Countdown for Showtime Begins NOW!

Starting my day off at 5:45am watching the morning news and finishing up my packages and story lists I was actually excited for my first official day as the graphics and web producer. We had so many great news stories to cover and all three days before us had put on fantastic shows.

The morning meeting was fast, effective, and we had so many stories we wanted to cover that we had to CHOOSE which ones were the best to put in our newscast. However, about halfway through the morning meeting my enthusiasm for the day dwindled when we found out how many people were not going to be able to make it to their shifts. We had to regroup and cross off great news stories due to the fact that we would be unable to cover them. Let’s just say around 9:30am I was beginning to panic a bit.

One of the most challenging parts of my job on Thursday is that we have the producing class from 9-12:20pm. Balancing the web, graphics, and being an active participant in class is not an easy task by any means. Luckily I can multitask or I don’t think I would have been able to handle all three at once!

By this second week of trying my hand at the web/graphics producer I finally figured out a system that worked for me, my graphics team members, art director, and web supervisors. I felt confident as I finished my web portion of the day.

As I switched over from web to graphics I began to notice a change of atmosphere in the newsroom. The calm and excited atmosphere from the morning was getting more and more intense as stories were being crossed off because we just didn’t have the man power to cover them. I began to worry if we would be able to pull it off.

At 12:30pm I began going through the rundown and making as many OTSs as I could for when my first graphics member got in. I felt really good about the way I set up my system for the day and delegated my graphics members and worked with them. I really liked being in charge and a leader and when people asked me questions I was not only pleasantly surprised with how much I knew but proud of my knowledge and understanding of the newsroom.  Because of the hard work of my graphics team members and Art Director Sarah, by 4pm we were basically done!

I began writing some copy stories to help out Christen and by 4:30 I felt as though we were really on top of it all. Then, all of a sudden, things were floated, pieces of stories we wanted we weren’t getting, tons of stories were changed, and new OTSs needed to be created.

My amazing Art Director Sarah and I began cranking out graphics left and right and I even began making them myself to make sure we had the new ones in on time. Everyone was running around trying to finish everything up and I honestly didn’t know if all of our missing people were going to affect our show. But boy was I wrong!

Christen is a producing genius who never buckles under pressure and always seems to know what to do in any situation. She was solving problems left and right and finished what I consider a solid newscast.

Olivia, who had the biggest challenge with missing four MJs, was entirely on top of her video responsibilities and when I asked if I could help her in any way she knew exactly what needed to be done, what was finished, and how I could help. Having Olivia be on top of her job made the last 30 minutes before show so much less stressful than it could have been.

While our show was not perfect I could not have been prouder watching our first live show. Our entire team Thursday both in the newsroom and studio worked so hard and it made me so proud to be a part of it. Lauren and Emily our EP and EP shadow were so great about making sure we felt confident in ourselves and our newscast and I was so thankful to have their support.

I am so excited for next week and even more excited to learn all about the second position I will have as a producer for week two of the live shows. And don’t worry; I’ll be back next week to talk about how that goes!