Week 4: Published??

After receiving a positive evaluation for the first half of my time at Newsy, I felt more confident walking into the newsroom on Tuesday, knowing that at least I was doing the right thing, even if I wasn’t getting published.

On Tuesday, I pitched the story about Juanes’ big concert in Havana, Cuba over the weekend. He said it was a peace concert, but many Cuban Americans were very, very angry and thought he was promoting communism, so it was a great “Newsy” story with lots of different perspectives.

I wrote a script for it, and then revised it and the editor seemed to like the story, and to my great surprise it actually got published! I’m so overwhelming happy and proud of myself.

On Thursday, my fellow convergence colleague and me put the entire script together in FinalCut. It took a long time, mainly because both of us knew just pieces of what we were supposed to do, so I’m sure other people could have done it faster, but we figured it out ourselves and I was able to see my idea through from start to finish.

I was so excited and thought that I had finally found my footing at Newsy. Check out the video!

http://www.newsy.com/videos/tune_of_peace_or_communism

Week 3: Finally Settling In

After two unsuccessful weeks at Newsy, I was sure that this had to be my week. I knew what I was doing now. I had thoroughly researched a story on the Elton John adoption issue the night before. I was convinced that it was perfect—lots of video sources and various opinions. This would be my Newsy story, I thought.

I got to Newsy and got started writing and doing more research. To my great surprise, the graduate student in charge of supervising us actually liked the story. She seemed impressed that I actually achieved something. She even passed it on to another person to put it together so that it can be published!

Finally, after two weeks I was getting published. I am very proud of myself. I remained optimistic despite some bad experiences and I was determined to do something right and I guess I succeed. Hopefully it’ll be published soon, but it hasn’t yet. Sometimes, it seems like it takes Newsy a while to get stuff up on their website.

On Thursday, I was not as optimistic walking in because although I had a story idea ready to pitch, I wasn’t very confident about it.

Regardless, I pitched my story about how the Senate passed the bill that would allow guns to be checked on Amtrak trains. It was a good Newsy story because it had a lot of different viewpoints, however, I was able to find no video sources for it, which is a major problem at Newsy.

I eventually found one video source, and a ton of blogs on the issue, so I wrote my story and the editors seemed to like it, so it’ll probably go to another person to finish writing it and see if other video sources appear in the next few days. I was happy and relieved that this week at Newsy was better than before, and I hope it continues that way.

Week 2: Frustration

The word of the day on Tuesday was frustration. If there were a word stronger than frustration, I would use it, but for now frustration will have to do. I was overwhelmed before I walked into my Newsy.com shift on Tuesday, because I’m taking Intermediate Writing for my print concentration, which is turning out to be more difficult and time consuming than I initially thought. I walked in with what I thought was a great idea and many sources for the story I wanted to write. My pitch idea was about the journalist in Sudan who was arrested for wearing pants. Newsy had not done a story on it yet, and I knew it was something that would be a “Newsy” story.

I walked in confident and ready to finally succeed at Newsy. My idea got the okay. I was pretty proud of the final product, and I was sure it was a “Newsy” story, unlike the ones I produced last week. It had a lot of video sources, which Newsy likes, and a lot of layers so I was very hopeful.

I turned in a first draft and made those changes and then turned in a second draft. And then history repeated itself. I was told it was not a “Newsy” story. I remained calm but grilled the graduate student who was in charge of us about what exactly qualified as a “Newsy” story. Apparently, my stories had to have more controversy and be less about the actual news, but more about the controversy surrounding it. I was supposed to use information from just blogs, columns and editorials.

Knowing what was expected of me, I remained hopeful that the story I wrote on Thursday would be closer to being published.

Thursday was also discouraging. Me and my fellow convergence editing students were supposed to “shadow” a fellow, which is all well and good, but I had written three scripts. Failed scripts, but still scripts nevertheless, so I didn't see the point in shadowing someone else.

So we just sat in pretty much silence and observed her edit a script and then write a new one that didn’t get finished because her first priority of editing took so long. We helped her find video and text sources for her story idea about the new Hubble telescope photos that had just been released. I had spent over an hour Thursday morning and Wednesday night researching story pitches, which no one asked for at Newsy. But the Hubble story was interesting, however, I still just don’t understand—this story is not at all controversial. Who would say anything controversial about telescope pictures? We got a lot of different angles to the story, but no controversy, which seems to be what Newsy wants. I'm pretty sure the story never got published. Who knows what happened to it. So that is what I did on Thursday.

Week 1: Unpublished

I began my convergence editing class this past week working at Newsy.com. Newsy is a unique website that focuses on national and international news. They take hot-button issues and discuss what other news sources/blogs are saying about the issue to make the news much more well-rounded than what someone would get from a traditional, single-perspective news source. I really enjoy the concept of the site.

Newsy, in my opinion, has changed significantly since I worked there nearly a year ago. The site itself has progressed and more stories are being produced daily, which is good, however, I have doubts that my work experience will be as successful as it was last year.

Me and two other convergence editing students were thrown into Newsy with no direction on Tuesday. We were assigned to work together and we wrote a script on the Michael Jackson hoax video, which basically shows MJ alive and well and caused quite an internet scandal, even though the German television producers disclaimed the video as being completely false.

It was an okay story that we came up with, but I knew immediately that this was not the kind of thing that Newsy would normally publish, despite the controversy. We wrote drafts of the story with guidance, but he story was not published. I figured that this had been assigned to us for practice, which I understand, but we were given no explanation in regards to format (Newsy has a pretty specific script format) or anything else. I walked away a little disappointed.

I didn’t know what to expect on Thursday. I walked in hopeful that I would be assigned a hard-hitting news story, even though I brought in pitches of my own. I started researching my own pitch, but I feared it wasn’t hard-hitting enough to get published, so I stopped pursuing it and joined another convergence editing student to help her with her story. We worked on the story and put together what we thought was a pretty decent story, but apparently it wasn’t “something Newsy would publish.”

I understand this. I understand that some stories are just not exactly what a site is looking to publish. Not everything can make the cut. However, I knew that this story wouldn’t be published at the beginning of my shift, but I still spent the full 4-hour shift working on it.

So, I’m a little frustrated with Newsy right now. It was an enjoyable experience last year and although I’m glad the site seems to be progressing and becoming more professional, my first week has not fulfilled my hopes or expectations for the experience. However, I will keep my hopes up for a better experience in the weeks to come!

Welcome!

Welcome! If you're reading this now, then you are probably one of my professors, but on the off chance that you aren't a professor of mine: welcome!

I am a convergence journalism students at the Missouri School of Journalism. Convergence basically means that my journalism education revolves around learning many different skills about print, radio and broadcast journalism.

This semester I am taking my third convergence course, Convergence Editing and Producing. I am working 8-hour weekly shifts at Newsy.com for the first half of the semester and KBIA radio, an NPR affiliate, the second half of the semester.

So, welcome to my blog and enjoy.