Keeping It Cool

For the first half of my summer, I'm taking a news producing class with Holly Edgell, KOMU's executive producer.

It's definitely a lot different than reporting. In the past 2 weeks, I've learned so much...including to be calm and in control in the "control" booth (where producers, directors, production crew sit to cue anchors/live reporters and punch in graphics). :-)

Holly's website has weekly guest blogger, and this is what I wrote for last week's blog!

It’s like that SNL skit with President Obama never losing his cool:  The producer’s job is to keep stressful situations under control. 

After my second week of producing, I’ve learned that one of the most important parts of the job is to always have a game plan. During the shift, you’re focused on putting together your newscast, but you also have to keep in mind plan B, C, and D. 

For example, we had two live shots on Friday (one reporter and one meteorologist), and both had live headlines. But right before the reporter’s headline, the live truck went out, and we basically lost their signal. Since she was our top story, my TA and I immediately had to move stories around until we got in touch with her. 

Fortunately, my TA took charge by telling the director to put the story back in after the first weather. But during the weather was still going, he started yelling, “swing the mast!” And that’s when the director yelled back to him to stop shouting. While this was going on, our anchors in the studio had no idea what was going on. Since my TA ripped off his headset for a moment, the director was the one who had to jump in to let the anchors know what was coming up. Even though we ended up getting the signal back and finished the show on time, our lack of preparation caused the anchors to look confused and misinformed. 

I’ve learned that the producers always have to keep in mind what to do if the live shot or a story didn’t make it on the news. And if we do make changes to the rundown, we have to make sure the director knows so he or she can inform the technical crew. We also have to let the anchors, the meteorologist, and the live reporter know the game plan as well.

Communicating with the entire news crew is a key, especially in the control booth. During the rundown meeting before the newscast, it’s the producer’s job to make sure the director knows exactly what’s going to happen in the newscast. 

When we lost the signal from the reporter, we should have called the live truck operator to find out what was going on, but instead we panicked and lost control. Producers are basically what keep the entire newscast together. So if we freak out and stop communicating, the viewers will immediately know that something is wrong because the whole news team depends on the producer to fix the problem. Our job is to make sure the flow of the newscast is seamless. 

At one point in my morning newscast last week, I was on the phone with Rod, trying to write a story, and run the prompter all at the same time. It was overwhelming to handling all of that, but it’s my responsibility to deal with the stress because the news goes on whether I like it or not.  

 

Sure, our job is nothing compared to what the President deals with. Still, dealing with stressful situations in the control booth isn’t easy, but it’s something I hope to eventually master.

Confession: I'm Addicted to Twitter

Yup, I've said it. I'm now a Twitter-addict. A proud one. I've gotten to know a bunch of interesting people through it. I even found a source for my Boonville story on Twitter. We haven't been able to find a day to meet up for an interview, but it's exciting to network like that. The only bad side is the addicting part. To make matters worse, I installed TweetDeck today, and it's AMAZING. It lets you organize your Tweeps to make your Tweeting less stressful, and keeps you updated on your followers' tweets. At the beginning, I almost had a panic attack because the notification "chirp" went off every 10 seconds, but luckily I changed the setting to turn it off. It's overwhelming how connected you can get with the web now, and I love it.

For my Ning project, Stephanie Cobb and I met up this week and wrote out instructions on how to post events on the site. We hope the community will be able to use it to connect through the events and meetings that people hold.

I look forward to learning more about the web!

Ning-ing to the Public

What a week. Trying to put together this story about Boonville's economy, finding time for my web projects on top of my other classes are definitely a challenge. Especially if your sources don't cooperate with you. Okay. Sorry for complaining because it's all part of the job, right?

But the good news is that I found an AWESOME potential web extra. While interviewing one of my sources, he mentioned that back in the 60's, Boonville's Chamber of Commerce took tons of ping pong balls and marked numbers on them. Then they took the balls on a helicopter and dropped it to the Main Street of downtown. Depending on the numbers written on the balls people got, they received discounts to the stores. It encouraged people to shop downtown.

And my source said he and his cousin have film footage from it! So hopefully, he'll be able to find it, and we'll be able convert it from VHS to Avid. Hopefully, I'll find more people who can tell the story. I'm super excited because it'll be a great side story for people to compare the changes in the town.

Another exciting news: KOMU's Ning site is going PUBLIC!! Yay! If you haven't signed up yet, nows the time!! We currently have 53 members, and our goal is to expand it to 1,000 people! We want to create a network where Mid-Missourians can share news and improve the community.

A Day in a Reporter's Shoes

Mallory and I worked on one of our many "Behind-the-scenes at KOMU" websodes! When we got to the station, we wanted to feature the reporters and how they get their stories on to the newscasts. We caught up with Sarah Hollenbeck and Dhomonique Ricks to find out more about their day. We asked them how they came up with their story ideas and the whole process of writing stories and editing video. We also shot cutaways like the KOMU cars, story board, Tiger Chair...etc.

