The End of an Era
Since my transition to the content team in Super semester, things have been very challenging and stressful. Second of all, despite the different obstacles that I had to face, I still kept fighting into I became successful. In my case, I did whatever it took to try to get done in a timely manner. One of the news packages that I did that was very challenging to make was about how President Shonrock wanted to change the Lindenwood Logo and rebrand the school with the slogan, “Like No Other.” In addition, my original intent was to have President Shonrock to be an interviewee in this news story. However, due to President Shonrock’s busy schedule, he had to cancel being in it. Therefore, I had only two interviewees that I interviewed for two strong soundbites for my news package. Nevertheless, I got this project done on time but I was still very upset that President Shonrock could not be in it. One thing that I’m learning about being a news reporter for Super Semester is that some people will enjoy getting interviewed and some will not feel comfortable doing an interview.
The next story I did was about how Senator Claire McCaskill wanted to end sexual assault on college campuses. Moreover, I talked the Director of Greek Life Christopher Miofsky, who was very knowledgeable about where Lindenwood University stands when it comes to sexual harassment on campus. In this case, Christopher said that he commends Senator Claire McCaskill for addressing these issues because he felt that Lindenwood University should also take this issue seriously. From here, I decided that it would be best to get b-roll of Lindenwood University to complete my news package. Another story that I done was about how a member of LSGA started a petition to put lion bronze statues all over Lindenwood’s campus. In addition, the purpose of the installation of the lion bronze statues was to get students to celebrate the school spirit more often. Furthermore, I was able to talk to the LSGA president about this idea and he gave me his information on how this plan will work. Also, this news story really frustrated me at first because I worked so hard to shoot everything only to get told by my professor Mr. Voss that I had to reshoot the interview with the LSGA President. The reason why I could not use the original clip is because I made the simple mistake of interviewing the subject while he sat down, and I stood up with the microphone. Plus, this was done unprofessionally because the subject’s eye level cannot look up at the interviewer, and this issue caused me to have to do this part all over again. Continuing this further, this made me so stressed because I dealt with this issue before in my other news packages where I had to reshoot. In the meantime, I was able to locate where the LSGA President was and reshot the interview sitting down with him. At this point, I was in panic mood because I was so worried that correcting this news package would ruin my chances of getting finished with all of my videos for super semester. However, since I completed all my other news packages for Professor Ms. Bratkowsi’s class, there was no point in turning in this news story as a news package. I decided that since I need a NAT package for Mr. Voss, this news package should be converted to a NAT package.
Another story that I worked so hard to finish was about a scam letter that’s trying to be associated with Wal-mart to trick people into giving out their money. Moreover, this story took really long to get finished for three reasons. One of the reasons was the fact that I had to reshoot b-roll of Wal-mart because my original footage got deleted. The second reason was that the employees at Wal-Mart could not be interviewed because this was against their policies. The third reason was because I decided to interview John Bowman who is Director of Public Safety and Security at Lindenwood University. It was a struggle to get an interview with him because his schedule was very busy, and I had to wait a week and a half just to meet with him. Nevertheless, I was able to get this story finished in a timely manner and my classmates were very impressed with what I done.
Above all, I learned that even though being a News Reporter can be very stressful and challenging, it can be a lot of fun simultaneously. As the super semester comes to an end, my goal was to learn about the experiences of a news reporter and how they put together their stories. In conclusion, in order to become successful on the content team, it takes time, effort, and consistency in order to survive.
