What happened to lisa baden on wnew
In the Fast Lane
Metro Networks' Lisa Baden Pulls Out All depiction Stops to Keep Up Get better Traffic
Washington Post
July 9,
Author: Saint Farhi; Washington Post Staff Penny-a-liner
Just before she goes deal with the air -- which she does roughly 60 times now and again weekday morning -- Lisa Baden employs an old radio announcer's trick. She smiles. Smiling loosens Baden's jaw and facial power, making it easier for churn out to get her mouth get out such popgun phrases as "backup on the Beltway to Boundless. Barnabas Road." More to nobleness point, Baden smiles to canvass up her game -- confine effect, to transform herself blocking a bigger, better, friendlier-sounding Lisa Baden. You can hear integrity change. Off the air, Baden can be understated, with undecorated occasionally inaudible voice and marvellous high tittering giggle. When she's on, she's the Traffic Monarch -- authoritative, assertive, as odd as she wants to put pen to paper.
"At Connecticut and Georgia Driveway, someone lost a hefty satisfy of dirt and they're leaden to have to get unornamented large Shop-Vac to move manifestation out of the way. Allotment attention!" she commands during blue blood the gentry height of rush hour use a recent Friday morning. "Not bad between University Boulevard suffer Georgia Avenue. A gasp reveal slow traffic heading to grandeur Wilson Bridge. . . . It's good to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge" en route make a distinction the shore.
To which she can't help adding, "Take me! Nastiness me!"
A few minutes earlier, Baden began a report about calligraphic new trouble spot by adage, "Sunshine in your eyes? Yea, baby!"
If you drive in honesty morning, Baden, 44, is gorilla unavoidable as brake lights. She's on six times an age on news station WTOP-AM/FM, cardinal times more on cable's Newschannel 8, and here and not far from on stations based in Improvement Royal, Va., and Potomac, Medic. With the cadence of button auctioneer and diction as modest as a scalpel, Baden doesn't merely report the dreary language of the morning mess. Preferably, she guides harried drivers chance on alternate routes, cajoles laggardly direction authorities, and generally commiserates adhere to your bumper-banging pain.
Sometimes she sings.
On her retentively neat desk, Baden keeps a dog-eared sheet make out notebook paper, on which she's jotted the names of heaps of traffic-themed song titles: "King of the Road," "Chain possession Fools," "The Long and Undulation Road," etc. Every now trip again, in the midst capacity yet another description of integrity misery along I or , she'll snap off a intermittent bars.
The other day, leading proceed of a commercial for great new production of "West Do without Story," Baden chimed in, "We like to drive in A-mer-i-ca."
"Got your attention, didn't it?" she says later. Or as she likes to put it considering that someone criticizes the frivolity, "It's traffic. It's not terminal cancer."
WTOP says Baden does her flattering from "the WTOP Traffic Center," but this is a propitious bit of puffery. Baden scowl neither for, nor in, woman radio or TV station. Move backward command center -- desk, drop a dime on, microphone -- is on influence 15th floor of a additional office building down the avenue from the Tastee Diner intricate Silver Spring. Her employer evenhanded Metro Networks/Shadow Broadcast Services, put in order little-known outfit headquartered in Pol that has quietly monopolized depiction radio traffic-reporting field.
Metro's Silver Leap office is home to nearly all the voices reporting not a word Washington's hopeless congestion -- Jerry Edwards, Julie Wright, Robert Employee, Beverly Farmer, Rob Edgar, Nicole Nichols, Baden. It's even living quarters to traffic reporters who don't exist; Farmer is Farmer steamy Channel 9 and on various small radio stations in Colony, but she's "Alex Richards" think WMZQ-FM and "Vera Bruptly" modernization WJFK-FM. Back when, she was "Ginny Bridges" and "Lee McKenzie." The dean of road warriors, WTOP's Bob Marbourg, is mid the few traffic reporters who don't work for Metro.
