Here's a sampling of some of the various job shadows done by you all (this will be updated as job shadow reports are turned in, so please check back frequently). Take a look and see what you can learn from everyone's visits. There's a lot of good stuff here to help you decide what you want to do with your lives; what you need to be doing to get there; and what to expect when you do get there.
Please give each one of these a quick read as they come in, will you?
Please give each one of these a quick read as they come in, will you?
*****
*******
For my job shadow I decided I wanted to do something
different, I wanted to be out of my comfort zone. I’ve done radio and print
journalism so the only thing I haven’t experimented yet was broadcast journalism.
After a couple of calls, I landed a job shadow opportunity with Joy Wang of
WILX Channel 10 News in Lansing.
Wang gave me a tour of the facilities and we went through a
normal day of a reporter at Channel 10. First of all, many of their ‘reporter
are not just reporters — they are called video journalists. Their job is
basically a one-man-band: Joy shoots, reports and edits, all of that before her
deadline. So she not only reports, but she also has to carry the camera around
and record. She told me there have been several times that she has had to go on
air without a cameraman giving her signal that she is on air.
Wang explained that, when pitching a story to the producers
and editors, every story pitched by reporters needs to have at least one of the
following elements: tracking, protecting, alerting, preparing. If the story
doesn’t have at least one of the elements, then there is no story in that idea.
Channel 10 audience is model by a concept called Ann Proctor — Ann Proctor is a
woman, middle age, with a family and not too educated. In other words, the
stories that are pitched need to be of interest to people like Ann Proctor. Wang
said that was one of the hardest parts, to fins stories that their audience
will be interested even if she was not.
Wang graduated from the University of Southern California’s
Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. After doing some internship
with the local affiliates of NBC in Los Angeles she landed a job at Channel 10
News. She moved a couple of months after she graduated without knowing anyone —
she signed her lease for her apartment online, without knowing if the apartment
was alright or if the neighborhood was safe. Her main advice: work hard, say
yes to everything, do your best and network.
For my job shadow report I went to City Pulse Magazine in downtown Lansing and shadowed Ty Forquer who is the arts and culture editor for the magazine. I emailed Ty on Monday of last week and we set up a time for me to come into the office and discuss what it is that he does and what the jobs of some of his colleagues may entail.
City Pulse is a magazine that distributes once a week to the Lansing/East Lansing community. Every Wednesday you can find a new issue of the magazine on your stands. The magazine is run out of what seems to have once been a house but now is an office space. Their individual offices are in the ‘living room’, ‘dining room’ and various ‘bedrooms’. The magazine seems fairly small with an elite team of people working over it. There are a lot of pieces that run weekly in the magazine that have the same writer for each week. For example, there’s a food piece that runs every week with new food items and options that is almost always written by Steve Green with occasional free-lancers.
Ty being the arts and culture editor oversees any content that goes into that section of the magazine. He also will look over other pieces to give added insight. They do offer an unpaid internship position during spring and fall semesters that I am interested in and will be contacting him about in the coming days. They currently have 2 interns who do not only work on stats and copyedits but will also get the chance to occasionally write a piece for the online issue and even for the print issue as well. The internship is 15 hours a week with flexibility but the reward for the work being done is worth every minute.
*******
For
my job shadow, I followed Jason Colthorp through his morning news routine.
After a 2:30 a.m. wakeup call, I was ready to hunt down some news. I arrived at
the WDIV 4 local Detroit station around 3:30.
Jason, his camera man, and I
quickly drove out to a crime scene. Unfortunately, job shadows have to drive
themselves, but I did get to hangout in the stakeout van for a lot of the time
at the crime scene. When we arrived on the scene, the paramedics and police had
blocked off the majority of the street. To get as close as we could to the
police tape, we had to go the wrong way on a one-way.
Jason tried to get as
much information as he could from the police, as well as the other news
stations that had arrived after us. He discovered that a 17-year-old boy had
shot his uncle several times in the leg with an AK-47 after the uncle had
attempted to steal his nephews car and pulled a hand gun out on him.
At 5 a.m.,
Jason appeared live on the scene and reported what he knew to the fellow
audience. After his first appearance, the three of us waited in the van hoping
for some more information, or if anything were to happen. Every half an hour
Jason had to report if there were any updates. Around 6/6:30 we got to watch
the nephew get put into handcuffs and taken to the station, which was good for
the news because we hadn't seen much go on. After sitting around, repeating the
news for about 3 hours, we decided we needed a little pick-me-up. A few
espresso shots later we were back on the scene.
Due to the fact there wasn't
much going on around the crime scene anymore, Jason shot a “like live” shoot that was planned on to go on at noon.
He made it seem as if we were live, speaking back to the anchors in the studio,
but really it was shot a few hours before.
