My First Week!

I want to begin by saying I wish I could be done with college NOW and start working as a news reporter TODAY! I guess I don't even have to mention the fact that I absolutely LOVE this internship! :-) This summer I have the opportunity to work with WATE 6-News, an ABC affiliated station in Knoxville, Tennessee. I have the opportunity to do pretty much everything but be on camera. I will shadow reporters as they do live shots and conduct interviews. I will also work with the producers to write stories that the anchors read on camera.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

I began my morning with a cycling class at National Fitness Center. Funny enough, I ran into Matt Hinkin, WATE's head meteorologist, who was also taking cycle. He was extremely nice and made me feel like I was going to be welcomed at WATE that afternoon.

I entered the station around 2PM that afternoon very nervous yet SO excited. The first event of the day was the daily rundown meeting which is held daily at 2:30PM. This is where everyone gets together to discuss basically what news stories they are working on for the different shows that evening. The different producers discuss what stories they want for their show and in what order they would like them to run. After this, the anchors and reporters talk about what they have been working on and/or their plans for different stories. On this day, I just sat and observed, but I plan to throw story ideas out during this meeting in the near future.

After the meeting, I was introduced to Mona Nair, a night side reporter. Mona is absolutely fabulous! You will hear me talk about her a lot. On Tuesday, Mona was working on a smoke detector story. I followed her around as we went to the local fire station for an interview and then to Target for her stand-up and to get some video footage of their smoke detector section. Oh and must I not forget to mention Brian. Brian is the night side camera guy who is hilarious. I am sure he will be discussed in a lot of my posts throughout this experience, also.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

This day was quite different from the first. I stayed in the studio all day working closely with the producers. I worked the teleprompter for the 5:00, 5:30, and 6:00 newscasts. This is the screen in which the anchors read from while reporting the news. Although I have done this with News Source at UGA, I must say this prompter took some getting use to. I did get a little mixed up at times, but Lori Tucker, one of the main anchors, guided me back on track. After the shows, I went back up to the newsroom where Beth, the 11 PM newscast producer, gave me my first story to write. Before I go into this, may I mention that I just recently got accepted into the Grady School of Journalism at UGA and I have not taking one class on reporting/writing, yet. Although I have experience writing in high school, this is NOTHING like what I did in high school. Beth guided me through my first story with lots of help. Next I learned how to pick a sound bite off of a video. I did this for the story on Phillip Fulmer from where he spoke at one of the UT graduation ceremonies. I also got to write the story that Kristin Farley read on the 11PM news that evening. I found it funny that one of the first stories I wrote was on a former University of Tennessee coach. Oh and I forgot to mention that from day one I have received a lot of crap for going to Georgia. I have a feeling it won't ever end... If they only knew. Haha! :-)

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Let me begin by saying this was a CRAZY day at WATE. All week the main focus had been the Vanessa Coleman trial. On this day, Coleman the jury announced their verdict right before I went in to work. The main topic for all the newscast for this evening was the outcome of this trial. I knew immediately there probably would not be much for me to do considering I have already learned when it's a good time to ask for something to do and when it isn't. Thankfully Mona asked me if I wanted to go with Brian and her on her story for the evening. This was an experience might I say before I even go into detail. As we got into the truck that allows the reports to shoot live, we got word a child had his hand stuck in an air conditioner on a school bus. We went to this scene first, but as we approached the scene we found nothing there. Change of plans. I am finding this happens a lot in this industry. Now back to the original plan, "Knoxville Tea Party upset about Al Gore awarded an honorary degree". Mona went live at 5PM at the Worlds Fair Park where the protesters, The Knoxville Tea Party, would meet later that evening. We stayed after she went live and she conducted a few interviews. This was definitely an eye opener for me and made me realize how much you cannot express your opinion or emotions as a news reporter. The following is the link to this story Mona covered today: http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=12480387.

What a first week I had. Everyday I wake up and truthfully look forward to going to work. I cannot express this feeling and how much I look forward to doing this for real in the near future. I know this was a long post, so I hope I didn't bore you. I plan to write more frequently in hopes the posts will be shorter. Thanks for listening. I will post more next week!