Confessions of an Ex-Reporter
I'm not going to lie... I miss reporting. I was out in the field for almost two years, running around alone as a one-man band reporter.
I only had to worry about my own package; never had to witness the chaos in the control room; easily got away with not knowing what was happening in the news aside from my story; and sometimes got through my entire 10-hour reporting shift without speaking to more than six people at ATVN:
-my producer during the morning meeting
-the Executive Producer for script approval
-Stacy for a script overhaul and final script approval
-John for various technical difficulties
-Tom for audio and transfer help at 6:05 p.m.
-and Cliff Liu, who fed my parking meter at various points throughout the afternoon.
Adjusting to my new role as a producer has been challenging. For the first time since my days at the assignment desk, I have to work as part of a team - and every three weeks, I'm the one in charge of that team. I don't just mean my team of three producers and an EP, but a team of more than 40 people who each have different schedules and concerns to work around - and varying degrees of commitment to, and familiarity with, television news.
I kicked off the semester with a feeling of panic, worried that my newscast, my JOUR 403 grade and my producer reel would be entirely dependent on factors that are out of my control. To a certain extent, this is true - I simply cannot do anything when an MJ comes back with footage that has no audio, or when my anchor calls to say he locked his keys inside his car and won't make it to the newsroom in time to put together a package - but I realized quickly that I had to look at things differently. It's our newscast, not mine.
Putting together a newscast is truly a team effort. I prided myself on being able to do everything - pitch, write, interview, shoot and edit - as a reporter, but I cannot, and should not, be doing everything as a producer. I learned that the hard way during run-through week, when I crafted what I thought was a perfect show during my rundown meeting... but failed to communicate the changes I made and the stories I rearranged to my video producer and graphics producer. As a result, they weren't able to assign MJs to write scripts and edit footage, and tasks our news team should have had plenty of time to finish got pushed dangerously close to airtime.
I panicked, and soon enough my producers started panicking, my MJs started panicking, my anchors starting panicking, my studio crew started panicking, my assignment editors started looking scared and stopped offering to help... and the newscast promptly fell apart in the studio. Happy birthday to me.
Fortunately, Team Thursday had a smoother workflow this week. I forced myself to maintain my composure and tried my best to calmly explain to every single person what I needed them to do; I let myself breathe during the rundown meeting and didn't forget to update the other producers; I had a plan B (no pun intended) for every story and didn't snap at MJs who came back without key interviews; I even smiled at several of my reporters.
It was a different story after I got to the studio and discovered all our packages, preshows and superteases were still offline... but I'm sure everybody I yelled at will forgive me because the newscast looked phenomenal.
Congratulations on a successful first show, Team Thursday.
