Putting the Puzzle Together for Team Tuesday
When we first picked our positions for the first and second weeks, I thought I lucked out getting the web/graphics teammate. For some reason, it seemed to be the easiest one. In my very naive eyes, I thought you only really focused on the website and then threw in some graphics here and there throughout the rundown. Wow, was I wrong.
After our first live show today, I had the revelation that the web/graphics teammate, in some ways, has the hardest job in that they have to be just as involved with the broadcast as they do with the website. For this week, I came in with a plan of action. Once the morning meeting started, I started printing out various wires and press releases for the stories, so they would be ready to go when my writers came in. In doing this, I had to coordinate with Paige as to what stories would be good for the web and which would not be. As new information became available to us, I had to constantly update the stories, tweet out the news and post it to Facebook. Furthermore, I had to try and stay in contact with the reporters out in the field, so they could send us pictures or quotes to add to our stories. However, one main thing became apparent to me today: communication with your teammates is incredibly important for a successful newscast. Sometimes, no one would tell me a story was floated or killed and I had already spent the time researching it or writing it for the web. This could be both mine and the lead producer's fault in that we both should be in constant communication with one another to make sure we are on the same page.
When I switched over to graphics for the remainder of the day, I experienced even more crazy situations than I did on the web. Due to the Dorner chase and constant developing stories regarding that, graphics were always changing. Whether creating a map or giving the latest details, I could never be fully sure something was going to stay the same until it came time to go on-air. Today, we had numerous full screens that had various details, numbers or locations for the audience to see. Due to the chaos that is a television newsroom in its second week, there was a lot of "telephone" going on. He said I needed to write this, but she said the interviewee said this and so on. One person would say they wanted a graphic a certain way, while another person said it was wrong and to do it another way. I thought I heard someone say to do something, but I misheard. I guarantee everyone experienced a situation like this at some point today. In working with the graphics, we had to change multiple graphics, because stories were always changing. When there would be changes, I would not only have to update the graphic, but I would have to tweet out the new information and update the web at the same time. It's almost like you had to combine your web/graphics brain and your broadcast brain into one. Again, if there would have been more communication on both sides, fewer mistakes probably would have been made and fewer graphics would have needed to be fixed.
Overall, I learned two main things today:
1. The website and the broadcast are like puzzle pieces: they can be very different, but if they're not working together, they do not work well apart at all.
2. Without communication, there are going to be way more mistakes than there are successes.
In all actuality, nothing beats the feeling of watching your newscast at the end of a long day, just like the feeling of completing a puzzle.
