Covering West (Part Five)

West Mayor Tommy Muska had missed a scheduled press conference and Travis and I finally left the auction barn after waiting nearly an hour. We felt like we had been there for days. We were driving around, trying to figure out what to do next when I saw several white vans on a corner as we passed.

"Travis,"I said, "Turn around and pull over."
A nondescript man in a long-sleeved white t-shirt was leaving a building. I recognized his face. It was the mayor.
Travis noticed a different face.
"Caroline, that's MATT LAUER," he whispered. "MATT LAUER!" 

I was more excited about Mayor Muska. He didn't share our enthusiasm. He looked like a man defeated. He probably lost friends, I thought. Lauer had first and only dibs. Muska said he would answer a few — a very few — questions and then he was leaving. He hadn't had sleep in far too long. He looked like he needed it. 

I recorded the interview on my phone, but I never published it. I had several professional reasons for this. I meant to watch and see if TODAY aired the interview, but in the days that came after, I was just too busy. 

After that, we left West for the newsroom. 

Probably the best news writing I ever did for the Lariat happened from the things I witnessed and the information I gathered that day. You can see it here. It was a collaborative effort between myself and a few other reporters, but I stitched the narratives together. The observations about the state of the city were my own.   

Even when the story was written, though, we weren't done. Disaster coverage is ongoing. We were all impossibly exhausted. We agreed to take the next few days in shifts so we could sleep. I had planned to head to Austin that night to be with Willie's dad — so I agreed to take the social media shift the next morning and update our feeds, a job I could do from a few hours away. Taylor, one of the reporters, agreed to be on call for writing stories. The city desk editor agreed to edit them (though I would also look at incoming stories). We would switch roles as needed, until our semester ended. 

We had a plan in place. I left the newsroom after the story was uploaded. I was in Austin in two hours, and asleep not thirty minutes later.