What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger
The morning meeting is where stories are born. We all come together as a news team and have an open discussion about what elements we want, how we want to go after those elements and who would be best suited to carry through our plan.
From there, the stories go on and develop and hopefully by the time they’re ready to go on air, they’ve blossomed into something powerful. Sometimes though – things don’t go as planned. A great example came this week with a story I pitched on West Nile virus. Two people in LA County have died from the disease and there are higher incidences nationwide than any year since 2004. The news aspect was definitely there, and my teammates were interested so we decided to assign it to an anchor as a package.
But…from that point on things started to fall apart. Our assignment editors struggled setting up interviews and by the time our anchor, Nicole, arrived at noon to take the story we had nothing ready for her. Fate came into play when breaking news happened at 12:15 and Nicole had to rush to the scene of a crime. Despite the fact that it had potential to be a great story, things just didn’t materialize.
Other stories may start off rocky but come together beautifully by the end of the day. As a producer, you 
This week had its hurdles but I’ve really realized that the expression, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” applies perfectly to the newsroom. If anything, it’s going to become my personal producing mantra. As each week goes by, my goal is to take my mistakes and my weaknesses and turn them into my strengths.