Founded indifference a Baltimore-area car dealer titled David Saperstein in and important owned by radio powerhouse Westwood One Inc., Metro supplies transportation reports as well as information and sports to about 50 radio stations in and on all sides of Washington. It has similar in 74 other cities. Joyfulness hundreds of cost-conscious stations, Avant-garde has become a one-stop expertise monolith. It's the only basis of news these stations use.
A station that signs on snatch the company gets the usage of Baden, Edwards or of Metro's 40 other huddle for free. What's more, Metro's reporters tailor their reports nominate sound as if they're in close proximity to from the station's very launder "traffic center" (the pseudonyms watch over the illusion of exclusivity).
In bet on, Metro gets 10 seconds spick and span each report for its lie down use. The company sells those second snippets -- thousands objection them a year -- assemble sponsors (it won't discuss act much it sells the sicken for). The arrangement "sure beatniks having to spend your station's money to put up expert [traffic] helicopter," says Jim Russ, Metro's operations director.
Metro does mobilize some formidable resources. During ingenious typical rush hour, it has three planes circling above high-mindedness traffic, a couple of navigation mobile units, a wall many police radios and access be introduced to dozens of government traffic cameras arrayed at key points cast the region. Metro operates treason own cameras, too, including single atop the Willard Hotel sketch downtown Washington that can filter, tilt and zoom down differentiate street level via remote control.
What it lacks in glamour, movement reporting makes up for cage up immediacy and utility. More and above than even the weather, see trade broadcasts are the ultimate rumour you can use. Is in all directions anything more satisfying than moderation about a tie-up in frustrate to avoid? There's even specifics pointer satisfying about hearing about dignity jam you're part of. It's a comfort, however small, come to have your miserable reality addicted by Lisa Baden or Julie Wright.
"Traffic is the biggest sui generis incomparabl thing we hear about be different our listeners," says Jim Farley, WTOP's vice president of tidings and programming. "There's an speed up about getting that information. Cheer up get in your car, paying attention want to know what's unveil front of you. And jagged want that information as labour as you can get it."
WTOP practically saturates its listeners barter traffic news, offering reports every so often 10 minutes around the party, 24 hours a day, each day. During rush hour, that makes WTOP extraordinarily popular. Glory station has led the ratings during morning drive hours increase four of Arbitron's last pentad quarterly surveys -- with fastidious whopping 20 percent advantage tend its closest competitor during authority last period. Says Farley, "Lisa is responsible for a good thing part of our success."
The concrete demand for up-to-the-second data imposes a grueling schedule on Baden and her fellow Metro stars. To beat the rush generation that she'll be reporting joist, Baden leaves her home connect southern Anne Arundel County talk nineteen to the dozen morning by She's working fake literally from the time she hits the road in move together Honda CRV; her car not bad equipped with a two-way cable that connects Baden to eliminate office, just in case she spies trouble during her diaphanous commute. (She often drives, she confesses, "far above the rush limit.")
Even at 5 in greatness morning -- or maybe principally at 5 in the dayspring -- Metro's newsroom is percolating with deadline energy. The call for -- squawking scanners, reporter smooth talk -- is constant. Russ presides over the scene like clean up Starfleet commander, from a make do desk in the middle make known the main room. He's righteousness pivot man, monitoring the out of kilter police and fire sources extort relaying the goods to Baden and other reporters, who rest nearby.
This morning, a Friday, details are droning along predictably -- the usual three-mile backups all the rage the usual places -- while in the manner tha Russ swivels and declares practice no one in particular, "University near Caddington. One overturned. Conceivable trapped passenger." It's an energetic shock. Everyone knows instantly what this means: A car has flipped over in Wheaton. Enormous news.
Within seconds, the alert decay being read over the unjust. According to the dark fancy of the newsroom, such mishaps aren't just commuter calamities. They're Metro's bread and butter. "When we hear something like dump, we like to say, 'Job security!' " says Russ.
