Now Playing: Multimedia on Everything, From Everywhere

Accident video shows a baffled motorist being ordered off a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., bridge where a tower crane mast section had just crushed another motorist’s car.
Image courtesy of Fort Lauderdale Police Dept.

These days material for video and audio recordings can come from almost anywhere. About two weeks ago, the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police department publicly released recordings of the aftermath of an April fatal accident at an apartment tower project in the city. There was a “bridgecam” reel showing nearly ground-level views of a tower crane mast section plummeting onto cars in a roadway; police bodycam tapes of officers rushing to the scene; footage from county police helicopters; and, remarkably, police bodycam recordings of interviews with site workers about a crane rigger who fell to his death.

When I saw local south Florida TV stations playing minute-long mashups of those tapes after their release on July 18, I thought that there might be something valuable left unshown. What I found was both moving and somewhat overwhelming, and I knew I had to write a story about what I saw and complete an edited video for ENR.com that showed what had happened..

Of 57 separate video files I received from the police, 10 were in a Windows file form that I could not play on my Macbook Pro, so I contacted BNP Media Video Production Manager Drew Lockwood, who converted them into a form I could review. As I took notes for an article based on the videos, I prepared a script that helped Lockwood knit together a four-minute video that can be watched from a player inside the text of my story on ENR.com or in our video channel, ENR.com/videos.

Soon after that first story was done, additional interviews and research—including a photo from Fort Lauderdale’s Fire Rescue Dept., the police written report and a discussion with tower crane expert William Neeley—showed that another story was needed that zeroed in on the potential cause of the tragedy. ENR California Editor C.J. Schexnayder also crafted social media posts about the multimedia material, alerting us how to package it for maximum impact on key channels such as LinkedIn. With input and assistance from talented colleagues, the online package came together, as well as a print story version (see p. 14), so ENR can share the broad range of material with our audience in this issue and on enr.com/videos and enr.com/media/podcasts.

Richard Korman
Deputy Editor

In a podcast and video, ENR Senior Editor Aileen Cho chats with Brian Kelly, the outgoing CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, about winning hearts and minds (and settling lawsuits).

ENR Senior Editor Jeff Yoders discusses GIS and BIM and how Esri and Autodesk are working together to make data transfer more seamless in a talk with Amy Bunszel, Autodesk’s AEC executive vice president.

Original icons by Getty Images/ V-Graphix and /-VICTOR-

Deputy Editor Richard Korman helps run ENR's business and legal news and investigations, selects ENR's commentary and oversees editorial content on ENR.com. In 2023 the American Society of Business Publication Editors awarded Richard the Stephen Barr Award, the highest honor for a single feature story or investigation, for his story on the aftermath of a terrible auto crash in Kentucky in 2019, and in 2015 the American Business Media awarded him the Timothy White Award for investigations of surety fraud and workplace bullying. A member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Richard has been a fellow on drone safety with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Richard's freelance writing has appeared in the Seattle Times, the New York Times, Business Week and the websites of The Atlantic and Salon.com. He admires construction projects that finish on time and budget, compensate all team members fairly and record zero fatalities or serious injuries.

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