"It's The Small Things That Change Lives"

I’ve heard too many people tell me any type of journalism work I did in high school means nothing when I get to college, but I couldn’t disagree more. Sounds like they didn’t have a journalism teacher like mine.

I first tried to join a newspaper staff in middle school, but once I learned we had to stay after school for an hour a day, once a week studying a grammar book I decided to drop out. (Who knew now I’d be so in love with grammar?) Once I got into high school I was recommended by one of my teachers to join the newspaper staff. After a bit of convincing from my older brother I jumped on board.

I quickly learned I had a love for features. Our newspaper was split up in different sections like opinion, news, a center spread, entertainment, features ect. Anytime I wrote a story, no matter what section, I always unintentionally morphed it into a feature (news is about PEOPLE). My junior year, I guess non-surprisingly, I became the feature editor of my paper. As the years went on, my passion for journalism grew, with a special thanks to my high school journalism teacher who pushed us to do the best we could. And who I truly believe could be teaching college journalism if he wanted.

When I came to college, besides trying to write a collection of features, I quickly lost sight of what I loved to do. I was also told that features weren’t that loved in the broadcast business, unless you had been in the business for a long time, were very trusted, and were good at doing them. I started writing more timely news stories. This didn’t bother me, especially because I fell in love with writing these kinds of stories as well. I’m a huge fan of breaking news and hard-hitting news as well. As time has gone on though I miss sitting down with people and divulging deep into their lives, asking them questions about anything and everything. I just accepted the fact that I probably would never be able to features (although I do still like to add a feature twist to every story I do).

But, hearing Today Show Feature Correspondent Mike Leonard talk yesterday and Lisa Ling talk a few weeks ago has been uplifting, as they made me realized features are not dying and it is possible to become a journalist that does them. As Mike said, “it’s the small things that change people.” I truly believe in this. Hard hitting news and breaking news is important, but features are just as important. Back in high school when I wrote features stories, I looked to provoke thoughts from at least one person, to get them to see life from someone else’s perspective.

Coming to college has helped to inspire my love for hard-hitting news and breaking news, but I will never lose sight of the fact that features will always be dear and near to my heart. (And why not make hard-hitting news into a feature?) In my career, I would like to be able to do both and the best thing about life is it’s an open road. You’re free to travel wherever you like. When people ask me what’s my ultimate dream--- I don’t have one. I have never aspired to be on a certain show or network; I’m just going wherever life takes me. I just want to be able to tell stories, whether it reaches a small or large audience, I just want to be able to affect at least one person’s life. I hear so many journalists aiming for a certain market number, but I feel that I just can’t do that. It’s great to have goals, but I don’t think many realize that there are stories everywhere, even in the small towns. I want to experience everything I can, no matter where it is.

High school began my love for journalism. I credit my high school teacher for taking our staff to conferences were I met journalists in the real world that continued to feed my passion for journalism as well as encouraging the staff to exercise our first amendment rights (paper was censored senior year--- we won!)

In high school there were a million stories to tell… and I don’t care how many people tell me high school doesn’t matter. I would not be here if it weren’t for high school. I would not have a love for features or news in general. And if I could, I wouldn’t change my past in journalism for anything.

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I once interviewed a nurse that worked in a psychiatric ward who told me about how one day the nurses were looking for this woman and couldn’t find her. When they finally did, she was scrunched up in her narrow closet; she believed she was living on an Indian Reservation and that Indians were coming to scalp her. The fear in the woman’s eyes was unbearable. “I’ve learned to never take what you have for granted, and to appreciate gifts and abilities,” she told me. “When you’ve been around people who can’t, you learn to appreciate life so much more.”

I once met an 8-year-old African girl whose only dream was to become a nurse to help others. Despite how much she was picked on for wearing clothes different than her classmates, she wanted to be the one to save their lives. Her mother had brought her over to America to lead a better life and within six months this little girl had an ample understanding of the English language and a greater knowledge on US politics than I ever will.

I once interviewed a guy who had worked in the film industry for 22 years and laughed about the memories he had working with actors. But his past life wasn’t filled with so much happiness. “I was raised in a foster family,” he told me. “The hardest part was not knowing if someone was going to come and take me away.”