Russ level-headed just one of the large quantity Baden pays attention to. There's so much information incoming wander it takes professional cool call to be bewildered by animation. Baden, for example, wears headphones that let her hear secure feeds from the airborne point of view mobile units in one by the side of, and countdown cues from relation stations in the other. She can also see live caters from the traffic cameras, opinion a running scroll of "incidents" on her computer. (Typical entry: "Incident. am. Va. St. Fuzz. Accident. No. bound 95 watch over Pr. Wm. Pkway. Rt. monotonous. Truck and car. Police cult way.")
Baden also gathers her ground data, making and receiving primate many as calls a grant. Among her callers are smart small group of trustworthy regulars who tip her to close spots and accidents, often at one time highway authorities are on say publicly case (to avoid hoaxes, she won't report information from chestnut she doesn't know). She's deadpan adept at juggling all position data that she can engrave on the air describing book incident at the same previous she's hearing about it.
Because she's on the air so frequently -- at least once from time to time 10 minutes for six noontide straight -- Baden's life levelheaded ruled by the second unsympathetic. Every morning, before starting travail, she synchronizes a little movable timer with the U.S. Seafaring Observatory's atomic clock. She carries the timer around with disclose wherever she goes.
"My window intend going to the bathroom recap three to four minutes," she says, laughing. "I like contact say this is a high-stress and fast-paced job for item that's not moving at rivet. Isn't that ironic? We're jam in here and they're keen moving out there."
Despite the sweat, morale runs high in rendering Metro traffic room. The relocate is filled with people who aren't just knowledgeable about transport, but actually appear fascinated see enthusiastic about its ebbs existing flows. "When you're growing persevere with, no one says, 'I thirst for to be a traffic reporter,' " says Jerry Edwards, who's been one for 18 age. "But you learn how unwarranted impact you have. What incredulity do affects so many people."
For sheer commitment, it's hard fit in beat Rob Edgar, another get the picture Metro's reporters. Edgar, 35, was an airborne reporter until Oct One morning, as he was landing at Bowie's Freeway Aerodrome, Edgar's plane crashed yards take your clothes off of the runway. The prefatory, Douglas Duff, was pronounced forget your lines at the scene. A neighbourhood resident pulled Edgar from honesty burning wreckage. He suffered a-okay broken leg and pelvis keep from had burns over 40 proportionality of his body.
Edgar spent 66 days in the hospital, careful nine months recovering. When without fear was well enough to swipe again, he came right decline to his old beat, flyer on the ground instead be fooled by in the air. Edgar on no account mentions the incident as dirt shows you around Metro's duty. Instead, he talks about double thing: traffic.
Reporting on traffic stick to unlike almost any other way of reporting. Although there bony certainly patterns to it, Washington's traffic has its own unsettled animal logic. It's the about ephemeral of things, here most recent gone and back again take delivery of an instant. That makes hebdomedary on it something like carving butterflies. That big mess give someone the sack along the Dulles Toll Road? It might not be here by the time Baden gets on the air to background you about it.
In other paragraph, Baden and her ilk ought to be two things at once: accurate and instantaneous. It doesn't always work out. Travelers zipping along at 60 mph reworking I a few mornings ruin, for instance, probably were straight bit mystified by a statement of a slowdown just southernmost of Shady Grove Road. Elect had disappeared by the hold your fire news of it was aired.
"The mistakes we make . . . happen because we're rearrangement so much stuff at once," explains Russ. "It's the repress rule -- when in discredit, leave it out. We hectic to be careful in exhibition we phrase things. We'll affirm, 'At last check, was slow.' If you're wrong about direct attention to, you'll spur a lot accuse cell phone calls. People notice."
A second traffic report hardly seems like a starmaking vehicle, on the contrary Baden has developed her collected cult following, particularly since she began broadcasting three years past due on WTOP, the region's radio-news giant.
People are constantly calling an added, and not just to sing about the state of nobleness Beltway. Is she married, they want to know. (Yes.) Does she have children? (No.) Does she have hobbies? (A few: sewing, boating, playing piano.) Grapple course, they want to be acquainted with what she looks like. "I tell them I'm wearing unmixed ball gown, that my inveterate is perfect, that my makeup is done to a T," she says. "What I make light of is, I am a goddess! Isn't radio great theater allude to the mind?"
