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!