I once interviewed a homeless man (as many of you have heard) who told me “People look down on me like I’m poor because I don’t have a front door, but home is where the heart is. The world is my home.”

I once interviewed someone who had come seconds away from committing suicide, but a friend saved her. “If he wasn’t there, I don’t know where I’d be today,” she said. “I felt like no one cared, but he was the person who spared my life. He made me realize, by showing me how much life would change if I weren’t there. All that time he had spent trying to convince me to live just wasted if I killed myself. If you know a friend in need make sure you talk to them because it can make all the difference.”

I once interviewed someone who became an All-American Tennis player because the coach of the baseball team he tried out for told him he was too short to be on the team. Because of this he joined the tennis team and later lead him to a career in teaching. Eventually he also met his wife because of this. “I wish I could go back today and hold out a picture to that coach and be like ‘here, look what you did’. I have a wife and two beautiful kids all because of you,” he told me. “If that hadn’t happened then I wouldn’t be here today. Tennis has definitely changed the course of my life.”

I once interviewed an ex-NFL football player who told me about the first time he put on his football jersey: “I felt great pride, knowing that I made it to where I wanted to be in life. You feel something inside and Iʼm sure I had a big smile on my face. My main goal in football was to put on a pro football uniform and play a pro game.”

I once interviewed someone who was so near death at age 13 that her parents had the priest come to the hospital to say last words. As she recalled this memory her eyes filled with tears, she had felt it was her fault that her parent’s were in so much pain. The worst was having them look at her and knowing there was nothing they could do. Now she continues to live everyday to the fullest and her parent’s consider her their “miracle child”. “If I got through that, I can get through anything,” she told me.

I’ve had countless people cry in front of me telling me their life story.

One who told me of her survival from cancer, not knowing if she would live to be able to hold her newborn in her arms and be able to guide him through life like a mother should. One who’s husband has been to Iraq three times and how she watches her kids grow everyday knowing that he's not there to see them. One who recalled the last car ride along the ocean with her best friend before he passed away. One who just loved his job so much, a job that has saved thousands of lives, that he was overcome by emotion as he told me about one of the lives he touched.

Someone who I looked up to that now has passed on…

…..

If you ever interviewed me I might be able to tell you that I love to stand outside during the calm before a storm. I might be able to tell you that I love to sit in the middle of the city and watch people go about their daily tasks (creepy). I might be able to tell you that my favorite thing is to drive to nowhere while blasting music. (yes I am that car with the unnecessary blasting music you hate)

But the only important thing I would want to tell you is what I want to do with the rest of my life: hearing other’s stories. It’s my way of discovering the beautiful things in this world. Journalism has taught me more than I could have ever asked for. Beyond the lens of the video camera, beyond the words on the paper there are real people with stories of struggles, joy, failure, and triumph. The camera and the piece of paper captures these moments to share them with the rest of the world, perhaps giving others the hope they need to move on with life. I want to be that person casting these stories out into the world, giving them a glimpse into what I’ve seen.

Sometimes I ask myself "Am I living or am I just alive?"

I believe that love is the most powerful thing in the world… and my love for journalism keeps me living.

Maybe you should ask yourself what keeps you living?

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.

My Version of a Great Feature Package

As I was getting ready to leave my shift last night one of the producers turned to one of our reporters and told him great job on his package. The reporter had found out about a couple who decided to have a “Harley-Davidson wedding”. Their ceremony was held in the Mid America Harley Davidson showcase room…and my guess is they rode off into the sunset with their motorcycle too.

I very much enjoyed the package so I decided to throw my two cents in.

How did I know it was a great (feature, we're talking about features here) package? As a web editor, the best way I can sum it up is… a good package is hard to edit for the web. Like I actually have to do some work (shock!) to make the story comprehensible to our readers. It’s my job to piece together the sentences and make them readable on the computer screen. You'd be surprised how many packages I've edited that haven't been hard hit news stories that were so simple to edit because the reporter basically told the watcher everything and just laid video over it.

We’ve been taught in broadcast to make sentences short and simple, breaking up facts so listeners and watchers can take in the information piece by piece.

