I Thought We Were Supposed to Fix That...

It's funny because I was going to start off my blog talking about the little things that seem to go unnoticed when we are doing our jobs in the newsroom. However, I came to realize that they are, in fact, not little things. They are BIG things. Things we, for one reason or another, missed or forgot to fix in the process of finalizing our rundown.  When these things don't appear in our newscast it's extremely noticeable. Our newscast is incomplete, which is a problem because we want our newscast to be professional and reliable.

As the video teammate, one of the most important jobs is to make sure all CGs make it into INews. It's hard to watch your newscast and realize that the CGs that are appearing on the screen are incorrect or out of order.  It's even harder to see that they're not even there at all.  So much work goes into a story, and it's a huge bummer for a multimedia journalist, reporter or anchor to see that a story they worked on wasn't correctly presented to the viewers. It's our job to make sure these things get put in, and when they do, it's a great feeling.

As the web/graphics teammate, full screens can be a challenge.  You may create a full screen thinking that it will turn out perfectly and will be clear and easy to understand.  However, it's important to make sure that we really pay attention to how much text is going into a single graphic. In this case, bigger is better, and we would hate for our viewers to have to squint while reading a full screen or ignore it completely because they can't decipher what it says.

These are just a couple things that we need to keep in mind to ensure that our newscast is professional and complete. While they may seem insignificant and oftentimes get overlooked, they're actually big mistakes that we need to pay attention to at all times.