News Gathering

Developing A Story

Any good story begins with the concept or angle. Start with an overall topic and then narrow in on your main focus. The story should fall under the main 5 news values: Relevance, Human Interest, Proximity, Conflict & Controversy, or Timeliness. You should then plan what footage you need and who you want to interview. For example, If I were to do a story on a new roller coaster in town, I would start with making time to go out and get varied footage of the ride. Then, I would find the owner of the business, a frequent visitor of the attraction, and even someone who didn’t enjoy it as much to interview. I would write my script around their answers in order to have evidence surrounding my claims. I would make sure my script is unbiased and on track with the story at hand. With all of this, I should have a well written, newsworthy story.

Writing A Story

I use Google Docs to transcribe my interviews and write my script. We transcribe our interviews so that we can visually see what we need to write around. I like to make a key at the top to better organize my script for my advisor and peers to read. I find facts and feelings so that I can rewrite the facts as my voice over and let the interviewee voice their opinions. I make sure to keep it conversational and with an active voice to keep the audience engaged.

Ethics & Literacy

When writing, it's important to stay objective to give a fair view of the information at hand. You want to make sure your subject is comfortable with what you're putting out and that it's accurate. I only include in my story what I hear the person say themselves. I want to make sure to have quote-able evidence that I can support myself with. Protecting yourself, and your station, is very important to becoming a reliable source that people can feel comfortable coming to for information.

When it comes to literacy, I believe WTHS and Mrs. Ivy have prepared our staff to excel in this area. We have weekly writing assignments to ensure that what news we are sharing is not only true but intelligent as well. I make sure to read and reread over my scripts multiple times, as well as have teammates double check them and make sure they sound professional and newsworthy.

Overcoming Obstacles

I entered my broadcast class in the midst of a large obstacle. The class was given a new teacher and a new set of boundaries. While I was trying to learn from the seasoned staff, my advisor was learning along with us. Fortunately enough, our advisor, Katrina Berry-Ivy, is a past professional in the field and used her real world knowledge to set our program up for success. Slowly we started to gain the trust and respect of our school with every accomplishment we reached. After that difficult year of rebuilding, we were struck with Covid. It's a storm that hit everyone in the world. With no school, meant no more shows. Or did it? We managed to get together on Google Meets and plan virtual episodes that aired on our youtube channel. We updated students on whats next for THS and gave them hope in the middle of what seemed like hopelessness. When we returned to school we were given very strict guidelines in order to protect our team, our students, and the integrity of our broadcast. Our motto that year was "making lemonade from lemons". We worked with what we had and managed to come out with an award winning year. Being executive producer in a year where we couldn't even interview students face to face seemed discouraging. Fortunately, we put a smile on our face and a good attitude in our heart and produced some of our best work. While Covid was difficult, It has taught me and my team a lot about not giving up. There is always another way and sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to find treasure.

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