While Mallory worked on putting together the video, I worked on collecting images for our stories. Dhomonique got some great shots for the Pakistan's Senate Chairman story. Sarah had cute video of stay-at-home moms and dads with their kids. 

I was reading Phil's blog, and I definitely agree with him. Even though majority of post-B3 students report on Fridays, I've noticed how most of them come back and give me a simple link for their web extra. Sometimes, they ask us to post press releases. It's true that links do help our viewers get more information. But, we (dot-commers in Jen's class) are learning so much about the web so the reporters should think deeper to come up with web extras that actually enhance their stories. I'm not sure if they know the things we're capable of doing on the web...? 

This also creates problems for the producers for the 6pm newscasts. Because dot-commers have to tease what's coming up on the web, but most of the time we have only images, links, or nothing at all. So it frustrates the producers as well.

When reporters are coming up with story ideas before their reporting shifts, they should be thinking about potential video and for possible web extras too. Reporters, that's all I ask. If you tell us some cool ideas, the odds are we'll make it for the web.

Spring Cleaning

Even though it's 28 degrees outside, spring must be here because we brought out the brooms and a dustpan!! During our Friday shift, the dot com table got a makeover!! Since keeping an eye on the web is also the desk person's job now, the desk area and the dot com merged together for a more practical set up. So right when Mallory and my shifts began, the computers were taken down and moved from its original place. Meanwhile, the renovation workers took apart the wall around the desk and extended across the room. 

Since the computers were down, Mallory and I decided to whip out a camera and began filming the renovations! Earlier, Mal showed me an awesome "behind-the-scenes" of one of our reporters that she had put together!! I have to admit, it looks waaay cooler than my Souper Bowl extended interview! Unfortunately, technical issues kept us from transferring the video so it hasn't been uploaded yet.

Mal and I maneuvered our way through the crowded newsroom trying to get bits and pieces of the transformation. We also asked the producers and the reporters couple questions about the newsroom and their jobs at the station... That's when Mal and I had an epiphany!! Every Friday, we'll put together an "Our View"--a behind the scenes at the newsroom and what goes on during a typical day of a producer, reporter, anchor.... etc. If you have any suggestions for the segment, we'd love to hear them! 

We also grabbed some great images for stories like potholes and house tax credits. But for the rest of our shift, we basically swept the floor and wiped off thick layers of dust from....pretty much everything. I tried updating the situation via Twitter. Our news director, Stacey Woelfel, hooked the computers back up toward the end of the shift so I began working on the reporters' stories.

To wrap things up, we'll work on those behind the scenes segment later this week...hopefully we can figure out a place to put it on the site.

Smooth Sailing

My shift was all in all pretty smooth. Mallory was back! Yay!

Once I got to the station, I caught up with the reporters to find out more about their stories. At the same time, I grabbed their cards to so we could work on the images right away. Note to self, don't take the cards from the reporters without asking (or when they're out to lunch...) because that will freak both the reporters and the producers out. Mallory and I picked out at least 3 images that we could use on the web. We also named the files differently so it was easier to find later. The reporters all had great video so the images really enhanced the web!!

While Mallory cropped the pictures and messed with the color balance, I made sure KOMU.com was all updated. We ended up fixing the images for several stories on the front page. I really do think those images play a huge role in determining  if a viewer wants to keep reading that story. I was also impressed with the quality of importing the images from the cards--not from Avid. They look 100 times better!! 

Unlike last week, the web extras weren't as interesting as last week's... but Kristin, Mal, and I were busy writing non-B3 reporters' stories on ACM. We actually got all of the stories (without video) up before the end of 6 pm newscast!! Go team Friday!! 

6xChamps!!

What an amazing game!! The game was a lot closer than I expected! A little disappointed that Limas Sweed didn't get to play, but hopefully there'll be more opportunities for him in the future!

XLIII

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!! Go Steelers!!

Going Above and Beyond at Dot Com

Yesterday's shift was pretty exciting!! I learned how to create an extra video for the web extra. Since Mallory, my dot com buddy, came down with a nasty food poisoning, I held down the fort with Kristin. Fortunately, things weren't too busy so I decided to create an extended interview for one of the reporters' story. He interviewed 6 kids for the Souper Bowl story and had extra bites and giggles that deserved to be heard. And why waste them, right?

I took snip-its of the interviews and compiled them so the bites alone tell the story. The toughest part of my night was putting the supers with the interviews... I created them on Photoshop and saved all 6 of them the same way, but only one of them worked. So after MANY, MANY tries, I went back to that file and saved over it--5 different times--one for each kid. I'm sure there's an easier way to do this, but I was desperate...

Even though it took me over 3 hours to do all that, it was actually FUN, and I hope viewers actually go to our site to watch it because they are super cute!! Can't wait to learn more about the world of web!