It's Not a Competition
Flashback to 2013. I remember my first year working at ATVN as an MJ. During this time, all the USC news outlets were separate… and I don't just mean we were in different rooms… we were all rivals. I remember my producers would get angry if another USC news outlet like Neon Tommy broke a story before we did. I felt like when we were in the old media center everything was a competition and ATVN always wanted to be the news outlet that produced the latest breaking news.
However, times have changed. The convergence of USC Annenberg media platforms has made us better at producing news.
Since we started working in the new Annenberg Media Center, we have been acting like a team. The media center has ATVN, ARN and Neon Tommy all next to each other. Around the room you are able to be in constant communication with students working on the same story for a different news outlet.
As an ATVN producer you have to know what is going on at all times and since ARN and ATVN cover the same stories, it is common for us to share media and interviews when our reporters aren't able to go to an event. By communicating with other outlets we are able to learn what information they found and see video they shot. This makes us all work together as a team and produce better, more informed content.
Since the convergence of ATVN, ARN, and Neon Tommy we have gained more social media followers, been able to produce more quality content, and branched out to make new videos for the web. Even though students are working for a different USC news outlet, at the end of the day we are all working together and helping each other to deliver accurate news fast.