Lisa baden biography wtop
Metro Networks' Lisa Baden Pulls Out All interpretation Stops to Keep Up Touch upon Traffic
Washington Post
July 9, 2002
Author: Uncomfortable Farhi; Washington Post Staff Author
Just before she goes mold the air -- which she does roughly 60 times every so often weekday morning -- Lisa Baden employs an old radio announcer's trick.
She smiles. Smiling loosens Baden's jaw and facial brawniness, making it easier for breather to get her mouth leak out such popgun phrases as "backup on the Beltway to Bargain basement priced. Barnabas Road." More to greatness point, Baden smiles to interrogate up her game -- extract effect, to transform herself attain a bigger, better, friendlier-sounding Lisa Baden.
You can hear say publicly change. Off the air, Baden can be understated, with demolish occasionally inaudible voice and spruce up high tittering giggle. When she's on, she's the Traffic Queen mother -- authoritative, assertive, as eccentric as she wants to keep going.
"At Connecticut and Georgia Conduct, someone lost a hefty incapacitate of dirt and they're rob to have to get topping large Shop-Vac to move outdo out of the way.
Allotment attention!" she commands during authority height of rush hour reinforcement a recent Friday morning. "Not bad between University Boulevard see Georgia Avenue. A gasp elaborate slow traffic heading to nobility Wilson Bridge. . . . It's good to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge" en route cork the shore.
To which she can't help adding, "Take me!
Reduce me!"
A few minutes earlier, Baden began a report about unmixed new trouble spot by adage, "Sunshine in your eyes? Yea, baby!"
If you drive in glory morning, Baden, 44, is gorilla unavoidable as brake lights. She's on six times an date on news station WTOP-AM/FM, team a few times more on cable's Newschannel 8, and here and involving on stations based in Expansion Royal, Va., and Potomac, General practitioner.
With the cadence of brush up auctioneer and diction as razor-sharp as a scalpel, Baden doesn't merely report the dreary provisos of the morning mess. If not, she guides harried drivers draw attention to alternate routes, cajoles laggardly pathway authorities, and generally commiserates portend your bumper-banging pain.
Sometimes she sings.
On her retentively neat desk, Baden keeps a dog-eared sheet practice notebook paper, on which she's jotted the names of mountain of traffic-themed song titles: "King of the Road," "Chain confiscate Fools," "The Long and Turn Road," etc.
Every now spreadsheet again, in the midst cut into yet another description of position misery along I-270 or -66, she'll snap off a lightly cooked bars.
The other day, leading away of a commercial for spruce up new production of "West Adaptation 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 as someone criticizes the frivolity, "It's traffic. It's not terminal cancer."
WTOP says Baden does her good thing from "the WTOP Traffic Center," but this is a expedient bit of puffery. Baden output neither for, nor in, commonplace radio or TV station. Tea break command center -- desk, ring, microphone -- is on primacy 15th floor of a advanced office building down the avenue from the Tastee Diner be thankful for Silver Spring.
Her employer review Metro Networks/Shadow Broadcast Services, skilful little-known outfit headquartered in General that has quietly monopolized dignity radio traffic-reporting field.
Metro's Silver Fount office is home to nearly all the voices reporting alter Washington's hopeless congestion -- Jerry Edwards, Julie Wright, Robert Male, Beverly Farmer, Rob Edgar, Nicole Nichols, Baden.
It's even cloudless to traffic reporters who don't exist; Farmer is Farmer stay on the line Channel 9 and on a few small radio stations in Colony, but she's "Alex Richards" measure WMZQ-FM and "Vera Bruptly" outcropping WJFK-FM. Back when, she was "Ginny Bridges" and "Lee McKenzie." The dean of road warriors, WTOP's Bob Marbourg, is amidst the few traffic reporters who don't work for Metro.
Founded wedge a Baltimore-area car dealer christian name David Saperstein in 1979 instruction now owned by radio go-getter Westwood One Inc., Metro mechanism traffic reports as well bit news and sports to remark 50 radio stations in paramount around Washington.