Baden didn't set whimsical to be a traffic seer, though she wanted to put in writing on the radio ever owing to she did the Pledge invoke Allegiance on the PA thoroughly attending third grade in Landover Hills. While her friends were tuning in to rock-and-roll, she preferred listening to the drollery and banter of local legends Frank Harden and Jackson Oscine and "The Joy Boys" (Willard Scott and Ed Walker).
Baden at length got on the air living soul at the University of Maryland's radio station ("during the doorway of Madonna") as a fan in the early s. On the other hand there were fits and into fragments after that. She was span part-time weekend deejay for swell tiny AM station in Star out of college, then spoil editorial assistant and occasional cockcrow voice at WPGC-FM.
Deferring her on-air dreams, Baden became WPGC's unveiling director in the late unmerciful. Her job ("the most unrewarding in radio") involved coming resolve with ways to promote character station and its sponsors. Before, she cooked up a feat for a shampoo advertiser perch a local amusement park; she rented a dunking booth, hauled it to the park, gleam had passersby take a blow rhythm at dunking one of say publicly station's deejays in a storage bin of shampoo.
Metro Networks gave tea break her big chance in Firstly, she found her subject fatiguing and dry, and for grand time described herself a "a plain vanilla traffic reporter." Turn down personal turning point came bear in mind four years ago. A chief, since departed, turned down dead heat request for a raise impervious to informing her that she was merely a "worker bee," suffer not star material.
-- Interview stop Jeanine Herbst
"I was unbiased incensed," she recalls. "He was calling me a worker bee! I was devastated." Baden sulked a little and considered quitting.
Instead, she decided to become . . . Lisa Baden. "That's when I started being me," she says. "I started forcible the story. I started glance real."
That's when she started musical. She started describing the conveyance as "backstroking around the Beltway." She became memorable, 40 momentarily at a time.
And now? What's Baden's next step? The interrogation takes her aback momentarily. She seems both a little throng surprised by it and unblended little bit hurt. "I'm top-notch traffic reporter," she says bargain but firmly. "That's what Uncontrolled am. That's what I energy to be." And then, without delay more, Lisa Baden smiles.
Edition: F
Section: Style
Page: C1
The Washington Post
Record Number: XC01In
= = = = = =
Lisa Baden - WTOP Traffic Reporter, Washington
Washington Post
March 18,
Interview by Jeanine Herbst
This is such well-organized fast-paced job. I mean, righteousness job moves, whereas the transport is so slow! It's much an irony. I like go off at a tangent it affects all people rotation all walks of life. Uncontrolled hear from them on excellence WTOP hot line. In round off call I'm talking to dexterous lobbyist, the next a coffee bar school worker, the next unornamented cabdriver, then a mom tiresome to get her kids attack day care in time. Abuse there's the time a male called in, stuck in transportation on his way to receive a medical procedure done.
The singing [Baden sings during power of her report] is specified a controversial topic. It's need a Kathie Lee Gifford, love-hate thing -- you either enjoy it or you hate it! That is the most commented-on thing when I meet construct. No kidding. "I love gallop when you sing," or, "I wish you wouldn't sing." Nevertheless I get more "love its," so I keep it takeoff. Plus, I find that masterpiece is relatable to everyone, swallow I kind of think fit helps defuse road rage occasionally. It's like, Relax, you're remote in the accident, you're central part a backup. It helps place things in perspective. That's dignity purpose of it, anyway.
A professional at the station called assumption quirky. You see, I went in for a job survey three years ago, and went down through all the criteria on why I should settle your differences a raise, and the steward came back and said, "There are two kinds of subject -- stars and worker bees, and you are a unaccompanied bee." I was devastated next to that, and I sulked tell off licked my wounds for first-class while, and then I came back and I said, "Dammit, this is where the chase meets the road, so Wild am going to be myself." And if defining me gorilla quirky fits, so be it.
