The Life of a Student Reporter

Tonight I had anchor auditions for WUFT News. This is the one night where I get to showcase the talent that I have and to show to my news directors that I am worthy enough of an anchor position for the upcoming semesters. How does the process work: I show up to my news directors office at 7 p.m. We go over my resume together and discuss my previous work experience We discuss the semesters I will be available to work for WUFT News as well as the position(s) I would like to have  I am given three pages of a practice script  I get 5 minutes to rehearse and practice the script Once my 5 minutes is up, I go into the newsroom studio and go "live" for my report as anchor  And that's it! Anchor auditions are short and sweet, but there are a few twists thrown into the mix. In the three page script, there are words that are hard to pronounce, words that are spelled wrong, inappropriate phrases that we do not use in news, and names of individuals we have never seen befor...

In the life of a student reporter, I am CONSTANTLY, and I mean CONSTANTLY, covering events that are in the Gainesville, Ocala, Alachua County, Marion County, etc area. But this week, instead of focusing on an event for this post, I decided to go outside of my comfort zone... I covered the weather. When it comes to weather, I have 0% background, knowledge or interest in the topic. The thought of becoming a meteorologist is the last thing on my mind. But when it comes to news, however, I am all over it. For me, covering and reporting on the news just seems natural. But this week in the newsroom on campus, I was assigned to cover weather damage that happened in Gainesville earlier in the week. We had severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings causing damage that almost mimicked what we saw during Hurricane Irma, but on a smaller scale. One of the people I interviewed with regards to the weather damage in the Gainesville area was John Shaw, the Emergency Management Director f...

Today I had the opportunity of having my video reel critiqued by a professional in the news industry. One of my professors decided to contact several people he knows currently in the news industry and set up several FaceTime slots for us to talk with the professionals about our reel. I had the pleasure of speaking to Mandy Mitchell. She is a former University of Florida grad and has spent a number of years in the news industry. She originally started out as a sports reporter but has more recently switched over to cover and report on the news. She currently works for WRAL, which is located in Raleigh, North Carolina. During my FaceTime session with her, we talked about the quality of my reel, the different pieces of work I showcase in my reel, and how I can improve it before I graduate. Here is my current newsreel. Take a look at it and let me know what you think! Although I only spoke to Mandy for roughly 10-15 minutes, I learned a lot of from our talk session. If you ever ha...

Being a full-time student and reporter takes up a majority of my time and daily schedule. However, on top of that, I am also involved in several campus organizations.  One of the organizations I am involved in is called Campus Diplomats. We are the official ambassadors to UF's Dean of Students Office. Throughout each semester, we put on several programs, outreach and service opportunities to ensure students apart of all populations are represented and are given resources to ensure they are successful and feel welcome on UF's campus.  In addition to our three main areas of focus, we also like to incorporate and improve moral within the organization's membership. We currently have over 100 members, including 42 new additions that were added at the end of February.  This past weekend, we had our Spring Retreat to give new members and current members a chance to really bond for the first time and partake in group activities.  I decided to take my report...

As I mentioned in my previous post, my news shift ended up falling on my birthday this year. When  I first realized this was going to happen, I was extremely upset that I couldn't take the day completely off to give myself a relaxing and peaceful day. But, I was able to find a loophole. I decided to cover a weekend story that counted as the story I would have to cover on my birthday. So instead of going out to find a story, I just stayed in the newsroom to edit and piece together my weekend story for the evening newscast. Although working on my birthday is never ideal, I decided to create a list of tips to remind myself of how I could still enjoy my day even though I was at work. While you may not be able to do the same thing as I did to get out of completely working on my birthday, hopefully, these tips I have created can help you for the next time you work on your birthday or another important day in your life. Plan your day out - Create a schedule for that day. Whethe...

Being a reporter means that sometimes you might have to give up a weekend or evening to cover a story. Well, today I decided to do just that - I covered my first weekend story. Although this was completely optional on my part I decided to do this for several reasons. One because my birthday occurs on the day I have a news shift so by covering this story today I would get my birthday (semi) off. Plus, I have never attempted to cover a weekend story or event and felt like now would be the perfect time to do so. I'm used to covering a story during the week when people are mostly active at work and not really taking downtime for themselves and their family. So, I was a little concerned with how the story would turn out. I decided to cover an event called Bricks-N-Blocks. This event was started a few years ago by a husband and wife dedicated to sharing their passion for Lego and other building bricks. The event took place in New Port Richey, Florida and welcomed over a thousand gu...

This week is Spring Break! Not only do I get a week off from classes but I also get a week off from the newsroom. When trying to plan out what I was going to do for this week I decided to look online to see what some of the "hot spots" were for this Spring Break. I ended up stumbling upon an article from Thrillist Travel. It laid out the top 12 locations to visit for Spring Break and a little bit of information on each place. The Top Spring Break Destinations, Ranked Spring Break really is the great American contribution to leisure travel. A week every year where the youngest, sexiest people in America go somewhere hot, with virtually no rules, and nobody there to recognize them. It's a week where you can be whomever you want, do things you wouldn't dare do back home, and generally enjoy life without much consequence. While I was looking at the article what I found interesting the most was that Florida destinations took four out of 12 of the hot spot locati...

I'm sure by now you can tell I have a lot of dedication and passion for being a student reporter. However, it's not always glitter and rainbows when working in this field as a student. As your time in school progresses, the stories you cover must also progress meaning your stories become more difficult as time goes on. But one of the difficulties I have been running into this semester, more specifically, is that with the harder story topics I choose, the less sources want to talk to me because I am a student. While I understand the hesitations many may have when talking to a student about a serious issue or topic, it becomes frustrating to constantly feel like I have to prove myself and my knowledge to allow people to feel comfortable opening up to me. This issue typically happens with a lot of government officials, due to the secrecy of the work their job entails, but has begun its decent to the regular, everyday citizens of Gainesville and Alachua County. For examp...