Why, Oh Why, Did We Film Her in a Canoe?

In what would have been a beautifully choreographed segment, Ms. Kosinski was reporting live about flooding in Wayne, N.J., in a canoe that was floating down a submerged suburban thoroughfare. The NY Observer and Poynter had the story.

“Eight days of rain, and some neighborhoods don’t even look like neighborhoods anymore,” she told Today viewers at the top of the 7 o’clock hour. “Little rivers with their own strong currents have taken over the streets, and people are getting out, any way they can.”

And it would have worked, too—the artful image of a correspondent Huck Finn–ing her way through a Jersey subdivision—had two guys in hip-waders not walked through the shot moments later, at 7:02 a.m., as if on cue. Water sloshed around their ankles. Ms. Kosinski looked like a grown woman in a nice outfit paddling her way around the kiddie pool.

“When it happened, it was funny and embarrassing, and I just thought, ‘O.K., this probably looks a little bad, or it looks unusual at least, to the people who are watching,’” Ms. Kosinski told The Observer four days after the segment aired.