Overall, it was a great experience
for me. I was getting a little bored at times (and tired) but it was exciting
to be out on the field getting the news first hand. It was investigative
journalism to the fullest. I think it helped me learn what it is like doing
different jobs within the field, and showed me how important it is to have your
facts straight.
********
For
my job shadow, I tagged along with James Edwards of the Lansing State Journal
for the Grand Ledge vs. Portland girls’ basketball game. He arrived to the
games early and immediately made sure that he had game sheets with rosters and
talked to people before games so that he knew what to look out for. He said for
sports like high school girls basketball, there’s not always that much prep you
can do. The majority of his knowledge on the subject came from the preseason
preview that they do for all sports.
During
the game, James sat in the stand and jots down every scorer whenever a point is
recorded. He likes having a chronological score report for whoever scores so he
can track runs and recall turning points in the game for his article. He also
tweeted the action, sending out a score and leading scorer update at the end of
every quarter or whenever something significant happens. James had a
photographer accompany him for the game, and they exchanged a lot of information
to make sure they were on the same point. After the game, he used the stats
provided by the scoreboard keeper for rebounds and assists.
As
soon as the game is over, James went to wait for the coaches to give
interviews. He asked the coaches for specific players, as well. James said he
thought of questions throughout the game but didn’t write any down, because he
likes a naturally flowing conversation. He said that interviews were a goldmine
for storylines, and actually discovered the ones he wanted to use by talking to
the playoffs. The best advice I received from James is to always look for a
storyline when covering an event. “Portland Tops Grand Ledge” is simply a score
summary while “Freshman Emerges As Star As Portland Tops Grand Ledge” adds a
little more to the story. Without that, he said, a story will just fade into
the background.
After
the game, James’ deadline was at 11:00 p.m. and he finished with interviews
around 9:45. Usually, he said, he enjoys writing in his car to remove himself
from the commotion of gyms or press boxes. He said his report varies in length
based on the content of the game, when the game concluded, its significance,
the storyline he picks up, the quality of the quotes, and etc. The minimum was
400 for him, though. One thing that struck me again was the importance of
deadline. It was set at 11:00 p.m., and even if something had happened to force
the game to finish an hour later, he would have had to have in a report by that
time. Of course, we learned this in class, but seeing its effect in person
solidified its place of importance in my mind.
*******
For my job shadow I shadowed Berl
Schwartz of owner, editor, and publisher at the Lansing City Pulse, which he
founded in 2001.
The busiest days
of the week for Schwartz are Mondays and Tuesdays, because the paper goes to
the printer on Tuesday nights, so he does all the proofreading of content. He
sometimes does the first round of editing on stories, and generally specialized
in word editing. Schwartz praised the importance of having different types of
editors on stories, citing help from other editors to edit content, so he can
focus on the style and word editing.
Additionally, he
is the ad director at the paper, and told me about how he manages the space in
the paper for companies asking to advertise. Advertising being its main source
of income, he said they rarely turn away an ad, and said it’s a balance in
trying to figure out how he’s going to include them all.
When asking about
advice he wish he would have known when younger, he explained that he wish he
had spent more time in Washington D.C. because it is one of the main hotbeds
for news. Along with that, modern day media requires you to be knowledgeable
about every facet and not just one small focus, so to take every experience as
a learning one. An interesting perspective he gave me was revealing he was gay,
but failed to reveal that for a while because it was generally not accepted in
journalism. On the outside this seems sort of strange, but he went on to
explain how much better he felt and the success that followed when he was happy
and comfortable being himself. This advice reminds me that, for me to be
successful I need to make sure I am happy in what I am doing myself.
Finally, he told
me about some unique experiences like getting to interview John Lennon and Yoko
Ono. Overall, I had a unique shadow experience with someone at the head of the
paper rather than just a journalist working for them. It let me get a better
understanding for how papers are run at the top, and the preparation and other
factors that impact a paper, aside from just the story writing. His advice was
useful and he was reassuring that hard work and passion in the industry can
still lead to success.
*******
*******
For this project I did my job shadow with Berl Schwartz,
Owner and Publisher of the Lansing City Pulse.
It was a valuable learning experience, because I not only learned about
the responsibilities of his position, but how he built his career and lessons
he learned along the way.
On a weekly basis, Schwartz explained to me how Monday and
Tuesday were the busiest days in terms of production, i.e., producing stories
for the physical publication. Asides from being publisher, Schwartz is also an
editor as he does “all the proofreading.”
Schwartz assists in copy editing as well, which is not
strictly fixing grammar and spelling, but involves more or less improving the
formatting and style of the story.
