This summer, I was chosen to be an intern for ABC Eyewitness News by Kelli Crosby ABC's intern coordinator. Th internship is highly selective and very competitive. I am very thankful that I was given the opportunity to learn about television production and news reporting from the best of the best. It was a most rewarding experience and I learned a lot.
Interns at ABC are considered an integral part of the news team. I was given the opportunity, as an intern, to participate in the day to day running of the newsroom, observe the editing room and control room operations, represent Eyewitness News at press conferences and accompany reporters into the field when they went on location to cover a story, and when they went to interview celebrities such as: Latin singing sensation Ricki Martin, actress-model Isabella Rosellini, and singer Jordan Knight. Most importantly, I was given sound advice about what it takes to be a newscaster and a television producer.
The ABC news team is staffed by highly trained newscasters, reporters, editors, writers, and technical support crew. Also helping to guide the production process are outstanding producers, news directors and their staffs, and independent consultants. It is a well-oiled news team.
It is easy to forget the enormous concentration and physical energy expanded by everyone working on a newscast. A look through the newsroom just prior to the Eyewitness News inevitably turns up a few team members with eyes upturned, as if searching for inspiration on the ceiling. It is apparent that no one who attempts to turn events into words can completely escape these moments of perplexity.
The newscasters: Bill Beutel, Roz Abrams, Rob Hanrahan, Dr. Jay Adlersberg, Sam Champion, Bill Evans and Lee Goldberg, and the reporters: Michelle Charlesworth, Lara Spencer, NJ. Burkett, Nancy Loo, and Art McFarland seem to share the news with their audience instead of merely passing it on as impersonal knowledge. They are friendly, outgoing people, who take the sting out of the visual catalogue of daily troubles which form so much of our news. They watch, read, ask and listen with notebook out and pen in hand. They are interested in nuances, concepts and ideas, and they are always looking to translate these subtle thoughts into what is essentially the language of the newscaster -- the language of facts. As Bill Beutel (newscaster), told me during lunch one day, "Facts are notoriously slippery. They can get lost while being transmitted from someone's mouth and from that mouth to another person's ear. They can wander off somewhere before hitting a note pad." That's why newscasters and reporters handle facts with so much care at Eyewitness News. The newscasters and reporters at Eyewitness News are suspicious of any story that can't be tied to solid fact. They are uncomfortable with predictions and speculation. As Bill Beutel (newscaster) pointed out to me "get the facts, eliminate the trivia, avoid redundancies, and be clear with words".
The reporter's job at Eyewitness News is demanding, but rewarding. It is one of the most exciting and desirable jobs there. The reporter is just one link in the chain that begins at the scene of an accident, or a news conference that ends in a viewer's living room. The reporter is the representative of the public at a newsworthy event; He/She is their eyes and ears and sometimes their conscience. His/Her primary responsibility is to the public. His/Her questions are asked on their behalf. George Stephanopoulos, President Clinton's former press secretary, who is now an ABC Eyewitness News political correspondent, told me that "a newscast is the purest form of communication".
Fred Chieco (assignment desk editor) helped the interns to understand the dynamics of the news program. He assigned the reporters and cameramen to cover specific stories and press conferences. But reporters developed their own stories both out of these assignments and in other areas. At Eyewitness News it's up to the reporter to determine what, if any, news is actually there or whether the news might be part of a larger trend or pattern. Fred advised me that "good reporters don't wait for news to come to them; they look for it". I will never forget his advice.
Ken Plotkin the managing editor of the newsroom is the glue that holds the entire newsroom together. He makes certain that the newsroom is competently managed and staffed. Watching him, I learned the importance of creating and processing the written word and graphic materials, which comprise a newscast within a given period of time.
With few exceptions, everything on a daily newscast at Eyewitness News-every film clip, every videotape, every still photo, every map and every scrap of news--is prepared and assembled on the day it is aired, all done within the space of a few hours, and in a few minutes it is over. Tomorrow it must be done again with fresh news, and the tomorrow after that with still other news.
Stories are chosen, and organized into a newscast by the ABC Eyewitness News producers so that they form a unified balanced whole. A producer is responsible for the content and production of a single newscast each day. Stories of limited concern are either omitted or are left until the end of the newscast.
The television newsroom prior to air time is a very busy place. What appears as chaos is actually an orderly haste, an organized system going at top speed. A great deal gets done in a very short period of time.
In the studio proper are the newscasters, who read the news on the air, the weathercaster and the sportscaster, the television cameramen, a "boom mike" man responsible for all the studio microphones, a prop man responsible for cards and furniture, the person who operates the TelePrompter, an electrician responsible for lighting, a stage manager who is both a sub-director and the person who cues the newscasters.
A news director, Bart Feder, oversees the entire news operation and administration. He bears ultimate responsibility for all newscasts. His primary responsibility is to supervise the production team in order to transform an idea, or concept, into actual sounds and pictures. He is able to establish a feeling of cooperation, teamwork and mutual respect among the crew and his production staff. As the afternoon passes, a pile of memos grows on his desk.
Every time I visited the control room, I found it to be a very busy and crowded place. There is a bank of television monitors showing what each studio camera sees, what each projector needs, what the videotape room sends, what the control room is sending out, and, what the television station is beaming. The director for ABC News and his staff not only see what is available through several live cameras, but also, what other stations are airing that very moment. The director and his staff make decisions about effective picture and sound sequence.
My visits to the editing room, always, found the editing room editor and his staff cutting and assembling film clips. They were editing field footage captured on tape that viewers see as a finished product in a news report. The editing room staff was constantly looking for frames which had to be removed, and for scenes which had to be spliced together. While these people were building the film clips to be shown, the writers were building the stories to be aired.
Many times during my internship, I observed the writers writing copy for the anchors which was based on reporters notes and available videotape. Although the newscast is fully scripted-insofar as the newscasters read from a prepared script--owing to time limitations the program is often produced without a complete rehearsal.
Eyewitness News, as the name implies, brings field reporters into the studio each day to report their stories, aided by film shot earlier in the day. In so doing we get a purer report, because the reporter has reported it and delivered it on the air.
The ABC Eyewitness News internship helped me to better understand the dynamics of the news program and the continuous energy and teamwork that is needed to successfully create daily newscasts.