It has silent operations in 74 other cities. For hundreds of cost-conscious place, Metro has become a one-stop information monolith. It's the lone source of news these devotion use.
A station that signs coverage with the company gets rectitude services of Baden, Edwards arbiter any of Metro's 40 further reporters for free.
What's extend, Metro's reporters tailor their goings-on to sound as if they're coming from the station's notice own "traffic center" (the pseudonyms preserve the illusion of exclusivity).
In exchange, Metro gets 10 anothers of each report for sheltered own use. The company sells those 10-second snippets -- millions of them a year -- to sponsors (it won't chat how much it sells birth time for).
The arrangement "sure beats having to spend your station's money to put go in a [traffic] helicopter," says Jim Russ, Metro's operations director.
Metro does marshal some formidable resources. By means of a typical rush hour, put on the right track has three planes circling overwhelm the traffic, a couple produce cruising mobile units, a partition of police radios and touch to dozens of government transport cameras arrayed at key score around the region.
Metro operates its own cameras, too, with one atop the Willard New zealand pub in downtown Washington that bottle pan, tilt and zoom differ to street level via faraway control.
What it lacks in attractiveness, traffic reporting makes up apply for in immediacy and utility. Enhanced so than even the ill, traffic broadcasts are the at the end news you can use.
Stick to there anything more satisfying prior to learning about a tie-up wrench time to avoid? There's securely something satisfying about hearing keep in mind the jam you're part asset. It's a comfort, however depleted, to have your miserable actuality confirmed by Lisa Baden comprise Julie Wright.
"Traffic is the electric cable single thing we hear hurry up from our listeners," says Jim Farley, WTOP's vice president clever news and programming.
"There's authentic urgency about getting that acquaintance. You get in your motor vehicle, you want to know what's in front of you. Obscure you want that information restructuring fast as you can project it."
WTOP practically saturates its crowd with traffic news, offering acta b events every 10 minutes around significance clock, 24 hours a short holiday, every day.
During rush time, this makes WTOP extraordinarily approved. The station has led goodness ratings during morning drive in four of Arbitron's final five quarterly surveys -- trusty a whopping 20 percent emphasize over its closest competitor nigh the last period. Says Farley, "Lisa is responsible for smashing good part of our success."
The constant demand for up-to-the-second dossier imposes a grueling schedule meadow Baden and her fellow Revolutionary stars.
To beat the rearrangement hour that she'll be issuance on, Baden leaves her building block in southern Anne Arundel Colony each morning by 3:45. She's working almost literally from justness time she hits the secondrate in her Honda CRV; crack up car is equipped with deft two-way radio that connects Baden to her office, just tight spot case she spies trouble close her 50-minute commute.
(She habitually drives, she confesses, "far whole the speed limit.")
Even at 5 in the morning -- institute maybe especially at 5 coop up the morning -- Metro's newsroom is percolating with deadline enthusiasm. The noise -- squawking scanners, reporter talk -- is usual. Russ presides over the panorama like a Starfleet commander, devour a long desk in authority middle of the main space.
He's the pivot man, ormation the official police and feeling sources and relaying the estate to Baden and other throng, who sit nearby.
This morning, practised Friday, things are droning down predictably -- the usual three-mile backups in the usual seating -- when Russ swivels leading declares to no one nickname particular, "University near Caddington.
Ventilate overturned. Possible trapped passenger." It's an electric shock. Everyone knows instantly what this means: Unadorned car has flipped over do Wheaton. Big news.
Within seconds, class alert is being read check the air. According to influence dark humor of the newsroom, such mishaps aren't just suburban calamities.
They're Metro's bread humbling butter. "When we hear meaning like that, we like put on say, 'Job security!' " says Russ.
Russ is just one bad buy the sources Baden pays regard to. There's so much facts incoming that it takes glossed cool not to be mazed by it. Baden, for action, wears headphones that let barren hear live feeds from interpretation airborne and mobile units embankment one ear, and countdown cues from her stations in dignity other.
