Off to a Rough Start

Continuing with my journal entries with my internship at News 10 Now in Syracuse, here is the entry about my first full day at interning....

In an entry dated 2-3-10:

Off to a Rough Start

Initially, I got to the station and was excited to see if I would be going out with a reporter, and if so, what we would be covering. The executive producer, Amanda, introduced me to Kat, the reporter I would be going out with every Wednesday night. The next hour-and-a-half was devoted to some tutorials.

Amanda showed me ENPS, which was set up pretty differently from the way we use it at Newhouse. Their ENPS uses video that's already loaded into teh system, so reporters and producers can just drag B-roll (video footage) and SOT's (Sound On Tape, or soundbites) right into the written version of the story. It's also shared between News 10 Now in Syracuse, Albany, and Binghamton. Therefore, there's an instant messaging system to use. Their ENPS also has CG's (Character Generators, or graphics to explain locations and interviewees' names and titles) and graphics already uploaded.

After the ENPS overview, Kat showed me the video editing system they use: Vortex. It was different from Avid (the one I use at school), but seemed easy enough once I got the hang of it.

At around 6pm, Kat and I left the station for Nottingham High School to report on a protest meeting about hydrofracking, but it turned out we had the wrong date for the meeting.

So instead we met up with Matt White, a News 10 cameraman to cover a meeting with the Congressional Republican candidates for the 25th District. Once we got there, we were informed that this was a meeting for people running for office during which they would learn the process of running.

Unfortunately, it was a small meeting, so none of the candidates showed up. A representative of one of the candidates came, and another "candidate" was there. But we later learned, he was not really an active participant in running for the Congressional seat.

Kat tried to get a SOT (soundbite) from the group's president, but when we got back to the station and explained the situation to Amanda, it was clear that our story was a bust. Amanda scrapped it upon learned that our "story" wasn't much of a story at all.

Kat felt horrible about this happening on my first day, but I still thought it was a good experience. In news, things often fall apart or are different from what they're expected to be.

I spent the rest of the evening playing around with Vortex and hoping Friday would be better.

Stay tuned for more on my News 10 Now adventures!