Car-tographers

The Voices That Map Your Way Through the Belt Loops

By Susan Anspach / Photography by Seth Freeman

“Branch Avenue, honey, did you hear? Northbound at the Beltway, that ongoing construction project, add 15 minutes to your commute.”

Lisa Baden paused for breath, exhaled in a gush of empathy.

“I know!”

The 50-year-old morning traffic reporter’s job—the radio position she wanted ever since first broadcasting the announcements in junior high—is centered first on efficacy, second on understanding.

“Sometimes I feel like I should’ve taken up psychology,” she said between early-hour reports. Between 4:55 and 11 a.m. on weekday mornings Baden is on air with 30- to 90-second segments for either WTOP, Good Morning America or Channel 7 at least once every 10 minutes. Off-air, she and an assistant field anywhere from 250 to 300 calls daily, whose collective on-road insights she deems just as valuable as the feeds that stream to her live from two airplanes, one helicopter, countless cameras and nearly 20 radios.

Also on duty are two mobile units. “Their job is not to get stuck, so they really have to know the roads so they can look at the traffic. Otherwise, they sit for an hour, too.”

As for her dial-in commuters, “There are those [drivers] who get frustrated who want to call and vent. Not that they’ve seen anything in particular, but they just want to vent for a minute. But you listen, and it makes you laugh, and hopefully it alleviates some stress.”

According to Baden, the frustration stems partly from the region’s road layout, which generates a unique brand of highway congestion—an intrinsically snarled one whose navigators aren’t all prepared to take on. “This is a very transient city. People are assigned here, they’re stationed here from all over the world … people who’ve never seen snow, much less driven in it.”

And of Maryland, the District and Northern Virginia, she speaks from 17 years’ experience with broadcast outsourcing company Metro Networks when she says the latter sees the most tie-ups. “Obviously, when it was designed how many years ago, it wasn’t designed to handle the population that we currently have nor the commute that we have. Most of the roads in the transit system were designed for traffic going into the city.

“But then everything started to expand out to the suburbs, so the transit system didn’t keep up with that. And the roads weren’t really designed for suburb commutes, and now we just keep ballooning out, so it just keeps getting worse and worse … It’s amazing, the congestion in Virginia.”

That exponential growth, as well as increased air-space restrictions since Sept. 11, has made keeping pace with the area’s traffic pulse more difficult in recent years, reporter Jim Russ said. Russ oversees 60 staffers from his perch as Metro Networks’ director of operations, a position he has manned for eight of his 17 years with the news, traffic and sports outsourcing behemoth headquartered in Houston. Further traffic challenges Russ cited as specific to the region: that it is comprised of two states and a district, each with its own jurisdictional boundaries, and that D.C. has few roads free of the stop-and-go patterns created by traffic circles and lights. Such layouts result in city clog, as well as trickledown to artery interstates 66 and 95. For his teams of eyes in their Silver Spring offices, abuzz every weekday morning and afternoon with the energy of such notables as Robert Workman, Beverly Farmer, Jerry Edwards and Julie Wright, it all translates to what Baden avers are “the most secure jobs in radio.”

When the Bridge Is Out
Secure, if not predictable. “Because we are D.C., you never know when the presidents, the signataries are coming through,” Wright said. “What keeps it interesting is it’s constantly changing. In a news story, whatever happened, happened, same story from 5 a.m. as 7 p.m. With traffic, everything’s different.”

Though extensive legwork and preparation are conducted before an event predicted to increase car surge—in April, Metro Networks devoted weeks of research to the speculation of the papal caravan’s D.C. whereabouts—some things simply cannot be forecast. “It’s time,” Baden said. “It’s in the now.”

WUSA9’s Angie Goff had yet to complete a week on the job when she was called back after a standard morning shift to cover her first ice storm (“I had left South Carolina! Sweet tea, OK?”). And there was no foreseeing the afternoon in November 1997 that Wright cites as the worst commute in her career’s history. While the staff at Metro Networks were attending an awards ceremony, a man inched to the edge of Wilson Bridge and threatened to leap. The overpass was closed to cars, and the flow-crippling effect shot out in all directions. “That evening, there was no simple solution because alternative routes were just as gridlocked as every major artery.”

Then there’s the issue of delivery. Forty Metro D.C. radio stations and five television stations barter segments of seconds with Metro Networks—which the company in turn sells to sponsors—in exchange for the newsfeed. Reporters, then, are habitually selecting different sets of newsworthy nuggets based on a given region’s commuters’ trends. “I will say, let’s just say I get 100 emails a day,” Baden calculated. “Fifty of them are, ‘You don’t talk enough about Maryland, and 50 of them are, ‘You don’t talk enough about Virginia.’ So it’s all perspective. It’s a juggling act, a balancing act to keep everyone happy.”

To appease those suspect of a slight, on an average day Baden will segment her reports into three, one section per district or state, but she is blunt when she explains that what she sees as requiring her attention will receive it. Both eyes, for instance, were on the real and potential whereabouts of the snipers in October 2002. “Focus has to be where it’s most needed.”

