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.