It was a good week at work. Got to have a pretty wide variety of stories and even got a live shot in the 6:30. Good stuff.
MONDAY
Localized a story about the FDA considering approving the sale of genetically engineered salmon. It would be the first genetically modified meat or fish available for consumption.
What might be most disturbing about the whole deal is that experts don't expect the FDA to require special labelling to distinguish the modified fish from natural fish.
Here's a blog entry I wrote about the whole FrankenFish experience.
TUESDAY
Covered the dedication of North Medford High School. Was hoping to have a live shot at the top of the 6:30 just as the festivities were getting going, but technical obstacles didn't let that happen. Either way, it was a fun story to cover. In the past two weeks I've covered two stories at SOU, one at N. Medford High, and I'm expecting to cover one at S. Medford High next week. Maybe I'll soon have the Education beat?
WEDNESDAY
Ashland is a bit like Diet Berkeley, it's fairly radical a bit artsy, but it's not nearly as hippie as Berk. On Wednesday, Ashland held Car Free Day. Officials from the city and from the local bus transit system closed down one block in downtown Ashland and hled a bike caravan down a main street. It was all in an effort to raise awareness about Shared Roads, roads that mandate bikes and cars share a lane of traffic. The story didn't get posted to the web, but it was pretty fun to cover and I shot a pretty cool standup*.
THURSDAY
On Thursday, MADGE (Medford Area Drug and Gang Enforcement) released a statement that they had conducted a three-month long undercover drug sting operation and they had issued arrest warrants for at least 23 people. Of those 23, 12 were women. Medford Police say that number is much higher than what they had been used to. I interviewed a counselor from OnTrack, a drug addiction recovery center. She said that that percentage of women did not surprise her. She said drug addiction is a disease that affects women as often as men and that its s social stigma that tells us to expect drug users to be men. It was good to talk with her about these kind of issues. It reminded me of topics and stories we covered in Sociology classes that challenged our stereotypes and expectations. It seems as though the classes I took in college and the events that I took part in, encouraged me to think differently about things that I hadn't thought differently about before: gender roles, stereotypes, expectations. It was refreshing to talk to someone who was so upfront about these topics.
In the evening, I went to SOU for a story about their new class of freshman and how their student body may be it's biggest ever. Here's a blog entry about that story and thinking back to SMC times.
FRIDAY
Fridays are excellent. Mostly because I cover one story in the afternoon and then get to shoot football in the evening. In the afternoon I previewed a fair-style event called the HarvestFest. I got there at the right time and saw organizers performing a test run of the Pumpkin Launcher. It was pretty spectacular. My producer wanted me to do something different, a look-live vosot. Now that might sound like a foreign language, and in a way, it is. Well, let's break it down:
Look-Live is a standup that goes at the front and back of a package or story. It's used when a reporter won't be able to front (introduce) their story in the show. The point is to have shot that looks as though you're doing a live remote shot, but wouldn't be able to because of timing or technology issues.
Vosot is just the form of the story. Usually look-lives are used in packages, but because this story isn't deep enough to package it was simply a vosot.
Anywho, I shot the look-live vosot at the HarvestFest grounds then headed out to football.
I love shooting football. It's exciting and relaxing at the same time. At SMC I shot a lot of basketball games and it was almost always more exciting to shoot the game rather than just be in attendance. The same is certainly true at the football games I've covered in the Rogue Valley
*A standup comes in the middle of a package where the reporter shows up on screen to explain part of the story. I'll probably write more on standups soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment