I wanted you to spend some time with this remarkable project that finds a new way to tell a well-worn topic. The project on drunk driving is especially timely, since this week we enter the holiday driving season when lots of people will be attending parties and then driving home. The project is reported by my old friend Rick Kupchella at KARE-11 in Minneapolis.
Here is the station's extensive online coverage of the project, including links to all the online video stories and extended interviews with the main characters.
It is unlike any drunk-driving project you are likely to see. It ran for three nights and takes the viewer deep inside the experience of drunk-driving arrest and the jail stay. Part three takes the viewer to a typical party where we will see how different people react to alcohol -- just how much a person can drink and still be safe/legal to drive.
I interviewed Rick via e-mail about how he pulled this project off:
Why did you do this project?
Sounds 'fake' -- but literally, I know some people who know some people ... dealing with DUIs. I was hearing the stories of how, on their first offense, they had to spend the night in jail.
They also lost their license for 90 days on the first offense. Photojournalist Jonathan Malat talked to me about doing this story at the same time I was hearing of these stories via friends of mine. He was actually experiencing the same 'awareness' through friends of his own.
We decided early on the only way to do the project was to gain an unusual level of access. The Achilles' heel of this subject is that everybody thinks they know this story.
Images of people in field-sobriety tests at the side of the road have been broadcast over and over. If we couldn't gain unusual visual access -- we were not going to do this story.
(More on that below.)
In the early stages of the research, I became convinced that -- despite all the 'news' about drunk driving -- people do not appreciate several key things:
- Consequence is much greater than they think (automatic overnight in jail and loss of license for 90 days on first offense).
- The effort to find drunk drivers here has never been so intense.
- In some cases we found federally funded sweeps netting one drunk driver for every 80 stops. That's trying very hard.
- Acceptable blood-alcohol-concentration limits are on decline (Minnesota was the state last in the nation to adopt .08; Colorado is already at .06.).
- I've begun to see this as 'tobacco' -- 20 years later. I believe tolerance for drinking and driving will continue to diminish.
- I also started thinking a lot about the very notion of '.08' as a standard. Your tolerance actually screws with you. You may 'feel' fine -- but maybe you're not. How are people supposed to know when they're at this 'imaginary line' of .08 ... when it can mean different things to different people on different days?
- The cops are the only ones with the 'tool' that tells you when you're going to jail.
- It's a fundamentally messed-up system when you threaten people with grave consequences for crossing a line that they cannot accurately see or measure.
- We've seen people who were seriously impaired well below .08 and others who "seemed fine" and were way over.
- This is all further complicated by the fact that people are most often trying to make this determination when they are literally the definition of "impaired." This is a major focus of the final night.
How did you get such extraordinary access?
This was all about the access. Had we failed the access we would have done something else.
The target was the jail. Everybody does ride-alongs. We wanted to go further.
We "negotiated" with several sheriffs over the course of the entire summer because sheriffs control the jails. County attorneys in some cases presented us with enormous hurdles such as contracts they wanted us to sign. We rejected these.
In the end we were able to work out the basic principles of an agreement on pretty much a hand-shake deal with the sheriff of Ramsey County (where St. Paul is). We wanted to ride with the arrestee to the jail and then go through everything they do, when they do.
We started with our own lawyers to develop our arguments:
- There's no 'privacy' issue on a public street with cops doing their jobs.
- More significantly, we were able to successfully argue "there's no presumed right to privacy inside a jail."
- There is certainly some information we cannot have access to/broadcast (medical conditions, etc.); we simply agreed this information would be off limits.
What surprised you most about what you learned?
1.)
Heavy consequence for first-time offenders.
2.) Fine nature of the net being dragged to catch DUI offenders.
3.) Tolerance actually screws with you.
3.) Very hard to know when you are at the limit where you will face the extreme consequences.
3.) In the end it will come down to .001-percent alcohol.
How has the audience reacted?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Many requests from schools, law enforcement and others interested in the stories for 'training' everything from high school kids to cops. There were some who thought we were too hard on the priest. Ratings-wise ... it was the strongest Monday night we had in ages.
Day-After-Thanksgiving Sale
It used to be that the day after Thanksgiving was a big day for newspapers running sales circulars. But tons of online sites are trying to move in. Sites like Alex's coupons and BlackFridayAds.com try to give the public a jump on what the stores will offer on sale.
The Price of Thanksgiving
The American Farm Bureau Federation has calculated the price of a Thanksgiving feast compared to years past.
The "F-Word"
A new documentary (to be released in February) explores the origin as well as the widespread use/abuse of the "F-word" expletive. From the U.S. Senate to schoolyards, this word finds itself in everyday conversations and yet can be the very foundation of hostile workplace lawsuits.
Imbd.com says "the ['F-word'] and its variations are used 800-plus times throughout this 90 minute documentary, making an average 8.88 'F-words' a minute."
By the way -- I always thought it would be a cool story to do a documentary on the origin of the use of the word "cool."
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
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is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials
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When the information comes directly from another source, it will be
attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is
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original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
I find it fascinating that the "F-Word" has become such...
