Recap: More Stories and Other Newsroom Duties!

The last two weeks I was moved off of web and more into the rest of the newsroom mix just to get my foot dabbling into other experiences. My shifts changed so that I was able to attend the early morning meeting as well as the regular morning meeting that I had been attending in the weeks before. The early morning meeting there’s a bit more pressure to pitch story ideas and so the first couple days was a bit nervewracking in terms of trying to find ideas but after that I’ve actually been surprised at how much easier it’s been getting to come up story ideas to pitch!

Beyond the web now I’ve gotten more experience in, as mentioned above, finding and pitching story ideas, also setting up interviews, calling sources for more information, working the phones, that kind of thing. I’ve also gone out a couple times to do interviews either for short VO clips or just to help another reporter because they weren’t able to go at that time, etc. And I also got experience writing scripts for the 6 p.m. shows! The writing for the 6 p.m. shows was great – I had a bunch of fun doing that and then watching the shows and actually hearing/seeing the anchors read out words I wrote was a great feeling. I wouldn’t mind doing more of that. I also loved going out with the cameraguys and doing interviews – I would like more opportunities to do that as well!

All the while I did miss working on the web. I have become very comfortable with the responsibilities I had for the website and I missed doing them! Plus writing short scripts for TV is vastly different than writing longer articles for the website and just with my previous experience in longer article/newspaper writing, I just love doing that. TV scripts you’re shot for time, not all the information can be included – stories I put on the website I had enough room to include extra details and links and etc. that you won’t get for TV scripts. Plus I think myself and the current web producer really have a well-working system going on but most of all – during the last two weeks “in the mix” of the newsroom – I didn’t have a permanent desk! I had to desk hop every single day and sometimes twice a day depending. Not a fan of desk hopping, lol.

But it looks like I’ll be back working on the web next week (yay!) but I was also told that before the practicum is up I will get some opportunities to go out for stories and then come back and write the script/voice over and put together the video as if it were to become a shorter package – for demo tape purposes! Honestly going into Global I didn’t think I’d be able to get any actual reporter-esque demo material just given that it’s a huge station and they’re not likely to air an intern’s report (even though I’m confident that whatever report I do would be air-able!) But yeah, I was told I’d get the chance to do a few stories and actually put them together as if I did them for air – to have on a demo tape. Of course it’s somewhat limiting in that it would have to be a story that Global is already going to be going out to do – I would just have to spearhead the interviewing and research and everything which is totally fine, then they’d use the footage for the actual news shows that day but then I’d be able to use the footage for my own, unaired side report. Which is fine obviously I don’t expect them to give me a camera to go do a random story they’re not going to air that day, lol. But yeah it was just a nice surprise because again I didn’t think I’d be getting any reporting demo material out of the practicum so hoorah!

There’s only a month and a half left now – as I said back on web this coming week, then perhaps will go back into the newsroom mix again the week after that – I’m going to ask my editing superviser if I can get a few more editing shifts in order to actually put together to-air packages. I might see if I can do more of that on the weekends too. And then as I think I mentioned before, there was a job posting that opened up within the newsroom that I have applied for. But I don’t want to give away too much details or talk about that too much until/unless decisions have ben made – but the interview process won’t even begin until the middle of March so still crossing my fingers on that one and I’ll let you all know how it goes once there’s actually a decision made!

And with that, I still did get to work on the web a little bit despite desk hopping around. Check out the stories below!

Here’s some of the articles I wrote for the website during Week 7 & 8:

Expect a fuller list with the next recap post!

Linda :)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

If you're Edmonton area, subscribe to my newsletter for hyperlocal recommendations on what to do, eat, and things to know this week!
If you're Edmonton area, subscribe to my FREE newsletter for hyperlocal recommendations on what to do, eat, things to know this week, and more!