Schwartz will volunteer himself to do the first edit on
stories his particularly interested in and always does the first edit for the
Arts & Entertainment section. Schwartz also took it upon himself to employ
a writer from the Lansing State Journal, who works with him to ensure all the
editing gets done in time for publication.
Schwartz has a media presence that expands beyond the City
Pulse, conducting interviews for both radio and television—including his own
show on Impact 89FM. When I met with him, he was preparing for an interview
with the new Mayor of East Lansing, Mark Meadows.
Schwartz had a long career in journalism before starting the
City Pulse in 2001. Schwartz started off as a Politic Science major at the
University of Pennsylvania, but left before finishing his degree to begin his
career as a reporter. Many years later he was a Visiting Professor of
Journalism at the University of Oklahoma. Schwartz eventually finished his
degree and after years of working for different publications, started his own—Lansing’s
City Pulse.
While Schwartz taught me what a publisher does, the most
important thing he taught me was to take every opportunity I can and turn it
into a learning experience. As an older man with vast personal experience in
this field, Schwartz told me it was valuable to make the most out of everything
available to you and to never turn down an opportunity to learn more about
yourself and/or the field of journalism. Schwartz himself did this by
diversifying his work as not only a reporter, but someone skilled enough in the
business side of things to start his own publication and keep it going for over
a decade.
*******
*******
I did my job shadow at ABC12 WJRT in
Flint, Michigan with Greg Molzon. I was fortunate enough to meet Molzon over
the summer at a graduation party where he gave me his card. This was incredibly
helpful considering last year for JRN 200 I had to do my job shadow back home
in Ohio because I didn’t
have any contacts up at school.
Molzon
is the sports director/anchor at WJRT. His job has him producing a little bit
of print media but for the most part he anchors the
local and notable sports pieces for WJRT. When I shadowed him he showed me
around the station, which was pretty similar to Local 12 WKRC in Cincinnati.
Regardless, It was still very impressive and a tad intimidating. Molzon focused
his tour more on the broadcast area and it was interesting to get his
perspective. Kevin Barnett, my last job shadow, worked behind the scenes so I
enjoyed asking him what it was like to be on the other side of the camera.
Molzon
demonstrated for me what it was like to read text off a monitor and how you had
to speed up or slow down during a broadcast. Which was something Barnett had
told me about but it was really different watching it live. Molzon, like
Barnett, also stressed how important time was in this business. Everything has
to happen in a timely manner for the entire broadcast or segment to run how it’s supposed to. Molzon also
showed me the football specials that he had been working on for the impending
end of the regular college football season, which was pretty cool to see.
Overall,
I had a good time and I learned a lot. I’ve never wanted to be in front of a camera and this job
shadow definitely reaffirmed this sentiment. I don’t think I could ever sit confidently in front of a camera
reading off of the screen like Molzon did. It was nice to go and see that
though, instead of just thinking that I wouldn't like it. Molzon was really
nice and the entire experience just helped me figure out where I eventually
want to end up and also gave me a new contact.
Greg Molzon
Phone: 810.257.2810
Fax: 810.257.2812
greg.c.molzon@abc12.com
*****
For my job shadow I spent the evening with
Robert “Scoop” Jackson, a writer for ESPN The Magazine. He roomed with my dad
for a couple semesters in college back in the day at Xavier of Louisiana, and
they remained pretty close over the years. He now lives in Chicago and I was
there over Thanksgiving break, so he was able to squeeze a couple hours in with
him while he worked on a Derrick Rose piece. I was not able to accompany him to
the interview because it took place earlier in the month, even though I’m pretty
sure I wouldn’t have been able to be there anyway.
He showed me all his notes from not only the
interview, but also the notes he had taken in preparation prior to meeting with
Rose. The stack was huge. I asked him why he felt the need to prepare so much to
interview a guy he had already spent a lot of time with, and a on a sport he
had been covering for over 25 years. Even I know a good amount about Rose. But
he said it’s important to always be prepared with questions and as much
knowledge about the person you are interviewing as possible, especially people
that give an allotted amount of time for an interview like Rose did.
Looking back I should have asked more about the
process of writing for a magazine and all that goes into it, but I kind of had
my mind set on asking the cliché questions about “how to make it big”. But he
said there is no real formula. Once you get out of college, everyone is working
hard and competing for the same jobs, and there are a lot of talented people
out there that don’t ever “make it” in the sense that I was talking about. I
laughed at this statement because it’s so true, but he joked that there are probably
1000 times more people that are trying to work for big companies like ESPN, or
FOX than actually work there. If you only focus on that, then whatever job you
have won’t be as enjoyable, even if you’re doing good work.
Even though I wasn’t able to accompany him on
the interview, I learned a lot from the conversation. He never came off as a
big shot, just a normal hard working guy with a little luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment