Today I shadowed Jessica Patrick, a WRAL.com Producer/Editor. Honestly, she is one of the nicest people I ever met. Her work is mostly run from her desk, so I sat with her in the morning while she showed me the ins and outs of her position. One of the main aspects of her job is following the trends of certain stories and sifting through news to find the best information that would entice viewers while also being very informative. For example, she found a story regarding a woman that pulled a gun on an African-American couple in Mississippi. Knowing that it would attract lots of attention and do well on the site, she quickly created a post for it and uploaded it to their “Watch Now” section. In minutes, the story was the top most trending on the site. However, news changes very quickly, so one story might be interesting for a little while, but it could lose momentum if breaking news were to come in, which is why Jessica has to stay near her computers on days that are especially busy.
Jessica’s position also requires a lot of creativity. Every week, she has to make a news video covering a small story she feels is topical and interesting. Today, she showed me how to make a video through her creation of this year’s top brewery picks. Overall, the experience was really informative and cool, as I don’t often get to see the inner workings of a website or the work that goes into their media page.
Just before I went to lunch, I actually had the opportunity to sit in the control room during the noon broadcast. WOAH. It was so hectic! I sat next to the producer, who decided on the fly which stories would be run, and the prompter, who scrolled the script for the anchors to read. I had absolutely no idea how much focus, work, and manpower went in to every broadcast before this. For example, the graphics specialist mentioned to the producer that a headshot was missing in one of the upcoming images. In less than ten seconds, the producer found the photo and replaced, all while juggling the fact that she was 1 min 20 seconds over her designated time. Everyone in the room was working furiously, but if you were watching the show, the madness that was happening backstage wouldn’t show in the slightest.
After lunch, I sat in on the producers meeting in which they discussed what schedule they’d pursue for the 4 o’clock live broadcast, barring any breaking news updates or other things that may change the plan, which happens quite often.
Originally, I was supposed to work with Stephanie Beck after the meeting adjourned, but she was a bit sick today and lost her voice, so I joined executive producer Lori Grant for the rest of the day. Her main job is centered around overseeing the ‘big picture’ broadcast. While each reporter works on their own segment, she checks everyone’s script and helps with organizing to ensure that the show runs smoothly. While introducing me to her line of work, she realized that I had not been given a proper tour yet, so we embarked on a quick journey around the building. Although everything we saw was unique and enthralling, my favorite rooms were probably the Augmented Reality room and the huge, overarching control room. In the Augmented Reality room, I saw how the graphics designer created backgrounds for several different scenes and projected them onto the green scene. In the huge control room, there were sections for all the stations working out of the Capitol Broadcasting Company location, including Fox50 and WRAL. My picture shows the “quality control” area, where every video that will go on the broadcast is checked for quality before being on air.
