Week 9: Road Kill

It was another stressful week at KBIA. After last week, I decided that pitching a longer form feature story was a better way to go than doing day turn stories that take more than one 4-hour shift to complete.

So, Jen and I teamed up to do a story on road kill. It was my idea—I did a little story on it at my internship over the summer and thought it would be interesting to do for KBIA. Janet seemed a bit skeptical about it on Tuesday because we admittedly didn’t have a relevant news angle to it, but we kept pursuing it with her approval.

I feel like doing stories in one shift period is very difficult just because getting a hold of people and having them call you back is difficult. Tuesday was a bit of a disappointment. We made a slew of phone calls and ended up with only one interview. Thursday was much better. We got two or three interviews done and decided we would each go out separately over the weekend to get some good nat sound of cars and wildlife.

I think we’ve made the decision to narrow the focus of our story to be just on road kill involving deer because there’s a big safety hazard involving deer. October and November is also the high season for deer accidents, which are much more prevalent in Missouri than most other states.

Our original concept was to follow someone who picked up and disposed of animals on the streets, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen because of people not wanting to talk to us. It is also interesting because we keep getting pointed in different directions to the people that actually collect the animals. It seems like no one knows who’s in charge of the animals on the street, which seems like it could be a story within itself.

Anyway, I think the story is going in a good direction, slowly but surely. It’s hard because I’m still feeling the constraints of working within two 4-hour shifts just because I’m so busy with other things. KBIA is nice because they do have a laid back environment and seem to trust reporters to make the right decisions on our own, which is refreshing.

So, I think our story will be up to par eventually, although it may take a little while, so I hope nobody rushes us, since we are working as hard as we can. It will be a good story eventually.

Week 8: Stressful First Week at KBIA

This week, I started work at KBIA, our local NPR station. I came in ready with a story to pitch bright and early on Tuesday morning. Janet, the main person at KBIA who’s in charge of us students, liked my idea about doing a wrap-up of the Citizen Jane Film Festival and how it went.

I’m finding it very difficult to do a story within the time limitations of my shift. My shift on Tuesday was from 8-12 a.m., however, the story meeting didn’t start until 9:00 and wasn’t over until 9:30 and I had a midterm at 12:30, so it didn’t give me and my partner much time to work on the story from start to finish. We got one interview done on Tuesday morning, and we didn’t get in contact with the rest of our sources until either late Tuesday or late Wednesday.

I came in for my next shift on Thursday morning with the goal of finishing up the story. I was concerned that I didn’t make a very good first impression because the Citizen Jane story seemed outdated on Tuesday, and even more outdated on Thursday.

We got the rest of our interviews done and were able to finish up the story that morning and Sara, the other person in charge of students, seemed to like the story, but I’m not sure when it’s going to air.

I decided that the best way to use my short time at KBIA productively was to pitch a longer form feature that I could work on during my own time instead of waiting around the studio for people to call me back during my shift.

I came up with the idea of doing a story about road kill and how it’s increased in some areas over the years. It would also be a human-interest piece because I plan to follow a public works person around as they pick up dead animals. I pitched it to KBIA and they seemed to really like it and gave me the go-ahead.

I’ll be starting on that next week with a partner, Jen, so I’m excited to have more freedom with the story and my time. Hopefully next week will be less stressful than this past week has been.

Week 7: Last Week at Newsy

This is my last week at Newsy, and I have to say I’m not overly sad to say goodbye to it. All in all, Newsy was not a terribly experience. I did enjoy it a little, however, I don’t think I learned that much I didn’t already know. The people I worked with were nice for the most part, but I never felt fully welcomed or appreciated by Newsy. Many days, there was no physical space for me and I often sat up front in the waiting area on my laptop.

I did get some good experience with research in the newsroom. Although I was given very little direction at the beginning, I figured it out on my own, and in that way it was a good learning experience. Next week, I’m onto KBIA-FM, our local NPR affiliate, and I don’t know quite what to expect, but I’m excited for what will hopefully be a productive challenge.

