We are a variety of working broadcast professionals, offering advice & guidance to people interested in tv, online & radio broadcasting ______________________________________________
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First Jobs: Before That First Job…
photo credit: o5com I have three major regrets from my college days – and, thank goodness, none of them have to do with drugs or alcohol. I regret not studying abroad. I regret only taking one history class. I regret taking zero business classes. A semester spent in a different country could have provided valuable [...]
First Jobs: Work Flow
A friend is applying for a job titled “multi-media journalist” – which launched an hour-long discussion between the two of us about this growing trend – sometimes called the multi-platform journalist, the backpack broadcaster, or (rather irreverently) the one-man-band… photo credit: stevendepolo We talked at length about the best ways to approach that position, and manage time efficiently. Setting [...]
Internship Applications: Students Getting it Right
I really liked Tai’s last entry and wanted to add some great examples of students getting it right when applying for internships (followed by my gut reaction when I read them): “I am fluent in Spanish and English, with some knowledge of Korean and Mandarin Chinese.” That’s just cool, no matter what you’re trying to [...]
Internships: Go Ahead, Take a Seat!
This is the room where news-gathering decisions are made – the desk where the morning and afternoon editorial meetings take place. To a college intern, it can be an especially intimidating room. Clearly, you don’t want to say the wrong thing in a room with the reporters, producers, photojournalists, and news managers that you hope [...]
Your Rights: Taking Pictures in Public
There’s a good article in Popular Mechanics (really? yes.) on taking pictures and video in public places. As an intern and young reporter, I was very intimidated by law enforcement and other official types telling me that I wasn’t allowed to photograph something or record something on video. But journalists actually have a lot of legal backing [...]
First Jobs: Newsroom Advice
Here’s another pile of great advice from our very informal newsroom survey. These are the answers staff members offered when interns asked, “What do you know now that you wish you knew then?” Get on board with multi-media reporting – learn to write for print, web, and broadcast. Take full advantage of internships – learn everything! You have to [...]
Live! (or something like it)
I’ve had a few interesting conversations about live shots lately – their purpose, their evolution, their disappearance. KXAS in Dallas/Fort Worth tried an interesting experiment – no live shots for a week. The reporters were only allowed to shoot look-lives - taped ins/outs to their packages – unless they were covering breaking news. Friends tell me, [...]
First Jobs: Story Generation
Looking for story ideas? They’re at your every turn… Many of the best ideas come from simply being an active participant in your community. Join a variety of organizations that offer different perspectives on the micro-world around you. In the past, I’ve been a mentor for a student who lived in a neighborhood very different from [...]
First Jobs: Continuing Coverage
A newsroom discussion about continuing coverage the other day made me realize – that’s definitely something I didn’t learn in college. The ability to tell a story well, over a series of reports, as it develops, is a valuable and marketable skill. Tonight, I wrote updates on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the mass shooting [...]
Internships: A Journalist’s Motivation
1. “I plan to one day be a reporter/anchor at a news station.” 2. “I want to be one of the leading news reporters in the U.S., like the late Peter Jennings.” 3.“I have dreams of becoming an anchor for Dateline or 20/20.” 4. “I want to get the news out there in a way that [...]