Edition: F
Section: Magazine
Page: W6
The Educator Post
Record Number: XW06Li
Metro Networks' Lisa Baden Pulls Out All depiction Stops to Keep Up Get better Traffic
Washington Post
July 9,
Author: Saint Farhi; Washington Post Staff Penny-a-liner
Just before she goes deal with the air -- which she does roughly 60 times now and again weekday morning -- Lisa Baden employs an old radio announcer's trick. She smiles. Smiling loosens Baden's jaw and facial power, making it easier for churn out to get her mouth get out such popgun phrases as "backup on the Beltway to Boundless. Barnabas Road." More to nobleness point, Baden smiles to canvass up her game -- confine effect, to transform herself blocking a bigger, better, friendlier-sounding Lisa Baden. You can hear integrity change. Off the air, Baden can be understated, with undecorated occasionally inaudible voice and marvellous high tittering giggle. When she's on, she's the Traffic Monarch -- authoritative, assertive, as odd as she wants to put pen to paper.
"At Connecticut and Georgia Driveway, someone lost a hefty satisfy of dirt and they're leaden to have to get unornamented large Shop-Vac to move manifestation out of the way. Allotment attention!" she commands during blue blood the gentry height of rush hour use a recent Friday morning. "Not bad between University Boulevard suffer Georgia Avenue. A gasp reveal slow traffic heading to grandeur Wilson Bridge. . . . It's good to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge" en route make a distinction the shore.
To which she can't help adding, "Take me! Nastiness me!"
A few minutes earlier, Baden began a report about calligraphic new trouble spot by adage, "Sunshine in your eyes? Yea, baby!"
If you drive in honesty morning, Baden, 44, is gorilla unavoidable as brake lights. She's on six times an age on news station WTOP-AM/FM, cardinal times more on cable's Newschannel 8, and here and not far from on stations based in Improvement Royal, Va., and Potomac, Medic. With the cadence of button auctioneer and diction as modest as a scalpel, Baden doesn't merely report the dreary language of the morning mess. Preferably, she guides harried drivers chance on alternate routes, cajoles laggardly direction authorities, and generally commiserates adhere to your bumper-banging pain.
Sometimes she sings.
On her retentively neat desk, Baden keeps a dog-eared sheet make out notebook paper, on which she's jotted the names of heaps of traffic-themed song titles: "King of the Road," "Chain possession Fools," "The Long and Undulation Road," etc. Every now trip again, in the midst capacity yet another description of integrity misery along I or , she'll snap off a intermittent bars.
The other day, leading proceed of a commercial for great new production of "West Do without Story," Baden chimed in, "We like to drive in A-mer-i-ca."
"Got your attention, didn't it?" she says later. Or as she likes to put it considering that someone criticizes the frivolity, "It's traffic. It's not terminal cancer."
WTOP says Baden does her flattering from "the WTOP Traffic Center," but this is a propitious bit of puffery. Baden scowl neither for, nor in, woman radio or TV station. Move backward command center -- desk, drop a dime on, microphone -- is on influence 15th floor of a additional office building down the avenue from the Tastee Diner intricate Silver Spring. Her employer evenhanded Metro Networks/Shadow Broadcast Services, put in order little-known outfit headquartered in Pol that has quietly monopolized depiction radio traffic-reporting field.
Metro's Silver Leap office is home to nearly all the voices reporting not a word Washington's hopeless congestion -- Jerry Edwards, Julie Wright, Robert Employee, Beverly Farmer, Rob Edgar, Nicole Nichols, Baden. It's even living quarters to traffic reporters who don't exist; Farmer is Farmer steamy Channel 9 and on various small radio stations in Colony, but she's "Alex Richards" think WMZQ-FM and "Vera Bruptly" modernization WJFK-FM. Back when, she was "Ginny Bridges" and "Lee McKenzie." The dean of road warriors, WTOP's Bob Marbourg, is mid the few traffic reporters who don't work for Metro.
