It All Starts The Night Before
Developing story ideas is a process that begins the night before. In our first two morning meetings our producing team struggled to communicate what we wanted to accomplish in our newscast, this was simply because each member did not take it upon themselves to do their homework and prepare appropriately. As a result, we heavily relied on our amazing executive producer to guide us as we put together our show.
In our morning meeting this week we had much better success, and this is naturally because we all were familiar with the concept of developing story ideas and formulating a show. Not only that, each individual producer adjusted their approach.
As for myself, I actually made it a priority of mine to prepare effectively the night before. This week I checked the CNS news budget multiple times on the evening prior to our show, and wrote one package idea while watching the final newscast of the day. Doing this made the morning flow so much smoother.
My mornings start at 6:00 a.m., watching the ABC newscast. While I'm observing the stories of the day, I finish putting together my story ideas. After I'm finished with my package ideas, I head to the newsroom for our meeting.
I made it a goal to be more vocal in the meeting this week because it's an area where I lacked in our first two. I was video producer, so it was important not only to myself, but to my team that I have some input, as I was responsible for managing the video and assigning multimedia journalists tasks. I found myself making more suggestions, pitching more stories, and actually having an input that held value. I can credit that to my preparation the night before.
As a producer I'm still looking forward to improving. I think there is so much more that I can learn. There are many dimensions that we haven't covered in some of our stories, so I am anxious to see how we to grow in our story developing process.
The most important thing is making sure our information is valuable to our audience. Keeping them interested is the most important thing.
