JRN 200: Job + You = Job Shadows

Here's the latest job shadow reports I've received; they will each be posted as I receive 'em.  Take a look and see what you can learn from everyone's visits. There's a lot of good stuff here to help you decide what you want to do with your lives; what you need to be doing to get there; and what to expect when you do get there.

Please give each one of these a quick read, will you?

***** 

I decided to shadow the news anchor Chivon Kloepfer of WLNS TV 6 News on July 16, 2014.

I greeted Chivon at 9 a.m. that morning and she gave me a tour of the WLNS News Station in Lansing, Mich.

Chivon showed me the meeting room, the production rooms, the office where all the new anchors, weather team, directors, producers, and interns edit and put their stories together, the make-up room, and the studio where the news is recorded live.

At 10 a.m. I was allowed to sit in a reporter’s meeting where they discuss with the director what stories they will cover at what time, the stories they need to gather more information about, and they pitch ideas to one another to make sure they have relevant and news worthy topics.

The meeting was really laid back and it showed how the reporters really work together.

The director was also very vocal in making sure the stories were good for the show. The director said, “People only hear a tenth of what you say so make sure you get your point across.”

Chivon and I then returned to big office where the reporters sit and edit stories, get ready for their show, prepare packages to air during the news, and so much more.

During the 11:00 hour, Chivon edits her stories for the noon show. She types up what she will say and she reads all the stories that she cover at noon.

Chivon’s producer returns from a separate meeting and puts the rest of the noon show together.

At 11:55 a.m. Chivon and I go into the news room so she can report the news live on WLNS TV 6.

I was able to watch the entire production in a seat right next to the cameras that were filming.

I could tell that Chivon had been doing this for a while.

The show was approximately 30 minutes and then it was done.

I really enjoyed my time there and it gave me a whole new appreciation for what reporters have to do on a day-to-day basis.

This was a great experience.

JRN 200: Homework For The Week Of 8/11

Just a reminder: EVERYTHING that's left to do is due as soon as 9 a.m. Tuesday and no later than 9 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 14. That's out-of-class stories, rewrites, extra credit projects, multimedias, tweets, blogs, job shadow reports, whatever. No deadline exceptions, period. What I find in my email when I come in will be all I'll accept. Please view earlier assignment blogs for precise assignments/parameters/due dates.

Any questions? Holler back now. And good luck, everyone.

JRN 200: Even More Job Shadows!

Here's the latest job shadow reports I've received; they will each be posted as I receive 'em.  Take a look and see what you can learn from everyone's visits. There's a lot of good stuff here to help you decide what you want to do with your lives; what you need to be doing to get there; and what to expect when you do get there.

Please give each one of these a quick read, will you?

***** 

I decided to shadow Marlee Delany of HOMTV 21 on August 1, 2014. Marlee is currently a Michigan State University student majoring in Broadcast Journalism.

Marlee and I arrived on set early in the morning where she was greeted with her stories for the day. She immediately began prepping for her segment that was supposed to air the next day.

I helped Marlee do some research for her stories and helped her go through some of the fact checking process that HOMTV makes her follow. We then sat in a production meeting for the next couples hours and listened to her boss communicate how he wanted the show to run.

Marlee was prepping for an upcoming election story so it was very important to her that she did not show any bias towards any of the candidates in her features. Some of her day-to-day responsibilities include writing a blog for the station, assisting her peers with research and fact checking, along with filling in on certain jobs that need extra help.

We talked a lot about how Marlee’s journalistic background has helped her create and maintain the blog for her station. She also noted that her bosses have done a great job exposing her to how a real news station works, but on a scaled back level. Marlee mentioned that this has been a perfect opportunity for her to get her feet wet in live television.

Marlee told me that journalism is all about honesty and integrity. She said that without those two things, no one would ever believe anything that you are saying. She also said that some of the best reporters out there are the people that the world can trust. I thought this was very true because I know I would be fast to discredit someone who I thought isn’t honest.

I could tell just from shadowing her for a day that she is an expert at what she does and that she has a tremendous future ahead of her. She is involved in so many projects and internships and she is definitely headed in the right direction. I was honored to follow Marlee around for the day!