Keeping Right
Further complicating matters, what radio listeners want is not the same as viewers. The back and forth between the two broadcasting styles bears more than consideration; the switch demands a reexamination of audience priorities. According to Baden, “Whereas on TV they’re planning their morning—‘Do I have time to take a shower? Should I pack my lunch?’—and you’re helping people make decisions, radio is real time. Those people that you’re addressing are living it.”

And the deliberation behind formatting can extend beyond the factual. “My personality is a lot different from station to station,” Wright said. “My delivery is different in that I might be more straightforward, more fun. Should Donnie [Simpson of Morningside, Md.’s WPGC] interact with me, I get to be more of me in that station.”

The variations do boil down to a themed set of routines. With a 2:30 a.m. weekday wakeup time, Baden rarely rises with the sun, and regularly with WTOP as her alarm station. She zips via Mini Cooper through her own 50-minute morning commute to arrive at 4:30 a.m., leaving herself just under half an hour’s prep time. The timer she carries everywhere dictates the keen synchronization of the next seven hours. “When you’re on the air every 10 minutes, even going to the bathroom is a challenge.”

Trends crop up within a given week, as well. Friday at Metro Networks are referred to as “Friday light” for the many government commuters who have recently made the switch to extended four-day workweeks. “It’s always been something that people have talked about, but now with the fuel crisis it’s becoming more of a reality, and I think they’re really starting to step up to the plate,” Baden said. “Not just because the commute is so bad, but because it affects not only our economy but also our fuel consumption and environment. So it’s getting pushed higher on the list.”

In the throes of the bumper-to-bumper barriers that do characterize most of the region’s weekday morning and afternoons, Metro D.C.’s traffic reporters have come to expect the unexpected from their tuned-in audiences. In addition to road-obstruction warnings, “people do call on non-traffic-related issues,” Baden said. “I’ve met a lot of nice tractor-trailer drivers.”

Irv she remembers from 10 years ago for his Beltway Prozac dispenser-placement pitch. “It’s nice that people call with whimsical suggestions for those around them because it shows to me that they’re lightening up and, you know, it kind of helps take off some stress … It’s an honor to be thought of as a pal.”

Pedestrian Crossings
While Baden said most of her caller feedback concerns route tips and frustrations, other local TV broadcasters cite call-ins—and run-ins—that pertain less to the profession than they do personal life. Baden suspects she’s an exception to that rule because her voice was heard across D.C.’s airwaves long before her face was projected onto its living-room screens. On a daily basis, however, Goff and Wright field queries pertaining to makeup selection, marital status or a given segment’s jacket.

“When somebody sees you, it’s a big shock [for them], and that can be a double-edged sword,” Wright said. “If you come across as a friend, when they meet you in person they are very open with you: ‘We love your work. I didn’t like that dress you wore the other day, but we love your work.’  It’s kind of like, Wow! It kind of takes you back a little.”

Another job component accompanied by both pros and cons is the element of personalization each reporter strives to pull into her reports—“I think when I’m on air I have to actually tone it down,” Goff said—that can result in broadcast audiences assuming an unexpected level of familiarity. “When people recognize you from TV, they automatically want to touch you,” Wright said. “And I’m a hugger! But I don’t know you!”

Of course, what outsiders feel they can best relate to the reporters on is something few realize they rarely have to endure themselves. “When I told people I was taking a job in D.C., before I could even tell people what my position was going to be, everyone was like, ‘Get ready for the traffic,’” Goff said. “That’s the first thing that comes to mind for people who don’t even live here … Then I realized I’d be missing all the traffic with the hours that I work.”

Their secrets to successful reporting, then, are at a level more advanced than understanding. For Goff, it was sloughing through a series of five media internships and putting in full workweeks of sheer road time to acclimate herself with her area of coverage. For Wright, who racked the most points for Most Talkative her senior year, it was putting her prolixity to work in a field that rewards the naturally chatty, though, according to Baden, the profession prizes the ability to listen over all else. “The secret to being a great communicator is to be a good listener. Because I listen to people all day long, and all I’m doing is just regurgitating. I’m describing what the caller saw, what the airplane saw, what the mobile unit saw, what the police officer told me and what I see.”

“Ooh, in Maryland I’m watching an overturned vehicle! On 29 South, Colesville Road, after the Beltway they’ve stopped the traffic in both directions. I don’t see anyone moving at all in Silver Spring inside the Beltway at Dale Drive. It looks like they’re going to be in the process of uprighting this vehicle, I’m assuming that’s why they’ve shut it down. Northbound out of Silver Spring—whoop! Here they come!—you want to use Georgia Avenue instead. That’ll save you some time. I’m Lisa Baden, 103.5FM, WTOP Radio.”

(December 2008)

Tags: broadcast, commute, Lisa Baden, radio, traffic, traffic reporter, WTOP