The reporter’s life …
CBS-19 News affiliate, WCAV-TV allowed me the opportunity to follow one of their reporters around for a day.
On March 9, I arrived at the station at 9:20. When I walked in I met the news director, Jim Hanchett.
We went to the newsroom. On the way there Hanchett seemed excited and started to tell me about how it’s a great news day because there have been 2 structure fires.
Then, without even taking a breath he introduced to me to the reporters, producers and the assistant news director.
At first, it didn’t really seem like anyone was doing very much. Mark Tenia was the reporter I was shadowing that day. Tenia explained to me that everyone was Googling and checking other news sites to try to find something good to “pitch” at the meeting.
At 9:45 everyone joined in the studio for the morning meeting. Hanchett listened to their ideas and then told everyone who was going to do what story and what type of story it should be-SOT, Package, etc.
Tenia got a story about how the stimulus package that was being announced that day was going to affect local banks. I think it’s boring but Tenia said he loves that kind of stuff.
From 10 that morning until around 11:30 he called 18 different banks and went through a few of his other contacts that were somewhat related to the story.
He was hoping that one of them could help him out and put in a good word with the people he really needed. Nothing panned out so we went to the courthouse and shot a SOT of one of the workers there.
She was explaining how a new site that the City of Charlottesville has put up will help people find jobs.
Then around 1:30 or so, we each had lunch and went and talked to Hanchett for another story idea.
As I mentioned before, there were 2 structure fires that day. So Tenia was then reassigned to go out and find something substantive at the Boyd Tavern Market fire.
We talked to passersby and the owner. Most were really unwilling to be on camera.
Then we shot a bunch of video of the area of the fire and the people stopping in just to look.
We went back to the station and Tenia edited all the video and got everything ready for air.
Even though Tenia’s first package idea didn’t work out, he went gung-ho into the second.
The #1 thing that I learned from this experience is to always shoot multiple stand-ups. You may never know what kind of usable video you have, what’s going to be the most important at broadcast time, and there are about a million other variables that could mess up only having one stand-up shot.
I also learned to keep pushing and continue to maintain your confidence.
It was a good day and pretty much exactly how I thought it would be.
I would like to thank everyone at CBS-19 in Charlottesville, Virginia for allowing me the opportunity! It was loads of fun.
