Sometimes crazy ideas can pay off

Okay, I'm a chocoholic. I admit that I circle the local Walgreens like a vulture the day after Valentines Day and Easter and swoop in to scoop up the 75 percent off chocolate hearts and rabbits.

And I was a fan of dark chocolate before it became "healthy" to eat. The other day I tried a new brand of dark chocolate, one that was "a delicious source of Omega-3's" which are supposed to be very good for you. One bite told me this was something terrific. The chocolate was really good and really different. So different, I started to read the label.

My jaw nearly hit the floor, and I'm not making this up.

The label read, "Contains anchovy and sardine."

I thought, you gotta be kidding me. But then again, the chocolate tasted so fantastic, and fish is good for you, so what the heck? I kept eating it.

Which makes one think that at some point, some guy in a chocolate factory had an idea to combine fish and chocolate. Bizarre, yes. But I stopped to think about the fact that every time I eat seafood for dinner I crave chocolate.

So are anchovies and chocolate a metaphor for the news business? No, but the idea is.

Look, we're all conditioned that news coverage has to be done a certain way because it has always been done that way. Packages have to run between 1:15 and 1:30. You need a standup and a sound bite. You need nat sound. Newscasts have to be produced a certain way and have to have 87 mentions of the website and five weather forecasts in 30 minutes.

Time to draw outside the lines.

Who says packages have to have sound bites? If you've got one with terrific nat sound, great video and a solid standup, you might be good to go.

Who says you can't do two standups in one package?

Who says you can't start a live shot staring up at the mastcam to show what you're talking about?

Who says you have to have a live shot in the first block, even when nothing is happening?

I see lots of resume tapes, and a lot of them look the same. After awhile they're video wallpaper. If you want to stand out among those looking for jobs, you have to be different.

Take chances. Try different things. Some may work, some may not. But if you hit on something wild like fish and chocolate that really works for you, you might just just to the top of someone's short list.