Job Shadows: What You Saw, Part 2

Here's a sampling of some of the various job shadows done by you all. 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.

We will add more job shadow reports to the blog as they are completed. Please give each one of these a quick read, will you?

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I spent my day job shadowing reporter/anchor/multimedia journalist, Susan El Khoury, from WILX 10 in Lansing.

Susan requested that I come in later in the day so that she would have the time to talk to me more and give me a better outlook on the job. When I arrived in the afternoon she went over what the morning meeting was like and showed me around the office. I noticed that everyone was concentrating very hard and working quickly in order to get their news stories ready for the 6:00 broadcast. We then went over to her desk where she showed me the story she was working on about Lansing schools shortening their summer vacations. She explained to me how she went out that day to record interviews and shoot footage for the story. She also showed me the video of her broadcast of the story that was ready for the nights show.

Then when it was time we went into the newsroom where the anchors were conducting the 6:00 news. It was really interesting to see it behind the scenes and got me excited for the future. She told me that she anchors the news on the weekend mornings and she enjoys that part of her job but likes reporting and finding her own stories better. She explained how she wasn’t always set on being a journalist and how she received her master’s degree before finding a job in the field. She told me that it was easy for her to get this job but it isn’t always like that.

She also gave me tips on how to find stories, like having regular sources who call you to let you know when something interesting is going on, and staying up to date on police department’s Facebook pages. I thought this was helpful and will definitely think about that when finding my next story.

Throughout my time there I saw how hard it would be to be a reporter, but I really like fast paced jobs and think that I may enjoy being a reporter in the future. However the news she reported on is not something I am interested in, I would much rather write for a magazine like Cosmo on fashion and beauty than on local news. My favorite part was seeing behind the scenes with the on air anchors, which is definitely something I can see myself doing as a possible career.