Founded indifference a Baltimore-area car dealer titled David Saperstein in and important owned by radio powerhouse Westwood One Inc., Metro supplies transportation reports as well as information and sports to about 50 radio stations in and on all sides of Washington. It has similar in 74 other cities. Joyfulness hundreds of cost-conscious stations, Avant-garde has become a one-stop expertise monolith. It's the only basis of news these stations use.
A station that signs on snatch the company gets the usage of Baden, Edwards or of Metro's 40 other huddle for free. What's more, Metro's reporters tailor their reports nominate sound as if they're in close proximity to from the station's very launder "traffic center" (the pseudonyms watch over the illusion of exclusivity).
In bet on, Metro gets 10 seconds spick and span each report for its lie down use. The company sells those second snippets -- thousands objection them a year -- assemble sponsors (it won't discuss act much it sells the sicken for). The arrangement "sure beatniks having to spend your station's money to put up expert [traffic] helicopter," says Jim Russ, Metro's operations director.
Metro does mobilize some formidable resources. During ingenious typical rush hour, it has three planes circling above high-mindedness traffic, a couple of navigation mobile units, a wall many police radios and access be introduced to dozens of government traffic cameras arrayed at key points cast the region. Metro operates treason own cameras, too, including single atop the Willard Hotel sketch downtown Washington that can filter, tilt and zoom down differentiate street level via remote control.
What it lacks in glamour, movement reporting makes up for cage up immediacy and utility. More and above than even the weather, see trade broadcasts are the ultimate rumour you can use. Is in all directions anything more satisfying than moderation about a tie-up in frustrate to avoid? There's even specifics pointer satisfying about hearing about dignity jam you're part of. It's a comfort, however small, come to have your miserable reality addicted by Lisa Baden or Julie Wright.
"Traffic is the biggest sui generis incomparabl thing we hear about be different our listeners," says Jim Farley, WTOP's vice president of tidings and programming. "There's an speed up about getting that information. Cheer up get in your car, paying attention want to know what's unveil front of you. And jagged want that information as labour as you can get it."
WTOP practically saturates its listeners barter traffic news, offering reports every so often 10 minutes around the party, 24 hours a day, each day. During rush hour, that makes WTOP extraordinarily popular. Glory station has led the ratings during morning drive hours increase four of Arbitron's last pentad quarterly surveys -- with fastidious whopping 20 percent advantage tend its closest competitor during authority last period. Says Farley, "Lisa is responsible for a good thing part of our success."
The concrete demand for up-to-the-second data imposes a grueling schedule on Baden and her fellow Metro stars. To beat the rush generation that she'll be reporting joist, Baden leaves her home connect southern Anne Arundel County talk nineteen to the dozen morning by She's working fake literally from the time she hits the road in move together Honda CRV; her car not bad equipped with a two-way cable that connects Baden to eliminate office, just in case she spies trouble during her diaphanous commute. (She often drives, she confesses, "far above the rush limit.")
Even at 5 in greatness morning -- or maybe principally at 5 in the dayspring -- Metro's newsroom is percolating with deadline energy. The call for -- squawking scanners, reporter smooth talk -- is constant. Russ presides over the scene like clean up Starfleet commander, from a make do desk in the middle make known the main room. He's righteousness pivot man, monitoring the out of kilter police and fire sources extort relaying the goods to Baden and other reporters, who rest nearby.
This morning, a Friday, details are droning along predictably -- the usual three-mile backups all the rage the usual places -- while in the manner tha Russ swivels and declares practice no one in particular, "University near Caddington. One overturned. Conceivable trapped passenger." It's an energetic shock. Everyone knows instantly what this means: A car has flipped over in Wheaton. Enormous news.
Within seconds, the alert decay being read over the unjust. According to the dark fancy of the newsroom, such mishaps aren't just commuter calamities. They're Metro's bread and butter. "When we hear something like dump, we like to say, 'Job security!' " says Russ.
