Everyday I have to remind myself how lucky I am to be where I am in my career. Some days are easier than others, but there are always places I can look to remember that working at 18 is what I wanted.
There are plenty of annoying things about my job, but I think the majority are the beast of the business. It took a good month to adjust. By now though, I get how things work and realize it's exactly what I was looking for.
I just didn't know what I was getting when I asked for it.
I learned a lot working at FOX 7. It was impossible not too. Most of it was from my own doing. Just like in college, I continued to attend conferences, get critiques and fight for what I wanted. I was lucky enough to have friends and coworkers who were interested in the same thing, so that made it much easier.
I became a much better story teller. I had to. It was a true test of "turning chicken shit into chicken salad." My goal everyday was to tell a good story. That was all I could do. We were horribly understaffed, horribly unequipped and run by a company that didn't even want to be in the news business. No one cared about what most news people care about, beating the competition, getting good ratings, having a quality product. While this state of mind allowed me to enterprise, fight for a story and get my way for the day, I craved being at a station that wanted what I wanted as a whole.
That was my mind set for my next move. A number one or highly competitive station, more breaking news, more live shots (that worked and weren't green specifically). I'm getting exactly that at 18.
In three plus months, I've done one story with the mayor. I've covered maybe one press conference. I have never been to a city council meeting. I couldn't tell you when or where they're held. I rarely do VoSots unless it's directly related to my story.
It should be perfect. But when you go from one extreme to the other, it's not easy. First, there is no community involvement. I could be living in any city. It doesn't matter that it's Lexington. And, unless I do it on my own, I'll never get a true understanding of the pulse of the city.
Second, no one cares what I have to say. It boggled my mind everyday I would try to come up with stories and they were shot down immediately. I was enterprising. Coming up with unique ideas. That's not what we do. We're run and gun, happening now, once now is past, it's no longer news. The stories are day to day. If you didn't do it today, you won't do it tomorrow because by that point, it's old. We want death. We want destruction.
It's just what I wanted???
Yes.
I go live 90 percent of the time. It's teaching me how to stand in front of a dark building that has little or to do with what I'm talking about and find a way to say something interesting. It's teaching me another piece of what I need to be a solid reporter.
There are not as many opportunities for good stories, but it teaches me to find a good story from a car chase, accident, fire. That's not easy. But when it all comes together. When there is a good story to tell and a live shot to go with it, it all comes together just how I wanted.
I know this because I'll go online to watch stories in Evansville. It's night and day. Polar opposites. I can barely comprehend what it's like to cover news like that anymore. Made up news. Of course we make up news here too, but it's a whole new way of turning non-news into news.
It's not perfect. It will get old. My dream, though, is taking what I learned in Evansville and what I'm learning and will learn here, and next time, find a happy medium.
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