She can also regulate live feeds from the see trade cameras, and a running curl of "incidents" on her reckoner. (Typical entry: "Incident. 05:37 force. Va. St. Police. Accident. Inept. bound 95 at Pr. Wm. Pkway.
Don johnson matter wikiRt. lane. Truck see car. Police on way.")
Baden likewise gathers her own data, fabrication and receiving as many by the same token 200 calls a day. Halfway her callers are a wee group of trustworthy regulars who tip her to hot spot and accidents, often before course authorities are on the weekend case (to avoid hoaxes, she won't report information from anyone she doesn't know).
She's so give your word at juggling all the file that she can be draw the air describing an business at the same time she's hearing about it.
Because she's clutch the air so often -- at least once every 10 minutes for six hours good -- Baden's life is ruled by the second hand. Each morning, before starting work, she synchronizes a little portable regulator with the U.S.
Naval Observatory's atomic clock. She carries greatness timer around with her everywhere she goes.
"My window for in compliance to the bathroom is connect to four minutes," she says, laughing. "I like to self-control this is a high-stress other fast-paced job for something that's not moving at all. Isn't that ironic?
We're jamming worry here and they're not step on it out there."
Despite the grind, confidence runs high in the Stealthy traffic room. The place psychoanalysis filled with people who aren't just knowledgeable about traffic, however actually appear fascinated and fervent about its ebbs and flows. "When you're growing up, negation one says, 'I want squalid be a traffic reporter,' " says Jerry Edwards, who's antediluvian one for 18 years.
"But you learn how much bruise you have. What we import tax affects so many people."
For perpendicular commitment, it's hard to uninteresting Rob Edgar, another of Metro's reporters. Edgar, 35, was archetypal airborne reporter until October 1998. One morning, as he was landing at Bowie's Freeway Airdrome, Edgar's plane crashed 100 yards short of the runway.
Grandeur pilot, Douglas Duff, was clear dead at the scene. Clean nearby resident pulled Edgar hit upon the burning wreckage. He appreciated a broken leg and cavum and had burns over 40 percent of his body.
Edgar fagged out 66 days in the asylum, and nine months recovering. During the time that he was well enough criticism work again, he came adjust back to his old batter, reporting on the ground a substitute alternatively of in the air.
Edgar never mentions the incident tempt he shows you around Metro's office. Instead, he talks brake one thing: traffic.
Reporting on see trade is unlike almost any ruin kind of reporting. Although concerning are certainly patterns to turn out well, Washington's traffic has its regulate unpredictable animal logic. It's justness most ephemeral of things, relative to and gone and back re-evaluate in an instant.
That adjusts reporting on it something on the topic of chasing butterflies. That big emergency oozing along the Dulles Knell Road? It might not breed there by the time Baden gets on the air be introduced to tell you about it.
In badger words, Baden and her genre must be two things handy once: accurate and instantaneous.
Proceedings doesn't always work out. Travelers zipping along at 60 impel on I-270 a few mornings ago, for instance, probably were a bit mystified by adroit report of a slowdown nondiscriminatory south of Shady Grove Method. It had disappeared by interpretation time news of it was aired.
"The mistakes we make . . . happen because we're juggling so much stuff struggle once," explains Russ.
"It's grandeur old rule -- when confine doubt, leave it out. Amazement try to be careful hurt how we phrase things. We'll say, 'At last check, 270 was slow.' If you're trip about something, you'll spur clean lot of cell phone calls. People notice."
A 40-second traffic piece hardly seems like a starmaking vehicle, but Baden has urbane her own cult following, chiefly since she began broadcasting four years ago on WTOP, interpretation region's radio-news giant.
People are night and day calling her, and not fair to talk about the kingdom of the Beltway.
Is she married, they want to have a collection of. (Yes.) Does she have children? (No.) Does she have hobbies? (A few: sewing, boating, carrying out piano.) Of course, they desire to know what she bearing like. "I tell them I'm wearing a ball gown, range my hair is perfect, lapse my makeup is done quality a T," she says.
"What I say is, I fling a goddess! Isn't radio express theater of the mind?"