In print or web, pieces are much more extensive. More than just one fact is compiled and put into a sentence. You don’t really need to break up sentences for the reader because if they are confused they can just go back. Commas are frequently used, as well as things like participles.

So what do I mean it’s hard for a web person to edit it?

Sentences aren’t complete because the video is doing the story telling. Soundbites or SOTS rather may not be a complete sentence either because it’s advancing the story or just adding to the story. A SOT might make sense in a broadcast story, but on the web the quote is confusing for readers.

This is why I love broadcast journalism. The ability that we have to evoke emotion with video is powerful.

A good story written down on paper describes facial expressions, describes an environment, it draws emotion from the reader. But broadcast journalists must use video to do this. Tears, smiles, anger. It’s all there for us to capture. (As you might guess, I’m a huge fan of natural sound/ambient sound as well.)

I guess I can finally deem myself a web nerd when I start relating everything to the web. Oh sigh.

The other way we know it was a great package? CNN called to put it on pathfire and then aired it. Zing!

Be sure to check out Kevin’s story: Click on me and then watch the video on the right!

Random Ramblings About the Web and What It Should Mean to Broadcast Journalists

The other day I was sitting in front of the computer, wondering how people ever did without. It brought me back to the first time I ever signed onto the Internet, sometime around the fourth grade. I remember this overwhelming feeling of vast possibilities, knowing that I had every piece of knowledge at my fingertips. I could type a word into a search engine and gather all the information there was about it. Now everyday people connect to the Internet without a thought in the world, a contributing factor into why web’s effect on society sometimes goes unseen. As far as a it goes for being journalists, we’re so content with the fact that we can do a lot of our basic research on the computer that I think many forget that the internet is more than just a place to find information, but a place to promote and better your news organization.

As a student in journalism, I know it’s not a new fact. Journalism is constantly evolving and during this time the majority of people looking for news log onto the web. Because of this I believe that broadcast journalists and print journalists alike should know how to use it.

So why do I think it’s important for EVERY broadcast journalist to know how to use the web and perhaps participate on putting content up on their stations website?

You’ve heard it before from broadcast students. “This is stupid. I don’t know why I have to put my stories up online… why can’t the web editors do it? It’s their job.” The complaints constantly flow out of the newsroom.

But to those who complain I’m sure you’ve heard of one-man-banding. And now to add to the list of the other jobs a one-man-band must do you can add web editor, at least while you’re still climbing your way up the market ladder.

First and foremost, our job as journalists is to create a public discussion and by using the web as an open forum we expand thoughts on these discussions. The web is a quick and easy way for a massive audience to view others opinions. I know that when I’m reading an article on the web and scroll down to read comments I read things that prompt thoughts I would have never had if there weren’t a comment section. Sometimes comments even spark an idea for an entirely different story. If enough people are talking about something on the web, then it’s probably something good to cover.

You may ask why can’t web editors just upload your story for you then? Sure they can, but what about information that didn’t make it to your broadcast story that the audience would like to know?

In a broadcast you have a 1 min 45 secs to tell your story. So when it comes to web extras, sometimes they are almost as important as the story itself. What other information do you have for the interested viewers? No one knows your story better than you, so that leaves you to take responsibility for putting it up on the web, not the web editors. (Besides don’t you love it when a friend says “Opps I missed your story because I was sitting on the potty!” A story appears -most of the time- on air once, but the Internet serves as the archiver of that story…. Where potty sitting friends go to find it. Don’t you want to make sure they see all the hard work you put into it?)

Take a chance to use the web as a way to give viewers all the facts you've gathered as well as using it to monitor the community and what it wants. It will improve the stories you report on.

Finally I would like to say a good luck to any newbie broadcast journalist that believes they can have a job without ever having to do any web work. I have yet to be in a small market newsroom where journalists aren’t expected to upload various things to a stations website.

What should every journalist know about posting content on their stations website that they probably don’t?

What I find funny is how hard people think posting content for the web is.

