Team A Newscast 3/31

For my first time producing, I think today's newscast went really well. I expected there to be a lot of stress, beginning with the producer's meeting. I was worried because Allie didn't have a story idea cleared by the news director.

But, he turned out to be a kind man and sent her to State St. where she checked on the state of the demolished building by I-81. Allie spoke with the building's owner and received some pretty interesting sound bites from him. Suprisingly, this guy has been great to our class -- a sound bite machine.

Allie's situation was my first scare of the day, the second came when Professor Nicholson told me Erika had to report on a story in person. REPORTERS AREN'T ALLOWED TO DO PHONERS. That was my lesson of the day.

So I needed to find Erika a ride, which definitely proved to be a problem. We eventually got her out to Onondaga Lake, where she picked up some natural sound and a few pictures of what's going on out there as opposed to just a phone interview with someone from the DEC. Erika got back pretty late -- 3:30 which made me kind of nervous -- but she finished everything in 20 minutes.

As for my third reporter Jesse, he finished his interview early in the morning, which made my life a lot less stressful. He did a very interesting story on the weather and golf this weekend. He was done 45 minutes early and that definitely help calm me down. Jesse also did a great job voicing his piece this week.

My anchor Jess and I worked well together but we definitely could have communicated better. She did a great job voicing the newscast, considering she only read the script through once. But, we definitely struggled finding Jess something to do for her anc./act.

We had a great idea to call a local meteorologist to talk about the weather, but it didn't end up working out. Jess also tried to do a story about the delayed budget, but couldn't get one of the state senators on the phone. So she finally ended up using some of Suntup's sound and doing a story on rising gas prices. Jess also did a decent job with the timing of the newscast, only getting cut off at the very last second when she was wrapping up.

The newscast definitely went well, but I'd only give it a B+. The writing could have definitely been tighter, but we did a great job juggling three reporters, and fitting them all into the newscast. I only had two copy stories in the first part of the newscast, which I found pretty surprising. Overall, it was definitely a learning experience, and it was actually fun.