Innovation Nation

Another week down and many more lessons learned! We tried our first live shot on campus during the show this week, which has opened the door for many new ways we will be able to tell stories throughout the rest of the semester. The possibilities are endless! 

While part of our job in the news industry is to inform, another important part is to entertain. It’s important that we as producers push the boundaries of what is capable in our newscasts to keep viewers interested in what is being said. Although television is a visual medium, some stories don’t always have the most moving video to help tell the story. I hope throughout the remainder of the semester to experiment with graphics and having them help tell these important stories in a visual way. This might involve having a reporter present the story in front of the chromakey and project a Prezi presentation behind him or her to help explain the important details in a visually stimulating way. 

Since we have the privilege of living in beautiful, sunny Southern California, I would be excited to try doing a live forecast of the weather in front of Tommy Trojan on a warm day. I also would be interested in doing live interviews with students on campus before or during certain events, such as if students are waiting in line for a special guest at Bovard Auditorium or if students are preparing to perform an improv show on McCarthy Quad. Not only would opportunities like this push the boundaries of our technical capabilities on ATVN, it would allow us to push the boundaries of our reporters out in the field.  

In order to better involve our multimedia journalists in the live broadcast, I think it would be exciting to introduce a new segment that allows a student each week on his or her day-of-air to submit a mini-package or front a story that he or she chooses. Whether it be a package a student produced for a broadcast class at Annenberg that would be interesting to our audience, or a multimedia journalist wants to front a story at the monitor about a topical event during the show, I believe giving our MJs more influence and recognition would help inspire them to become more involved and put more effort into their reporting. 

While my last idea is anything but groundbreaking, I would be extremely interested in implementing and promoting a specific tip line or account that USC students could contact to let us know what is happening on campus. I feel it is important to begin more of a dialogue between us and our viewers about the stories we report on. Be it positive or negative information that is provided, I feel it would be very beneficial to hear more opinions about what different people view as newsworthy. From this information, if perhaps a story were to be uncovered that involved more investigation than just one specific day-of-air could allow, I would be very interested in introducing a new segment in following weeks for a reporter to have more time to continue investigating the story further.