During this semester, I have interned at News12 Long Island in the sports department. My experience there has been nothing but positive. This is in large part due to the people that work there, and the atmosphere that they set up to work in. In my previous paper I described the atmosphere as a relaxed one, where everyone called each other by their first names, and there was no dress code. I don't think I truly understood how important the atmosphere was until the middle of the semester.
Besides for the obvious reasons, such as you don't have to worry about people constantly on your back, there were two specific instances where the personnel really helped me out. The first one was I had a personal tragedy during the semester, my father passed away unexpectedly, and they were very understanding, sent a fruit basket, and were there for me to talk to. Secondly, I was having a problem graduating with honors and needed to up my internship hours. Since I have a very busy schedule it was hard to f~nd an exact time that I knew I could be there. They were very accommodating and allowed me to come in whenever I had the time. I don't want to make it sound like the atmosphere was too relaxed though, because you were expected to do your job and do it well. It is just that everyone I worked with was both personable and professional. They respected my opinion, and were always willing to answer any questions that I had.
A lot of the activities that I did during the second part of the semester such as logging games, taking news feeds, and critiquing sportscasts were similar to the first part of the semester. The major difference was that I had more responsibilities, and expectations. During the first few weeks it was excusable if I made a mistake or didn't have a certain fact. By the end I had better have that fact or be able to find it on the computer quickly.
Using the computer became a major part of the internship. Not only did I use it for research, stats, hunting down a story, and printing out the scripts and rosters, but also that is where the rundown of the shows is, and where you type out the scripts. When learning about how a run down gets set up, there is a lot of details that go into it. There is the general information that is needed, such as, the slug or title of the story, and who the anchor is but after that is when the decisions and attention to detail are needed. For starters, you have to select the order in which the stories are to run. In being a Long Island news network we have to give greater attention to the Long Island stories even if another story may seem as if it is more important.Next you have to decide how long to devote to a certain story. You're only allowed certain amount of time and very rarely can you run over. You need to realize what news to keep in and what has to be dropped. Two more things about the rundowns are you must remember to write in a courtesy as to what channel you got the highlights from and you must write in whether the story is on camera or if video is going to be used. If you forget the director won't know to put the highlights on and this can ruin the show. Rundowns have to be flexible because certain things can really throw a wrench into them, and force you to change it all around. There were three things that I noticed that caused the producer to change a rundown.
The first is a late breaking story. You may have to delete another story and you have to run around trying to find video or sound for the new story. It just causes problems. Another thing that happened a lot is that the anchor would decide that he wanted to do a commentary about a subject. Since he is in charge we have to put the story into the rundown, and usually the commentaries would be for at least a minute and a half and when the show is only five minutes long it could eliminate some stories. The third thing that puts the rundown on hold is if we were to do a live remote from an arena. This is an even bigger problem if you have to use another stations truck, because their own station takes top priority and they just fit you in when they can.
When it comes to the writing of the scripts the first thing you need to know is how quickly the anchor reads. This is important because it dictates how many words you can write for the highlight. The general criteria is to be creative, not be repetitious, and put in the necessary stats to solidify the story.Another thing I used the computer for was to search the database to find old highlights that we needed for a story. Sometimes that didn't work however, and I would have to search a lot of old tapes to find the necessary highlights.
One of the first and most important things I learned was what the different sports producers felt was news worthy. They taught me to keep track of certain trends during the games. For example if David Cone had ten strikeouts, then I must have a highlight of him striking someone out. Of course, if there were any exciting plays that I as a sports fan would like to see then I should keep track of them too.
Another technique that I learned in selecting highlights is what is known as a low angle highlight. In certain instances such as an alley oop dunk, television will show you an angle that brings you closer to the action. This sort of highlight can create more of a reaction from the fans watching at home. The responsibility of selecting a highlight or sound increased because during the first few weeks the producer would watch the games with us so that they could make sure we were using the correct highlights and sound. Afterwards we were on our own to tell them the story of the game or what quotes to use.
Once you have selected the highlights the next thing to do is edit them. This is the area that my responsibility increased in the most. For the first few months most of the editing work that I got to do was stuff that I stayed extra time just to practice. In other instances, the anchor asked me to put together a package of-highlights and then would critique them. When they saw that I did a good job they started to allow me to edit things that would make the air.Besides the basics of where to start the tape, where to put the ins, and what buttons to push, there were four principles that I learned about editing. First, I learned how to edit highlights to coincide with the pace that the announcer reads. Second, I learned how to still and slow motion a highlight. Then I learned certain things to look out for such as light bulbs flashing that could give a distorted picture. The last technique I learned was to lay down the video from a replay and than cover it with audio from the live play.
In something related to editing that I learned was how to patch up a portion of the show. This is necessary in case of a major blunder or if a game is not over before the anchor goes on air. Other tape work I did had to do with dubbing. There were a lot of times when we did stories, for MSG networks and since they only had beta equipment we would have to use the dubbing machine to transfer what was on our DVC tape to a beta tape.
As much fun as it was to learn all these things I have talked about there were two things that really stood out to me. The first was being able to go out in the field and cover the high school playoff games. I had to log the game, interact with the official scorer and at the end I got to tell the reporter who they should interview. The second really fun thing I got to do was listen in on a live conference call after the Rangers fired Neil Smith and John Muckler. I learned the format in which the reporters could ask the questions and I was responsible for taking notes in order to be able to tell the producer what to put in the story.
There were only two problems that I had with the internship. The first is that since there are other interns that need practice sometimes I didn't get as much practice as I would have liked. The second problem was that in the beginning I had to ask all the time how to do something. It would have been nice if they had volunteered to teach me how to use the equipment. I got the feeling that if I didn't ask I would have sat around doing nothing. That leads me to my next point, which is that on my long day there were sometimes in the afternoon when there wasn't much for me to do.
This internship was a great experience. Besides just teaching me all the technical aspects of the business, it also helped me in such areas as working under pressure to meet a deadline, time management, and a strict attention to details. The respect between the producer and myself seemed to be mutual because he is now helping me try to find a full time position after I graduate. I fully enjoyed my time at Newsl2 and would recommend the internship to future students who are dedicated to the sports field.