PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – So, I am rounding third base on this amazing intern experience at WAVY and it is a bittersweet feeling.
I feel like I have accomplished so much, but am starting to feel the emotions that come with my time at this wonderful station nearing an end.
In the last few weeks, I have been gaining so much traction with learning more about the newsroom as a whole and understanding what it takes to become a reporter.
I feel like I have started to find my groove with all of this. I have gone out with so many different reporters and photographers and have started to better understand the process of putting together a news story from start to finish.
I went out with photographer Paul Wisniewski to get footage and audio to put together a VO for the 5 o’clock show that day, and learned so much from that experience.
Because I had gone out with numerous reporters to see how they conducted an interview and things of that nature, I was pretty prepared and ready to do this myself.
The story was about a number of French bulldogs who had been rescued from a breeder in the Midwest and brought to this area to be nursed back to health and eventually find their forever homes.
When we arrived at the Animal Vision Center of VA, one adorable Frenchie was preparing to go into surgery to repair prolapsed eyelids in both eyes.
Because of the incredible training I had received from the lineup of amazing reporters at WAVY, I knew exactly what to do.
While the photographer was setting up his camera, I mic’d up the doctor who would be giving us information and speaking.
I knew to ask her to first start off by saying her name and spelling it for me. I knew to ask open-ended questions that would give the interviewee lots of areas to give an informed response that could be used to put together the VO.
I looked around the office for shots that I felt would be good to include in the story and get footage from.
I also used this time to practice a few stand-ups outside of the story.
After we returned to the station to start editing everything, this experience turned into a huge teachable moment and valuable learning experience for me.
One of the amazing producers came to me and told me she listened to my audio of the interviews I conducted and had some feedback for me.
She pointed out that although I asked good questions, I didn’t allow the person being interviewed to fully answer because I kept talking, which led to us going off subject (I tend to get a little excited when meeting people.)
Although it may never be fully an easy task to hear criticism, I was very appreciative of this. That producer took the time to come to me and teach me and guide me on how to do something better and that is exactly the kind of guidance I aim to receive from this experience.
I am soaking up everything I am learning here so that way one day I will be able to call myself a reporter, and if I don’t know what areas I can improve on and how to correctly and properly do things, how will I ever reach that ultimate goal?
In one day, these amazing reporters go out to various locations, try to get interviews from people, capture photos and footage of environments, evaluate how they are going to piece it together and produce a story, then they have to come back to the station to piece everything together in time to meet their deadlines.
I finished editing two news packages in the last few weeks and the realization occurred to me that when I start doing this for real, I would most likely have about two hours to complete a package versus two weeks!
That means that I really have to learn how to create a news story with my eyes closed and keep learning as much as possible.
I will have to continue to stay focused and master time management skills In order to do this job.