NBC Update: Canoeing Kosinski Swears the Deeper Waters Weren't Well-Lit Enough

The New York Observer updates last week's Michelle Kosinski Today show nightmare, caught reporting in a canoe in ankle-deep waters.

"It’s kind of painful,” she said, “because you want to explain yourself. The most important point for me to get across is: Yeah, it looked really stupid, but there was never any attempt to make it look like it was worse of a storm than it really was.” The article ends with her one lingering concern: Her one lingering concern: “That it might have looked to some people like we were trying to put something over on viewers,” she said. “That would just be idiotic.”

Writer Rebecca Dana explains the gritty details were all about production values:

This, in more innocent form, is the idea that flashed through a Today show producer’s mind on Thursday night. Streets were flooded. Residents and rescue workers were riding around in boats. It made perfect sense. They bought a boat and had it delivered the following morning. Ms. Kosinski arrived early to practice paddling around. She had been in a canoe before, she said, but never by herself, and never in waters any rougher than a slow-moving stream. They tried to set up the shot at an intersection where the water was waist-high and the current was strong, but “they couldn’t light it,” Ms. Kosinski said. “The microphone was wireless and it wasn’t working, and with all the equipment, they couldn’t wade out into the deep water.” So producers asked Ms. Kosinski to paddle to where the water was shallower. She did. She wasn’t happy about it. But she did. “Even though I wanted to show deeper water, in the end I said O.K. I didn’t really think it was inappropriate,” she said.