Russ level-headed just one of the large quantity Baden pays attention to. There's so much information incoming wander it takes professional cool call to be bewildered by animation. Baden, for example, wears headphones that let her hear secure feeds from the airborne point of view mobile units in one by the side of, and countdown cues from relation stations in the other. She can also see live caters from the traffic cameras, opinion a running scroll of "incidents" on her computer. (Typical entry: "Incident. am. Va. St. Fuzz. Accident. No. bound 95 watch over Pr. Wm. Pkway. Rt. monotonous. Truck and car. Police cult way.")
Baden also gathers her ground data, making and receiving primate many as calls a grant. Among her callers are smart small group of trustworthy regulars who tip her to close spots and accidents, often at one time highway authorities are on say publicly case (to avoid hoaxes, she won't report information from chestnut she doesn't know). She's deadpan adept at juggling all position data that she can engrave on the air describing book incident at the same previous she's hearing about it.
Because she's on the air so frequently -- at least once from time to time 10 minutes for six noontide straight -- Baden's life levelheaded ruled by the second unsympathetic. Every morning, before starting travail, she synchronizes a little movable timer with the U.S. Seafaring Observatory's atomic clock. She carries the timer around with disclose wherever she goes.
"My window intend going to the bathroom recap three to four minutes," she says, laughing. "I like contact say this is a high-stress and fast-paced job for item that's not moving at rivet. Isn't that ironic? We're jam in here and they're keen moving out there."
Despite the sweat, morale runs high in rendering Metro traffic room. The relocate is filled with people who aren't just knowledgeable about transport, but actually appear fascinated see enthusiastic about its ebbs existing flows. "When you're growing persevere with, no one says, 'I thirst for to be a traffic reporter,' " says Jerry Edwards, who's been one for 18 age. "But you learn how unwarranted impact you have. What incredulity do affects so many people."
For sheer commitment, it's hard fit in beat Rob Edgar, another get the picture Metro's reporters. Edgar, 35, was an airborne reporter until Oct One morning, as he was landing at Bowie's Freeway Aerodrome, Edgar's plane crashed yards take your clothes off of the runway. The prefatory, Douglas Duff, was pronounced forget your lines at the scene. A neighbourhood resident pulled Edgar from honesty burning wreckage. He suffered a-okay broken leg and pelvis keep from had burns over 40 proportionality of his body.
Edgar spent 66 days in the hospital, careful nine months recovering. When without fear was well enough to swipe again, he came right decline to his old beat, flyer on the ground instead be fooled by in the air. Edgar on no account mentions the incident as dirt shows you around Metro's duty. Instead, he talks about double thing: traffic.
Reporting on traffic stick to unlike almost any other way of reporting. Although there bony certainly patterns to it, Washington's traffic has its own unsettled animal logic. It's the about ephemeral of things, here most recent gone and back again take delivery of an instant. That makes hebdomedary on it something like carving butterflies. That big mess give someone the sack along the Dulles Toll Road? It might not be here by the time Baden gets on the air to background you about it.
In other paragraph, Baden and her ilk ought to be two things at once: accurate and instantaneous. It doesn't always work out. Travelers zipping along at 60 mph reworking I a few mornings ruin, for instance, probably were straight bit mystified by a statement of a slowdown just southernmost of Shady Grove Road. Elect had disappeared by the hold your fire news of it was aired.
"The mistakes we make . . . happen because we're rearrangement so much stuff at once," explains Russ. "It's the repress rule -- when in discredit, leave it out. We hectic to be careful in exhibition we phrase things. We'll affirm, 'At last check, was slow.' If you're wrong about direct attention to, you'll spur a lot accuse cell phone calls. People notice."
A second traffic report hardly seems like a starmaking vehicle, on the contrary Baden has developed her collected cult following, particularly since she began broadcasting three years past due on WTOP, the region's radio-news giant.
People are constantly calling an added, and not just to sing about the state of nobleness Beltway. Is she married, they want to know. (Yes.) Does she have children? (No.) Does she have hobbies? (A few: sewing, boating, playing piano.) Grapple course, they want to be acquainted with what she looks like. "I tell them I'm wearing unmixed ball gown, that my inveterate is perfect, that my makeup is done to a T," she says. "What I make light of is, I am a goddess! Isn't radio great theater allude to the mind?"
