Saturday, November 8, 2014

Media Participation Project - Lauraine Genota

I have been interested in broadcast journalism for awhile now, so I thought I would do something that would help me learn more about broadcast journalism for my media participation project. I thought about looking up internships or shadowing a reporter, but what really worked best for my schedule was attending UMTV shows. Around the middle of September, I contacted the one of the director/producer of Capital News Service, Sue Kopen-Katcef to let her know I was attending and to ask if I had to sign up anywhere. A few weeks later, she replied and attached a schedule of days we can attend. I signed up for three Wednesdays in October.

After my last class on Wednesdays, I would walk to the Tawes building where UMTV studio is. On my first day I arrived a little after 6 pm and already the anchors were ready at the desk, practicing their scripts. Everyone in the room seemed to know which jobs they had for this show; some were practicing; most of the Tech crew was making sure everything was ready and working correctly. I stood around taking it all in for a little while before I went in Ms. Sue’s office and told her who I was and asked what I should do. She led me to Asa who was in charge of Jour200 students. He gave me a quick tour of the place, starting in the control room and then the rest of the studio. Ms. Sue was really nice and told me I could sit anywhere and enjoy the show. There were a few students who talked to me and made me feel more welcomed.

Before and during the show, everything just seemed hectic but everyone knew what they were doing. I sat and listened to the things they talked about. There was plenty of jargon I couldn’t quite pick up yet, so I’m excited to learn more. The show starts around 6:30 pm and runs through 7 pm. When it’s over, they have a meeting about what went well, what went wrong, and what to do next time. I thought that was really interesting because everyone got to say something if they wanted to and I think the feedback really helps everyone do better.


Overall, I was just really excited to be there. I hope to help out at UMTV someday or another broadcasting place. I’m just interested to know more about it and I wish I got do a job; however, it wasn’t something they let everyone do. This really helped further my interest in broadcast journalism, but I’m still open to print journalism. 

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