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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On Thursday, February 9th, 2017 I was able to job
shadow Fred Heumann, sports director, and anchor, at WLNS, the CBS channel of
news for Lansing and Jackson Michigan.
I initially met Heumann when he came and spoke to my sports
journalism class in the fall of 2016. Heumann has had a lot of experience in
the field of journalism, working for WILX-TV in Jackson, WJR T TV in Flint, and
then in Detroit where he spent 17 years reporting and anchoring. Heumann also
worked in the radio business where he worked at Midwest Powerhouse WJR Radio in
Detroit.
When I first arrived at the studio, Heumamm showed me how he
begins his day. This consists of watching multiple sports channels, checking
his email, and editing clips for segments he may use for that show. After
spending about an hour editing clips and watching him create captions and
content for the six o’clock news, Heumamm let me go out in to the field with sports
reporter Alex Sims, who was headed straight to the Breslin Center.
I was lucky enough to come on a Thursday, the day that Sims goes
to interview the basketball team and Coach Izzo. We were able to watch the team
practice, and then we went down on the court to talk to Coach Izzo. After
completing the questions with some of the players, we raced back to the car to
get back to the studio on time to enter and edit the content for the 6 o’clock
program.
Sims gave the footage to Heumamm and we spent the final minutes
before Heumamm went on air editing and compiling the clips we believed were the
most crucial to the evening news. Heumamm stayed in his office up until the
sports section of the show, and allowed me to sit in on the broadcast from the
side and watch the live show.
When I asked Heumamm his keys to success, especially things he
wished he knew in college, he enlightened me with many of his strategies that
have helped his career. First, Heumamm told me to always over prepare. For
example, Heumamm spends his time before the show stacking his sportscast with
material that could possibly air on the news. When doing this, he always over
stacks his show, incase something is unable to be aired or if we were unable to
get back from our interview with Izzo on time. This parallels his strive
towards always being over prepared, and this mindset has been a key component
to his success in his journalistic career. In addition, he stressed the fact
that it’s important to go outside of your comfort zone. For example, when going
in to the interview with Izzo it was important to ask the difficult questions,
especially after they had just lost a game with way too many turnovers, and
also to be aggressive and make sure to get the right shot and the right quotes
for such an important story.
I also noted some keys to Heumamm’s success from simply
observing him while working. Heumamm was extremely organized and on top of
things. He was always responding to phone calls and messages, and had certain
folders and sections where all of his work belonged. Heumamm was also very informed
on everything going on, whether it was local sports, or national sports news.
Overall, I learned that the field is very fast-pace, and it takes
confidence, accuracy, and organization
to be successful. The experience was amazing and I am very excited for the
future of my career as a journalist.
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I
arrived to the WROC-TV News 8 (CBS) station at 4 p.m. and met with Prescott
Rossi, sports reporter and anchor. He took me on the scenic route as we went to
his work space, passing by some control rooms and other offices. In his office
was Thad Brown, head sports anchor, preparing for his segment on the 4 p.m. show.
In his office were lots of films from Buffalo Bills games for a project he was
doing to cover the playoff drought, along with two small T.V.s to stay updated
on news and also pull highlights from with a special program.
The top story of the day was the
record-high wind storm day – 82mph peak – but for sports it was the beginning
of NFL free agency announcements and the Bills had re-signed Tyrod Taylor as
well as making other moves.
Work got going right away, on
various things at once. Rossi was working on preparing the 5 p.m. edition with
updated news, updated web stories, checked for updates on Twitter, and watched
the Barcelona/Paris UEFA tournament round where Barcelona historically came
back after being down 4-0.
Rossi is the number-two sports
anchor so he’s on the set Fridays and Saturdays, today he was just working on
web stories, production, and shooting highlights. His typical hours are 3p.m.
to 11 p.m., Tuesday – Saturday. Because of the wind storm, high school playoff
games he was going to shoot were cancelled so he re-planned to cover the Rochester
Americans minor league hockey game later, where I tagged along. Because there’s
no sports producer, photographer, etc. at the local news station level, the
reporters do all ends of the work themselves.
When preparing the 5 p.m. show, one
of the things he mentioned was how it’s the company who owns the station, not
the network affiliation, who has more influence on the programming. Because of
this, they’re able to use clips from networks in other cities, like Syracuse,
for parts of their broadcast, regardless of if it’s a CBS branch. This was the
case for their coverage of the ACC tournament. On a more grand scale, Brown
showed me how their ownership company has a partnership with CNN to use any of
their clips and vice versa.
Although my shadow was with Rossi,
Brown was in the office for most of the time too and was doing a lot to prepare
his segments, weaving the highlights together and preparing a script. He,
Rossi, and the rest of the network worked on a platform which allowed the shows
to be made, divided by the segments. It was like a Google Doc for setting up
the news. The two worked together in determining what to put in, and when some
clips or parts didn’t work, they’d have to adjust. There was a lot of time used
waiting for their computers to bring data over from other areas so Brown was in
a crunch for 6 p.m. show, getting everything done minutes before he had to go
on. This was also due to the high volume of sports news going on due to the NFL
and Bills free agency. Nevertheless, it all worked out, and he invited me to
the set to watch. He told me on the way there learning all ends of the
broadcasting process was key since it’s what you’ll need to know for when you
start out.
Shortly after that, I went with
Rossi to cover the Americans game where he was just shooting highlights for the
11 p.m. news show. Because there was only about 3 minutes for sports during the
broadcast, the hockey game would only get a small fraction of time, so if the
game was a blowout early on, he’d be able to leave early since he’d have the
material needed for the broadcast. However, this wasn’t the case. The game was
a snoozer up until the 3rd period when the Toronto Marlies, the
opponent, scored right away and they and the Americans went back-and-forth. The
Americans won 4-3 and we headed back to the station to prepare the clips.
Since most of the news occurred during
the day and there were no longer any evening events beside the hockey game, the
only preparation for the nighttime news show was the Americans game and making
any updates for the previous segments. The same show from earlier would
basically be used again but re-shot with the updates. Once Rossi got the hockey
game taken care of, it was about 10:30 p.m. and he’d be done at 11 p.m. From
there, he left and I did as well.
Although I desire to go into print
media, I’m glad I did a shadow in the broadcasting field to get exposure to
another side of the industry. Although I’m not big on being in front of the
camera, that only seems to part of job, where there’s a lot producing and video
shooting as well with the job. Certainly, being in front of the camera can be
worked on. This made it more appealing to me since there’s also a writing for
web stories involved, so there’s still an opportunity to write. I like to think
now I have more options of what I may want to do later now that I’ve been
exposed to sport broadcasting on a local level. I certainly learned a lot more
than I thought I would about the job and myself.
Rossi
can be contacted at prossi@wroctv.com or
via Twitter @PrescottRossi (probably best for an immediate response since his
DM’s are open)
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