It was like living that recurring nightmare so many of us have had at one time or another. The one where you're sitting naked in the newsroom while people all around you are fully clothed. And you're waiting. Waiting for the moment everyone notices that you have nothing on.

A few years ago that nightmare came to life for me.

I was invited to participate on a panel for award winners during the annual SEJ conference. I had recently won a prestigious National Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting. I won for a series documenting health issues affecting some orchestra members on Broadway who worked on shows where pyrotechnics were used. And I was quite proud of my work.

I was the only broadcaster on the panel. To one side was Gary Cohn, whose work for the Baltimore Sun won a Pulitzer. The series, on ship-breaking, filled a large special section. On the other side, Bill Mills, Meeman winner from the Cape Cod Times. His work, too, made for an impressive stack of paper.

And there I was, in the middle, with my 11-part series. A series that in total would perhaps fill just one sidebar produced by Bill or Gary.

I was naked, waiting for everyone to notice.

It's not an unusual position for a broadcaster. All too often many of us feel inadequate next to our print brethren.

And when it comes to content, there's good reason to feel that way. The entire script of one day's CBS Evening News broadcast would fit easily into the front page of your local newspaper. That's not a lot of content.

But what about impact? What a good broadcast lacks in depth it can make up in impact. Think of that lone student in Tiananmen Square facing down a tank. That 30 seconds of video did more to energize people about that issue than any single well researched print story. Or how about stories in 1969 showing the Cuyahoga River afire? That did just as much to galvanize the environmental movement as anything I read. Images of Love Canal? They were a major factor in the push for Superfund legislation. And if you've ever listened to a well-produced audio story on a rain forest, the natural sounds can make you start swatting imaginary mosquitoes. Try that with your newspaper.

The scripts still remain short. But the potential impact is great.

Public radio has a phrase for these stories -- "driveway moments." That's when the story is so compelling, you can't get out of your car until the story is done. For those of us who have experienced a driveway moment, it's truly magical.

This power is especially evident with environmental stories. These are the stories most rich in natural sounds, and the context needed to tell a great story. So the broadcast medium is well suited to report on the environment.

Now all this doesn't mean broadcasters always have listeners eating out of their hands. Today quite the opposite is true -- for every driveway moment there are 50 Michael Jackson stories. But well-produced audio and video is no less a story than an article in a newspaper, and the effect can be much greater when it comes to galvanizing public opinion.

So next time I find myself naked in the newsroom, perhaps I'll take comfort in knowing that a good broadcaster is no less a journalist simply because of the brevity of their medium. Rather, we can use the strengths of our broadcast profession to engage our listeners in a way that print reporters can only envy.