube Channel at TheMostExclusiveClub.com, and a film I shot at my compound in Vietnam at NewsVideo.com/Vietnam.

I traveled in three presidential campaigns. Stories to tell! How about a near mid-air aboard AFII?

What could I do?

How is it that I could know that about 30 children were inside a burning building and I was just standing there watching?

I went up against the ceiling when Air Force II did an emergency dive to avoid a mid-air.

Traveling in presidential campaigns.

I've been chewed out by the best.

A Red Sox player purposely threw a ball into my face.

Just another day as a network news cameraman.

I talk about my adventures in getting to Mexico City, how we were held back in the air over the Texas/Mexico border, how our producer got me on a light plane to shoot video of the city still burning, and I talk about the second earthquake and I stood outside watching tall buildings sway and creak and crunch all around me as the ground under my feet moved side to side about three feet. And, the baby that was carried out of the rubble looking grey and very still.

38 years of working for NBC, CBS, and ABC network news out of their Dallas Bureaus. I have many adventure stories to tell, and it often happened that I saw many of the same guys, guys from news bureaus around the country, at big stories. There it is; despite there being no pre-announced time and place, we all show up. How more exclusive can you get than that?