Highlights in Producing from KOMU
COLUMBIA, MISSOURI
KOMU 8 Jan. 2020 Producing Reel
I am graduating the Missouri School of Journalism in a few short months, and I wanted to put together some highlights from my time at KOMU. I write captivating, interesting headlines/cold open packages to get the viewers' attention and showcase the best content of the day. I love breakouts to give viewers more details on a story that's impactful. Creative teases are highly important to me as well to make sure a viewer stays for the entire show.
Breaking News on September Homicides in Columbia
In the month of September in Columbia, we had five homicides (four at the time of this newscast). Columbia's Police Chief held a press conference on the recent homicides and named two suspects held at 3:30-3:45pm. As the 5 p.m. producer, I had to work really hard to get the breaking news, SOTs from the press conference, a field anchor, etc. into the newscast. I worked with reporters as well to make sure we had content that would provide context to all of the homicides that had happened up to that point. This is the final result.
Localizing an International Story & Using Social Media
From the morning show...
We lead with an update to the situation in Syria and updates on the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. I wanted to make this an interesting topic to those in mid-Missouri, so I decided to include a SOT from Sen. Josh Hawley, D-Missouri, who sponsors a bill about the state of democracy in Hong Kong.
Developing News, Building up Reporter Tosses & Satellite Feeds
I decided to lead with this developing news instead of national news on the impeachment inquiry because this has been a HUGE story in the state and the nation. Untested sexual assault kits backlogged in the state has many people really upset and frankly outraged. I worked with my reporters to showcase their stories in different ways. One I utilized a cold SOTVO open to show the emotion around these numbers. While the other, I added graphics to show who the trial was about. One aspect of the show I really wanted to make sure was in was the satellite feed for the democratic debate that night. The director and I worked to get the feed from NBC newschannel in the bam behind the anchor. Using the feed really highlighted that story instead of a normal VO preview piece.
Breakout Example -- Hurricane Dorian
Also from the morning show....
During this time, Hurricane Dorian threatened a lot of people near the Gulf and Bahamas. So, I decided to create a 4 minute breakout highlighting some sound and new video we had gotten overnight. I also worked with the right now anchor on finding content that related to Dorian. Looking back on this I like how I weaved the stories together to make the block of stories. One thing I would change is to pick a different opening SOT.
Quick Adaption and Problem-Solving
Mere minutes before the 5pm show started, iNEWS and our video system completely crashed. So, in a moment of quick thinking in the booth, I told the director we would have to pull up tweets on our extra producing computer and show those during our reporter stories, local and national. Because we had to use tweets instead of video it resulted in some coding and camera issues, but -- all in all -- I'm very proud of my show. This is a huge example of my quick thinking, problem-solving skills and quick adapting.