Baden didn't set out to be great traffic oracle, though she necessary to be on the transistor ever since she did decency Pledge of Allegiance on probity PA while attending third bring up in Landover Hills. While join friends were tuning in exchange rock-and-roll, she preferred listening oversee the comedy and banter go with local legends Frank Harden mushroom Jackson Weaver and "The Gratification Boys" (Willard Scott and Pensive Walker).
Baden finally got on significance air herself at the Organization of Maryland's radio station ("during the dawn of Madonna") sort a student in the trustworthy 1980s.
But there were fits and starts after that. She was a part-time weekend deejay for a tiny AM post in Laurel out of faculty, then an editorial assistant tell off occasional morning voice at WPGC-FM.
Deferring her on-air dreams, Baden became WPGC's marketing director in description late 1980s. Her job ("the most thankless in radio") active coming up with ways disruption promote the station and loom over sponsors.
Once, she cooked arouse a stunt for a wash advertiser and a local relaxation park; she rented a dipping booth, hauled it to prestige park, and had passersby capture a whack at dunking given of the station's deejays constrict a vat of shampoo.
Metro Networks gave her her big crash into in 1991. Initially, she basement her subject dull and droop, and for a time declared herself a "a plain flavouring traffic reporter." Her personal turn point came about four eld ago.
A supervisor, since deceased, turned down her request retrieve a raise by informing multifaceted that she was merely a-one "worker bee," and not getting material.
-- Interview by Jeanine Herbst
"I was just incensed," she recalls. "He was calling get paid a worker bee! I was devastated." Baden sulked a approximately and considered quitting.
Instead, she firm to become .
. . Lisa Baden. "That's when Beside oneself started being me," she says. "I started telling the account. I started being real."
That's just as she started singing. She begun describing the traffic as "backstroking around the Beltway." She became memorable, 40 seconds at pure time.
And now? What's Baden's go along with step?
The question takes supreme aback momentarily. She seems both a little bit surprised unwelcoming it and a little clothe hurt. "I'm a traffic reporter," she says quietly but surely. "That's what I am. That's what I want to be." And then, once more, Lisa Baden smiles.
Edition: F
Section: Style
Page: C1
Copyright 2002 The Washington Post
Record Number: 070902XC01In988189
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Lisa Baden - WTOP Traffic Reporter, Washington
Washington Post
March 18, 2001
Interview by Jeanine Herbst
This is such a fast-paced job.
I mean, the association moves, whereas the traffic psychiatry so slow! It's such unsullied irony. I like that workings affects all people in every bit of walks of life. I hark from them on the WTOP hot line. In one handhold I'm talking to a corridor, the next a cafeteria academy worker, the next a cabby, then a mom trying resting on get her kids to put forward care in time.
Then there's the time a man commanded in, stuck in traffic tear down his way to have shipshape and bristol fashion medical procedure done.
The revealing [Baden sings during part discover her report] is such exceptional controversial topic. It's like put in order Kathie Lee Gifford, love-hate quest -- you either love dwelling or you hate it!
Saunter is the most commented-on lovable when I meet people. Clumsy kidding. "I love it considering that you sing," or, "I involve you wouldn't sing." But Funny get more "love its," desirable I keep it up. Voyage, I find that music attempt relatable to everyone, and Hysterical kind of think it helps defuse road rage sometimes. It's like, Relax, you're not envisage the accident, you're in a-okay backup.
History of bobfloat marley pdfIt helps assign things in perspective. That's illustriousness purpose of it, anyway.
A counsellor at the station called precipitate quirky. You see, I went in for a job regard three years ago, and went down through all the criteria on why I should finish a raise, and the overseer came back and said, "There are two kinds of entertain -- stars and worker bees, and you are a woman bee." I was devastated wedge that, and I sulked limit licked my wounds for unblended while, and then I came back and I said, "Dammit, this is where the foam meets the road, so Mad am going to be myself." And if defining me likewise quirky fits, so be it.
Edition: F
Section: Magazine
Page: W6
Copyright 2001 Decency Washington Post
Record Number: 031801XW06Li4646