Too many people think being a web editor consists of maintaining the look of the site. Of course starting from scratch to build a website can be difficult, in fact impossible if you don’t have perspicacity of HTML and even more important CSS. But the thing is building up a website is completely different than maintaining one. Forget about HTML and CSS, journalists aren’t expected to know how to build or design a website. (Hand over this job to the IT guys.) This is why Content Manager Systems (CMS) were created. A CMS is an easily learnable tool designed to manage what appears on the website. Granted if you are looking to make a simple site you don’t need a CMS, but news sites aren’t simple with their many stories being posted a day. CMSs are used for sites needing archiving and easily searchable documents because there are so many on the site. Basically they keep the work-flow in order.

It may have taken a little bit of getting used to my first CMS, but after that it took 15-20 minutes tops to learn basics on the others. A CMS consists of different tabs, text boxes that you fill out and different uploading features. You write up an article and it pops up on the site in the correct way for you.

As my brother explains it, CMS was created specially for dummies. Or he says, to be less callous, those who aren’t so technological.

After working for komu.com, wrex.com, and nbcchicago.com rest assured that anybody with a basic understanding of the Internet can easily grasp the concepts of a CMS.

So to those just joining the world of journalism, or even for those who believe they are too old to go forward into the new trend don’t be afraid to jump in, it’s not as hard as it looks.

Behind the scenes… things a journalist doesn’t have to know about a news site, but might be interesting to know anyway.

Have you ever thought about the time and thought that goes into a news site? Not just the design of the site must be thought out, but things such as advertising and marketing as well. This is to say, even if we want to believe that our main goal is getting the news to the viewers, at the end of the day it all comes down to money. How will the site profit?

Who is your target audience? Throughout my internship at NBC I have watched as we transformed our site to grab an audience in the age range of 20’s-30’s. Our snarky writing is designed to provoke emotion and to have readers think about things in a different way. We put a nice fun spin on the news. Because we don’t necessarily work with the broadcast that airs, the news we put up on the site generally isn’t news you would see on air. We also have things on our site such as a mood indictor for each story. It gives readers a chance to tell us how they feel about a topic. On our main page we have a sentence telling how the city is feeling about a certain topic that is popular. These types of things set us apart from other sites.

All sites are different. I believe that when you move to a new news organization or station it’s very important to know who your target audience is, what is the main goal of the website (besides money!), and how they go about reaching their goals. You will find many don’t even know what they want yet though; stations are still testing different ways of doing things because no one really knows what works the best.

Knowing the goals of the station’s site will also give you an insight on how a station wants content to appear on the site-word wise. There are many news sites that take on the most prevalent form of online writing: shorter articles than AP style, but longer than broadcast articles.

Off topic, quick thoughts. Beyond knowing news sites…how has social media had an effect on society?

It’s simple, social media has had and will continue to have a prodigious and lasting effect on society.

Think about this simple fact. There are bloggers whose entire supporting income is based on advertisements they sell. And another. Twitter has served as a free tool to increase awareness and draw in revenue for business’ who choose to use it (twitter business model). It also is another way to have a community forum. Topics that people are discussing here and now, what they want to know about. What about social networking sites? Myspace gave Tila Tequila a show. Of course whether or not she should have had that show is a whole other topic (I’m sure myspace has other uses, but marketing people is the largest use I can think of at the moment)…Facebook has allowed people to brand themselves, talk to people they would have otherwise never been able to, connect with peers and continue to build on relationships, and finally for those who choose to market it’s a free way to do so.

I always believed that in a slumping economy, the way we pick ourselves back up is being innovators. New inventions may take away jobs, but it only opens the doors to new ones. Different social media tools, obviously the thought of innovators, quickly create jobs for those who know how to use them (and of course those who created the social media tools drew in some cash too… i.e. facebook, myspace).

This going back to news sites, if someone is able to design a great news site (someone who is an innovator) and broadcast journalists are able to learn how to maintain it, they can benefit by archiving their stories, improving their stories and by creating other outlets for public forums. Great news websites draw a larger audience as well, creating more revenue for the station (if you can show advertisers that you have a large audience!). I’m sure though, once you start posting your content online, learning how to use your news' website you find many more benefits.

In conclusion to these never-ending topics, what does it all mean? Well, I'm not quite sure, except that I love the internet and what it is doing for us journalists and what it is doing for society. So I will continue to learn and extend my knowledge about it. I hope other broadcast journalists will follow the same path.