Working with The Team
This semester, I have the pleasure of working with Katie Lyons as my producing teammate and with Sarah Sax at the helm as our Executive Producer. So far, I am thrilled with these ladies and the work they bring to the table. We have already become close friends and I know it is going to be a rewarding experience.
For the past two weeks, I have worked as Lead Producer. I have created, organized and formatted the rundown, written stories, and worked with our multimedia journalists and reporters to ensure that we have a show. Sarah has guided me through, watching out when I miss a step and relieving some of the burden as I learn the ropes.
Katie has worked as the CNN/Video/Graphics teammate and has had plenty on her plate. She has ordered video, monitored and reviewed the work of the MJs and created graphics, all while answering everyone’s questions. It has been hard, but Katie has handled the stress well.
What’s working for our team is our energy and positivity. We have a good time together, which creates a really nice working environment. We are good about reminding each other to perform certain tasks and aren’t afraid to hand out responsibilities. On the receiving end, we take criticism and demands with grace.
What we still need to work on is our time management and communication. An hour before our newscast today, half of our stories still had not been written and we were missing even more video. When it comes time to pound out stories, we need to be more demanding and make sure our MJs and reporters are working efficiently and diligently as opposed to taking their time.
We also need to turn up the intensity a bit throughout the day so we are not stuck scrambling in the late afternoon. If we see stories still need to be written, we need to write them ourselves or have a plan for who will be able to write them.
Furthermore, it is vital that we improve our organization. We should better keep track of what we have covered and what we still need to cover so we are certain nothing falls through the cracks. We should not be allowing phoners to get lost or multiple MJs to be sent to the same story. This goes hand in hand with communication.
Nevertheless, the last few weeks have been exhilarating. I am excited to see what type of show our team can create by the end of the semester, and I can’t wait to get another crack at it next week!