On Tuesday of this week, I pitched the story about how Governor Schwarzenegger signed the Harvey Milk Day bill into law on Monday. There were obviously lots of strong opinions about Schwarzenegger and whether he was a flip flopper (he vetoed the same bill a year ago) or a good guy, etc. It was an interesting story.

The only problem was that I only managed to find one video source that I could use. I didn’t think that this was a huge problem, however, Tanya, our supervisor, threatened to cut the story after I put two hours of work into it if I didn’t find another video source. I was determined. After much searching, I did find videos, but none that were precisely on the subject of the story. I think that’s a flaw of Newsy’s. A story still has potential and importance if it only has one video source. It ultimately got passed onto a higher editor so who knows if it’ll get published or not. However, the story I produced on Thursday had ZERO videos and only one audio piece, so I guess that’s just a contradiction at Newsy.

Since I finished my story early, I was assigned to help another girl with her story, and when that was done, Tanya taught me a new skill of finding photos for the website. It was nice to learn a new skill.

On Thursday, I was put on production, even though I was prepared to pitch a story. FinalCut always challenges me, so it was nice to get to know the software better and see a story somebody else started through to the finish.

Onto KBIA-FM next week. I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I’m always up for something new!

Week 6: Supervising

It was another busy week. The group I was in charge of project managing somewhat successfully completed their story last week. It is a very interesting, eye opening experience to be on the opposite side of where I was last year. It was cool to sit in on the grading meetings and really get an insight into what the professors are looking for in our stories.

My group this week got off to a bit of rocky start because they changed their story on Monday, which I kind of anticipated happening. They seemed to work really hard and pull the new story off though. I just hope they were able to make it compelling enough to be interesting, so that they get a good grade.

At Newsy on Tuesday I worked on my own story idea about the farmers protesting in Brussels over low dairy prices. It was actually a quite interesting story. The only problem is that I couldn’t find a lot of sources that presented a good argument on the issue, but I think I found enough to make it a concrete and substantial story. Here's the link: http://www.newsy.com/videos/crying_over_spilled_milk

On Thursday, I pitched another story that got approved about the Supreme Court cases involving a cross on federal land in a Californian national park. It’s an interesting case, and it turned out to have a lot of complicated layers. I don’t know if it’ll get published or not, but if it does I’ll post a link.

Next week is my last week at Newsy before going on to KBIA, an NPR affiliate.

Week 5: Busy

This week was unique from what I usually do because this week I am also supervising the reporting students with their stories, which is a nice change and challenge.

My group is working on a story about field trip budgets being cut. Overall, I am incredibly impressed with how ambitious they are. They opted to do a KOMU story opposed to a Missourian story, so I admire them for taking on the challenge. They talked to a ton of people, but they were able to pull it all together.

At Newsy on Tuesday I was assigned to continue on a story another student had started. It was on the Facebook poll put up asking if President Obama should be killed. I hadn’t even heard about it, but it is as awful as it sounds.

Anyway, despite coming in with pitches of my own, I finished up the research on the Obama story and was surprising assigned to start producing it in Final Cut. Going solo on my first production story freaked me out a little, however, I used it as an opportunity to figure out once and for all how to use Final Cut. It turns out that just sitting down and messing around with Final Cut is very useful.

It took me a while to produce the story and I’m sure someone could have done it better, but I did it and I’m excited that I was able to produce something on my own. Here’s the link: http://www.newsy.com/videos/hate_in_the_facebook_age

On Thursday, I had the idea to do the story about President Obama being in Copenhagen to schmooze the Olympics committee into choosing Chicago for 2016. However, apparently somebody had already pitched the idea and it was rejected because Newsy didn’t think they could turn it around in time before the Olympic city was announced, which would trump this news.

I understood that. So I teamed up with my fellow convergence colleague, LaurieAnn, to work on a story about China’s 60^th anniversary of communism celebration. It was an interesting story, so we wrote a script and found a lot of different perspectives. Check out the link:

http://www.newsy.com/videos/celebrating_60_years_of_communist_rule

My group finished their story somewhat successfully. It was cool to be on the other side of the reporters and see what goes on behind the scenes that you don’t necessarily get to see in the reporting class. I have my last group next week (project managing shifts seem very short), so hopefully they’ll do just as well.