Week 1: Unpublished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!