2nd Week!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

This day began my second week at WATE. This was the first day I worked after the Coleman trial so things were not near as crazy as my first week. After the rundown meeting I followed Mona and Brian to USI Motors in West Knoxville. On our way there we got a call that there was a lawn mower accident at my old high school, Bearden High. Luckily the high school was right next to the car dealership. We arrived at Bearden to learn that there was no real story to report on after all. The principal and teachers all recognized me and definitely gave me a hard time about coming out for such a pointless incident. I just had to explain that when we hear something important/interesting on the scanners, we jump on it immediately. It's something only reporters would understand. :-) We were now heading to USI Motors to report on 3 missing exotic cars totaling over 500,000 dollars! Mona went live at 5 and of course did an awesome job. Tuesday started out extremely busy, but ended up slower than usual.

Wednesday, May 18, 2010

The rundown meeting was quite different on this day. I guess you could say it was a pretty quiet day in the news. This could definitely be a good thing for the community, but can make it difficult to produce a full newscast. With this, the reporters began throwing story ideas on the table. Mona had suggested a story a few days before on a local strawberry festival. Funny enough, our news director, Jamie, approved. He told her that if she did a package on this festival, she must make it a "hard" news story. Once again, Mona, Brian, and I hopped into the car and drove to Morristown, Tennessee. Mona decided to make the story "hard" news by reporting on the various weather issues some strawberry farms have experienced this season. Tennessee actually had a great year, but there were many states that experienced freezing temperatures in April ruining their crops. After Mona interviewed multiple people and Brian got some good shots of the crops, the head farmer gave us a huge basket of strawberries to share with the station. This was such a fun story to report on and definitely showed me how to turn a "dayside" story into "hard" news.

Morristown farm ready for strawberry festival despite tough season

By Mona Nair

http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=12511545

Expect to see more of these type of pictures :-)

Mona reporting on strawberries

Thursday, May 20, 2010

This Thursday started out pretty slow. I did not go with Mona because I had already made plans with the sports department to go help shoot a soccer game later in the evening. After working on a few small things I asked Jill McNeal, another nightside reporter, if I could go with her to interview the parents of Channon Christian. Channon Christian was the girl murdered in January 2007 along with her boyfriend, Chris Newsom. The Coleman trial I blogged about last week was in relation to this murder. Jill was interviewing Channon's parents for a golf tournament they were putting on in memory of their daughter. The Christian's were very sweet people. I enjoyed getting to meet them and learning from a new reporter.

Channon Christian Memorial Golf Tournament

By Jill McNeal

http://www.wate.com/global/story.asp?s=12518766

Jill interviewing Mr. Christian

Mrs. Christian (pink)

Jill McNeal reporting

After the interview at Willow Creek Golf Course, I went straight over to Farragut High School for the soccer game. I met Prentice, one of the sports reporters there to help film the game. Before the game started, Prentice allowed me to shoot a few stand-ups for my resume video. These clips will not be on local TV, but I will use them when I apply for jobs in 2 years. These were the first of many and I am not going to lie, I LOVED being on that side of the camera!