During the 7:30 a.m. segment of the Today show, Meredith Vieria (pictured) presented a sample from her first major out-of-town interview since taking over as co-anchor of the program a few weeks back: a conversation with the mother and father of Emily Keyes, the Platte Canyon High School student murdered last week in her English classroom. NBC clearly plans to make the most of this footage. Following the airing of this snippet, Vieira noted that more of the chat will turn up on the Friday episode of Today in anticipation of the full-blown treatment on the Saturday night edition of the magazine staple Dateline.
In a blog about the assignment written in Bailey just prior to her conversation with Keyes' parents, Vieira points out that "it's been over ten years since I put on my reporter's hat," adding, "I wish I could stay here for weeks. To meet more people. To tell more stories. It's like the peeling of an onion... I realize it's good to leave New York and go back into the country. You forget there's a big world out here. It's nice to reconnect with this place called America."
Guess Colorado and America are synonymous. That explains a lot.
At essentially the same time as Vieira was debuting footage from her Colorado visit, Today's ABC counterpart, Good Morning America looked at alleged dangers associated with one of the state's most prominent exports: Crocs. A Kate Snow-helmed story, whose text version can be accessed here, offered the following revelation: "Some people have reported that kids wearing Crocs have had their feet sucked into the side of escalators."
The piece was an example of a favorite morning-show story category: Why You Should Be Terrified of an Everyday Object in Your Home This Very Minute! Then again, it's undeniably gratifying to see the words "Crocs" and "sucked" in the same sentence. This time, the national media got it right. -- Michael Roberts
