[Jay5780]

I work for the abc affiliate in RI and told the news director (friday) about FIRST and the CT event having a team from RI attending (who ended up winning) and some from our MA viewing area. and that it would be a great story. Anyway today I look at the news wire to see what's there about FIRST and what I found from abc news disturbs me. So I am telling my news director not to use what is on the wire and talk to the teams directly.

here it is written by the network about the cali regional only not the whole event
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And they're off! This is the race of the robots. Sixty high school students
are taking part in what's called the first competition...."For Inspiration
And Recognition Of Science and Technology" robotics event. The future
engineers and inventors had six weeks to build their own robots for the
mechanical challenge. The robots have to race around an obstacle course in
two minutes or less. Winners go on to a national championship later this
month.
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Obsticale course??? what the heck are they talking about? I have never seen an obsticale course in any FIRST event. This obsticale course doesn't sound interesting enough to watch, but "Zone Zeal" was.

Does FIRST even send out press releases to the networks? I think they should, these people have always gotten it wrong. Also they should send something to local stations where a team particiating comes from (ie Middletown RI) so they know that this is going on. Dean is always saying that he wants FIRST to grow.

~Jay