"Oh, Right in the Face!" NewsChannel 8 Reporter Gets Pummeled With Snowballs—Again

NewsChannel 8 reporter Mike Conneen should consider taking winters off. For at least the second year in a row, Conneen found himself the victim of DC’s young professionals who regress toward juvenilia whenever a few inches of snow appear on the ground.

Conneen, who’s been out reporting on this week’s winter storm since 2:30 AM, intrepidly headed to Meridan Hill Park in Columbia Heights at about 11 to cover an organized snowball fight. As soon as his hit started, about 11:14, it was obvious Conneen was in the snowy shit, with loose clumps of powder exploding around him from all directions. Although he was able to duck and evade most of the barrage, Conneen failed to make it out unscathed.

“Oh, right in the face,” he said as a clump of snow landed on his noggin.

Theories will abound as to why Conneen was singled out by a mob of overgrown fourth-graders who believe snowball fights should be governed by politesse instead of raw, guerilla-style tactics. It’s plausible his camera crew made for a tempting target. It also appears the snowball throwers had a bit of outside encouragement.

Snowballers, remember, your primary target is @MikeConneen

— Andrew Beaujon (@abeaujon) February 17, 2015

Whatever their motivation, they hit Conneen without mercy.

“Oh yes. I was hit,” he tells Washingtonian via e-mail. “Hard. And often. Even more when we weren’t live.”

A video Conneen posted to Vine suggest that no one was willing to defend him—not even the yokel with a Captain America shield.

However bad it got when the camera wasn’t rolling, this year’s carnage can’t compare to what Conneen got last year, when he was absolutely clobbered by a rabble of snowball tossers in Dupont Circle after perching himself on the fountain to stand above the mob, armed with a snowball stash of his own. This year, it appears Coneen tried the conscientous objector route, and still got creamed anyway.

UPDATE, 5:24 PM: WJLA has posted Conneen’s full report on the snowball fight. It’s brutal!

Find Benjamin Freed on Twitter at @brfreed.

Benjamin Freed

Staff Writer

Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.