Ticker or not to ticker? 12-4-2012 A sad story has developed in our community. Friday the owner of a local pizzeria at the Lima Mall left to make a bank deposit. Dominic Fricano hasn't been seen since. We got word of the missing man on Saturday evening. By Sunday family and friends launched a search in Delphos, a small town west of Lima. Of course our weekend crew covered those events as news stories. Monday morning I got a call from a family friend of Dominic at 10am asking us to run a bulletin on our NewsTicker. That's the crawl you see at the bottom of the screen usually reserved for school closings or big stories and certainly breaking news that could put the public in danger such as an explosion at the refinery or a hostage situation. In this case the caller wanted to announce they were launching a search party and were looking for volunteers. It was an amateur search to say the least with no law enforcement participating or coordinating the search.Not plotted grids, not ATV's or bloodhounds. The only thing they had to go on is that the cell phone he was carrying was last tracked pinging in the Delphos area. The reason for no law enforcement participation; was that it is not a crime to go missing. Some people just decide they want to fall of the face of the earth. It's unusual, but not unheard of. The reality is that the family is upset about their loved one has vanished. A mystery of such with no explanation. . There was no indication that there were problems at home or that he might get up and leave. No medical issues, No known reasons to leave his business or family without explanation. The point of today's blog...there was a request .to run the ticker or not announcing the search. Each year i get a dozen requests from parents about their missing teenage kids. Usually during the summer they run off with the carnival or are mad at their parents and are hiding out with a friend across town. On occasion I also get requests for help with missing dogs. People want us to run the NewsTicker crawls for all sorts of reasons. Chili suppers being cancelled because the church lost power or boil orders being issued and sometimes 911 service at a police dispatch being interrupted.. Each case is considered on an individual basis..NewsTicker is an effective tool.to get the word out. I went to my general manager and told him of the request. I wanted to know what he wanted to do. I said I could see running it but was inclined not to run it. He wanted to know why. My reason was simple, Why does this pizza store owner missing merit anymore attention than the missing teenager or missing dog. Each person making the crawl requests think theirs is the most important on earth. They want to find their loved one or animal. I told my boss I didn't want to open a Pandora's box and establish a precedent.. I needed to have a policy that maintained some sort of protocol or we would be running missing dog crawls during the Brown, Bengals and Lions games. there's got to be a joke somewhere in here about the crawl being more interesting than the game. My boss agreed. not to run the crawl. I told him I would call the search party up and tell them NO. In earlier TV days, television was really the best way to reach a mass audience. Now days there are so many other methods and mediums that are more efficient in getting a message the the masses quickly.. Twitter, Facebook and the internet in general. I told the person requesting the call that I couldn't justify interrupting programming for a situation that wasn't threatening the general public . Again no crimes had been committed and somebody's livelihood wasn't in eminent danger (needing medication and such).. "this case just keeps getting stranger by the day, we 've had no leads ,no one has called us, we haven't had any sighting on the vehicle. the bank deposit was never made. so its just like he up and vanished , It s a bizzare situation": | Never made the bank deposit In the end I told the caller we would instead post the request and photos of the story on our web page and Facebook pages. I also agreed that I thought the search was newsworthy . From there we proceeded with doing a noon live shot from Delphos Stadium Park with the search party making a plea.for tips and information. Dominic Fricano is still missing. Only time will tell what happened. I hope it was only a midlife crisis and wanting to disappear for a while and not something horrible. During my 35 years in news I've seen these things turn out both ways. my prayers for his wife, family and friends that this has a happy ending. http://www.hometownstations.com/story/20261484/missing-local-businessman If you have thoughts or comments feel free to share them with me. [email protected] |