JRN 200: Your Thursday 8/7 Homework

We're in the home stretch! The last day of class will be one week from today. Everything to be assigned this semester has been assigned, and your graded third out-of-class stories should be to you this afternoon.

Remaining deadlines are as follows:

On Tuesday, your AP Style quiz will be due no later than 9 a.m. to omars@msu.edu.

On Wednesday, finish up everything else we have left! Because ...

... on Thursday, your third out-of-class story rewrite and your third multimedia/social media/blog package and your optional fourth out-of-class story will be due no later than 9 a.m. to omars@msu.edu.


Also on Thursday, all extra credit -- such as mini-stories, additional out-of-class stories and/or additional multimedia/social media/blog work, or any/all make-up work, if any, as previously agreed to by me -- will be due no later than 9 a.m. to omars@msu.edu.

Plus, don't forget to do your SIRS class surveys. A link can be found right here. Since this was the first time we taught this class online, we really need feedback, whether good, bad or meh.

And that will be it.

One more thing: I will be out of the office this Friday, so if there's anything you need from me before Monday, grab me before 6 p.m. today.

One last time: have a good weekend, everyone.

OOC #3: We Have Problems

So, Thursday was the deadline for the third out-of-class story, and barely half the class submitted the story. 

That's a huge problem. Every out-of-class assignment is worth about 13 percent of your final grade, meaning that if you do only two out of three (or four, if you also skip the optional fourth one) but get 4.0s on every other assignment, your final grade for the semester can be no better than a 3.0.

Since the start of class, I've tried to emphasize the importance of turning in all your assignments, and not missing any. This is from a June 30 blog post:

*****

The worst thing we can do in journalism -- even worse than getting a fatal -- is to blow off an assignment. A newspaper can't go to print with blank spots in the pages, and a 30-minute newscast can't to to air without content that fills up all 30 minutes. That means in the media business, you can never miss a deadline.
And yes, to reinforce good habits and deter bad ones, assignments that are not done will have a much more severe impact on your final grade than fatals will, and if I have to use a tie-breaker in determining your final grade, the first categories I will use will be whether you blew off any assignments, since that tells me how seriously you are taking this class.
I express that value in the grading scale. Everything we do in here translates to a 1,000-point scale to which your grade is converted to a smaller subset of points that add up toward that. So when we get a 4.0 you get 100 percent of points, a 3.9 gets us 99 points, a 3.8 gets 98, and so forth.
 
And under that scale, a fact fatal that gets us a 1.0 still gets us 70 points. If we screw up an assignment so bad that we get a 0.1, that's still 61 points.
 
But a 0.0 is zero points. At a 0.1, we're closer to a 4.0 than a 0.0.
 
Again, that's to emphasize that missing your deadline is simply not an option in the media biz. We always need to hit our deadlines. Every single time.
 
Beyond that, none of us can afford to miss a single assignment because we need the practice! You'll soon be working on out-of-class stories (which are our biggest projects that most impact your final grade), and the best way to make sure you're writing it in a proper journalistic manner is to have opportunities with these practice stories to try our best, review our work, keep applying good habits and learn how to fix our bad ones.
 
We can't do that if we don't do that.

 Again, the more you tell me you are unreliable as a journalist by skipping assignments and not showing up without a valid excuse, the more I will recognize that in your final grade. I can work with you if you give me an assignment that's not up to snuff -- and so can an editor in a real-world setting -- but I can't work with nothing, and I can't work with you if you're not here. Neither can your future bosses.

*****

At this point, for some of you we've missed so much work that I fear we're past the point of no return. If you've missed a bunch of work this summer, don't be surprised by the grade you'll get. I'm afraid we have people trending toward flunking this class: a very rare thing in my six years of teaching JRN 200.

But I can't grade what you never turn in.

If you want to talk about where you're at and what (little) we can do with the (little) time that's left, then let's talk. I'm out of the office Friday but I'll be in all of next week. Email is omars@msu.edu, phone is 517-432-3009, office is 435 E. Grand River Ave..

OOC #3: Fatal Problems

This is troubling; at this point of the semester, we should be seeing fatals fade away. Instead, on an assignment which is critical to your final grade, we had a spate of fatals.