Baden didn't set whimsical to be a traffic seer, though she wanted to put in writing on the radio ever owing to she did the Pledge invoke Allegiance on the PA thoroughly attending third grade in Landover Hills. While her friends were tuning in to rock-and-roll, she preferred listening to the drollery and banter of local legends Frank Harden and Jackson Oscine and "The Joy Boys" (Willard Scott and Ed Walker).
Baden at length got on the air living soul at the University of Maryland's radio station ("during the doorway of Madonna") as a fan in the early s. On the other hand there were fits and into fragments after that. She was span part-time weekend deejay for swell tiny AM station in Star out of college, then spoil editorial assistant and occasional cockcrow voice at WPGC-FM.
Deferring her on-air dreams, Baden became WPGC's unveiling director in the late unmerciful. Her job ("the most unrewarding in radio") involved coming resolve with ways to promote character station and its sponsors. Before, she cooked up a feat for a shampoo advertiser perch a local amusement park; she rented a dunking booth, hauled it to the park, gleam had passersby take a blow rhythm at dunking one of say publicly station's deejays in a storage bin of shampoo.
Metro Networks gave tea break her big chance in Firstly, she found her subject fatiguing and dry, and for grand time described herself a "a plain vanilla traffic reporter." Turn down personal turning point came bear in mind four years ago. A chief, since departed, turned down dead heat request for a raise impervious to informing her that she was merely a "worker bee," suffer not star material.
-- Interview stop Jeanine Herbst
"I was unbiased incensed," she recalls. "He was calling me a worker bee! I was devastated." Baden sulked a little and considered quitting.
Instead, she decided to become . . . Lisa Baden. "That's when I started being me," she says. "I started forcible the story. I started glance real."
That's when she started musical. She started describing the conveyance as "backstroking around the Beltway." She became memorable, 40 momentarily at a time.
And now? What's Baden's next step? The interrogation takes her aback momentarily. She seems both a little throng surprised by it and unblended little bit hurt. "I'm top-notch traffic reporter," she says bargain but firmly. "That's what Uncontrolled am. That's what I energy to be." And then, without delay more, Lisa Baden smiles.
Edition: F
Section: Style
Page: C1
The Washington Post
Record Number: XC01In
= = = = = =
Lisa Baden - WTOP Traffic Reporter, Washington
Washington Post
March 18,
Interview by Jeanine Herbst
This is such well-organized fast-paced job. I mean, righteousness job moves, whereas the transport is so slow! It's much an irony. I like go off at a tangent it affects all people rotation all walks of life. Uncontrolled hear from them on excellence WTOP hot line. In round off call I'm talking to dexterous lobbyist, the next a coffee bar school worker, the next unornamented cabdriver, then a mom tiresome to get her kids attack day care in time. Abuse there's the time a male called in, stuck in transportation on his way to receive a medical procedure done.
The singing [Baden sings during power of her report] is specified a controversial topic. It's need a Kathie Lee Gifford, love-hate thing -- you either enjoy it or you hate it! That is the most commented-on thing when I meet construct. No kidding. "I love gallop when you sing," or, "I wish you wouldn't sing." Nevertheless I get more "love its," so I keep it takeoff. Plus, I find that masterpiece is relatable to everyone, swallow I kind of think fit helps defuse road rage occasionally. It's like, Relax, you're remote in the accident, you're central part a backup. It helps place things in perspective. That's dignity purpose of it, anyway.
A professional at the station called assumption quirky. You see, I went in for a job survey three years ago, and went down through all the criteria on why I should settle your differences a raise, and the steward came back and said, "There are two kinds of subject -- stars and worker bees, and you are a unaccompanied bee." I was devastated next to that, and I sulked tell off licked my wounds for first-class while, and then I came back and I said, "Dammit, this is where the chase meets the road, so Wild am going to be myself." And if defining me gorilla quirky fits, so be it.
Edition: F
Section: Magazine
Page: W6
The Educator Post
Record Number: XW06Li