Uploaded July 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Arkansas Associated Press Award Winner, 2003
Ricky Newman was the suspect in a high-profile local murder case involving a homeless woman. Not only did Newman confess to the killing, but he even put himself up as a candidate for the death penalty. 40/29 reporter Sean Brown conducted a prison interview with Newman, during which he repeatedly stated his belief that he should be executed, and recounted the story of the killing with what appears to be very little remorse. This is one of thoses cases where if you’ve got footage like this, you can’t go wrong, though in retrospect, I have spotted a couple of edits and editorial choices I’d probably handle differently now.
This story aired in the 10pm news on August 19th, 2002, and later won an Arkansas AP Award. Be warned, this'll send cold shivers up your spine.
A NOTE ABOUT VIDEO QUALITY
I began archiving my work-related video years before YouTube existed. It was an age of darkness, an age of limited web storage, an age of... {shudder} ...dial-up connections.
More to the point, my work archive at my site was all dependent on... {shudder some more} ...Adobe Flash. These videos were converted, usually from either the master MII or Beta tapes or from VHS dubs, with a program called Sorenson Squeeze. Sorenson is great for what it does, but with scenes featuring a lot of motion, there's often a lot of pixellation and motion artifacting that's considered unacceptable these days. The Sorenson files were also generated at a very small resolution, and thus the video extracted from them could only be the same resolution. (I no longer work at any of the TV stations for whom I produced these spots, and as such no longer have access to the master tapes.)
I hope you enjoy this little walk down local TV memory lane.
Arkansas Associated Press Award Winner, 2003
Ricky Newman was the suspect in a high-profile local murder case involving a homeless woman. Not only did Newman confess to the killing, but he even put himself up as a candidate for the death penalty. 40/29 reporter Sean Brown conducted a prison interview with Newman, during which he repeatedly stated his belief that he should be executed, and recounted the story of the killing with what appears to be very little remorse. This is one of thoses cases where if you’ve got footage like this, you can’t go wrong, though in retrospect, I have spotted a couple of edits and editorial choices I’d probably handle differently now.
This story aired in the 10pm news on August 19th, 2002, and later won an Arkansas AP Award. Be warned, this'll send cold shivers up your spine.
A NOTE ABOUT VIDEO QUALITY
I began archiving my work-related video years before YouTube existed. It was an age of darkness, an age of limited web storage, an age of... {shudder} ...dial-up connections.
More to the point, my work archive at my site was all dependent on... {shudder some more} ...Adobe Flash. These videos were converted, usually from either the master MII or Beta tapes or from VHS dubs, with a program called Sorenson Squeeze. Sorenson is great for what it does, but with scenes featuring a lot of motion, there's often a lot of pixellation and motion artifacting that's considered unacceptable these days. The Sorenson files were also generated at a very small resolution, and thus the video extracted from them could only be the same resolution. (I no longer work at any of the TV stations for whom I produced these spots, and as such no longer have access to the master tapes.)
I hope you enjoy this little walk down local TV memory lane.