In one quote, we said something was pervious when we meant to say previous. This is both a quote with a misspelling and a misspelling that creates a change in meaning, both of which are grounds for a fatal.

In another instance, when we meant to say "... who asked you?" came flying toward her, we extended the quote marks like this: "... who asked you came flying toward her." Adding the non-quote segment inside of quote marks creates a misquote, which is a fatal. 

Also, we spelled one person's last name alternately as Bivens and Biven's. A last name has only one spelling; so having two spellings is a fatal.

In one quote, we misspelled "me" as "em." In another, "home" became "hoe." Those are misspellings that change the meanings of quotes, and thus they are fatals.

The shame of it is, these were all really nicely-written stories. For each person, I'd argue it was close to their best work of the semester, if not THE best.

But in journalism, if we don't get things right, it doesn't matter. Any mistakes make what we have of less use to readers. It makes our work less trustworthy. It erodes our credibility.

We've gone through proofreading strategies all summer, but they won't work if we don't religiously adhere to 'em.

JRN 200: More Job Shadows

Here's the latest job shadow reports I've received; they will each be posted as I receive 'em.  Take a look and see what you can learn from everyone's visits. There's a lot of good stuff here to help you decide what you want to do with your lives; what you need to be doing to get there; and what to expect when you do get there.

Please give each one of these a quick read, will you?

***** 

At Michigan State I am majoring in Journalism and would like to specialize in Sports Broadcasting. It has always been a dream of mine to report on sports, getting the inside scoop onto what is going on in the world of sports, travelling to various sports stadiums, and talking to players. It almost seems too good of a job to be getting paid for it.

I  interviewed Mike Moore, a sports reporter for C & G Newspapers. C & G Newspapers are a collection of newspapers that cover the metro Detroit area.  They do online media as well as print media.

            Moore specializes in high school hockey and girls basketball in the winter. During the summer he does whatever C & G needs him to cover. Over the summer he has been doing a lot of baseball, golf, and a bit of football news.

            Without any high school teams on their summer break, things can be a bit slow for the sports reporters.

He has a bit of freedom to choose what he wants to cover, for example, he has done power rankings for high school hockey teams around his coverage area.

            Most of his work days consist of going to various games around the area and  reporting on what occurs in them.

            Since this is a newspaper that covers local area events, he will also point out some of the things going on around the community to help inform those who want to get involved in local sports activities; like local soccer team tryouts or a local tennis tournament.

            C & G Newspapers allow the local community to email them about ideas for stories and Moore will sometimes do stories on what the local community asks them to cover.

            Moore says that in sports reporting your hours have to be really flexible. This isn’t a job that you can just work a normal 9-5.

            With most high school games being after school, the reporting day may not even begin till just before the school day ends.

            With the time before the game he will think about how he wants to write the game, thinking about pregame interviews and what story angles he can take. Sometimes he will even begin to think about this the night before if he knows the story in advance.

            Planning ahead can save you a lot of headaches later on in the day, since you won’t be scrambling to figure things out when you get there.

            It’s a job that requires a lot of prep work, like knowing what the teams have been doing up until the point that you are covering them, therefore you can get a better understanding of what the magnitude of the game may end up being.

            It will also help you think of better interview questions for those you are considering interviewing. In general it will make you look like a more knowledgeable reporter and will make others think highly of you.

            During a game he will sometimes give out twitter updates on the game he is reporting on. He will also be taking notes and begin writing his full story, bit by bit as the game goes on.

            Once the game is over he will finish writing the parts about the game that he would like to include in his piece while he waits for players and coaches to get ready to be interviewed.

            He will then conduct postgame interviews and then finish up his piece. When starting out, you will need to send your piece to your sports editor so that they can get it prepped for being published, but the more experienced you are the more leeway you get into what stories can be published outright and what has to be sent to the editor.      

            After talking to Moore it seems like the job is less exciting than it seems at times, with a lot of hours to work, and lots of time spent thinking about your job. If I ever get to that position that I hope to make it to, it is going to be after a lot of long hours and reporting on stories that many people will never see. But you’ve got to start somewhere, right? 

*****