Overcoming Obstacles
My three goals for midterms were to really focus on time management, motivate the MJs, and to form a better path of communication with my fellow producers.
As the Web and Graphics Producer, I feel that I have really overcome the obstacle of time in the newsroom. Instead of waiting to arrive in studio and look over the ATVN website, I start preparing changes that must be made to the website before arriving in the morning and multi-tasking during the morning meeting to organize the importance of each story by finding out which ones will be made into packages.
After the morning meeting, I use my web rundown to organize the stories in the order they need to be completed by our team of web journalists. The stories at the top are the ones that need to be started immediately after the morning meeting and breaking news is always put in at the very top.
By organizing my work in this way, I can immediately assign web journalists coming in to begin work on a new story, saving time and energy.
Another way I manage my time is by dropping the section of the budget involving a specific story, along with the corresponding wire, into the story portion of each line in the rundown. This way, I won’t have to look up the wire repeatedly as new web journalists come in to finish work on a story another person left off on.
By briefly explaining the story, and referring them to the wire already in the rundown, the writer has a better understanding of the story and what is expected of them while writing for the web.
I feel as though another midterm goal I have accomplished is keeping the MJs motivated and excited to work in the newsroom.
I have gotten close with the MJs, and when new people come in to make up their shift from another day, I make sure to get their name and introduce myself so that they don’t feel so out of place.
When the MJs know what a great job they are doing and how important they are to our newscast, they try to produce their very best work.
One thing I've learned as a producer is that regardless of how much work you have to do, or how pressed you are on time, there is always a moment to check in with your MJs, graphics artists, and web journalists to see how they are.
Not only will they feel more motivated to work hard knowing that I care about them, but I can always get a good read them to see what kind of assignments they will do a better job on that day.
