This year, I served as co-executive producer of my school's broadcast journalism program, Tower Broadcast News (TBN). For the first time in our school's history, a course solely dedicated to broadcast journalism was offered to students at the start of the 2022-2023 school year. I was a leader and mentor to the younger students in this class as they learned the fundamentals of broadcast. Prior to the creation of this course, all of the stories were produced and edited between a TBN staff consisting of only three people (including myself). It was so exciting to have a team truly interested about broadcast and I learned the importance of patience as I helped guide them through the production process. I produced and anchored five of our six broadcast episodes this school year. Through promotion on social media, I have helped our YouTube channel gain 150 new subscribers since the start of the year.
My goal this year was to have more students contribute to TBN episodes through this new course. I encouraged the staff to work alongside me to produce stories and created a Google Form for each episode where they could indicate their interest. This new course allowed us to dedicate a class period to film the anchoring portion of the show where everyone on staff had a role. With each TBN episode, the staff became increasingly comfortable operating the cameras, teleprompters, and sound board. I enjoyed watching the growth of the broadcast journalism students over the course of the year and preparing them to continue the legacy of TBN after I graduate.
As executive producer, it is one of my responsibilities to review scripts and offer feedback/guidance to my peers. One example of this was a story covering a school musical performance. I provided my classmate with a time limit of roughly 2:30. My edits primarily focused on reducing wordiness in order to shorten the length of the segment. In my comment, I explained helpful strategies and tips for the script writing process.
One of the most common mistakes that I saw in some of our segments was the lack of certain equipment and use of the rule-of-thirds. This propelled me to create a document including helpful tips for camera/microphone set up during interviews. I shared this information with the members of the staff so that they could reference it before conducting interviews.
In addition to broadcast journalism, I have also really enjoyed using Adobe Express to present my work because I think this medium offers a more engaging read through interactive elements. It allows me to incorporate graphics, photos, link buttons, and videos.
Our school recently hired Local Live, a video production service that broadcasts all of our varsity basketball games. When my advisor informed me that equipment was purchased to commentate the games, I was ecstatic. While we only had a few more games left in the season, I jumped onto the opportunity and shared the news with our print and broadcast staff.
Based on who was interested, I scheduled auditions in pairs after school and provided the candidates with team rosters ahead of time. I selected a clip from a previous varsity basketball game which I showed at each of the auditions, allowing everyone to try both color and play-by-play commentating. In consultation with my journalism advisor and the athletics operations manager, I selected four commentators and two swing commentators. I have also promoted our coverage on social media in order to increase viewership. I helped with keeping track of statistics during one of the games, which the commentators incorporated into their coverage. Being aware of this information provided them with useful discussion points over the course of the game. Statistics also give viewers a more dynamic understanding of the standout players. Looking ahead, I hope that we will be able to expand the sports commentating program at our school. Perhaps, we can eventually broadcast other sports in the future.
I will be attending Northwestern University in the fall, and I am looking forward to continuing my passion for journalism as a Communication Studies major in the School of Communications.