Helping Each Other Leads To Success

"It's a requirement," they said. "It will be fun," they said. "It will look great on your resume," they said.

Well, no one ever said that being a producer for ATVN will help you in any career field that you go into and is one of the most valuable learning experiences at Annenberg. I had academic advisors, professors, and colleagues all tell me about the producing class and whether I should take it or not but none of them gave the true picture of what it is like.

I have done the round robin and gone through all of the positions as the lead producer, the video teammate and the graphics teammate. At this point, I know the multimedia journalists by name and have started to build relationships with them. During my producing shift in any position I'm in, I'm not just learning how to be a producer and create my own newscast. I'm learning how to work with multiple people, work under deadline, communicate with people simultaneously, and multitask all while trying not to stress out about everything that needs to get done. 

Since doing the full circle of all of the positions, I have learned that in order for anything to work throughout the day, I need to be in constant communication with my producing teammates. If we don't talk about something that was added to the rundown or where a reporter is at in the day, then that's when things start to fall apart. But if things do start to fall apart, I know my teammates are there to help pick up my slack and get the newscast on the air by 6 pm. Copy editing is next on the list of importance right underneath communicating with each other. If the words don't make sense coming out of the anchor's mouth, then all of the work was done for nothing. My teammates and I are pretty good about keeping communication with each other except for this past week's broadcast for some reason, but copy editing is something we all agree we have to work on.

After going through all of the positions, I can definitely say I am meant to be a reporter and not a producer in the booth. But it doesn't even matter. I will take the skills I am learning from this experience as a producer and take them into any field. I will need to know how to multitask, communicate, work with others, and under deadline in any career field I go into. I have had these experiences before, but being a producer intensifies the experience and challenges me 20% more than any other situation I've been in before.