Self-Critique

On the first day I thought this class wsa going to be fun. I've had Jill for other classes and I knew that she would be able to help me work on being an anchor/reporter, mostly because she's been one and so she know what she's talking about. The first day packet that I got was kind of intimidating, but what do you expect for J-term, you have to fit a semester worth of stuff into two weeks. I felt comfortable my first time on air, because i've done it before, but by the time it was my tern to be on-air, we had talked about my voice and pacing, so I was a little nervous, because I was trying really hard to concentrate on those things, while still reading the teleprompter and showing emotion. Shooting a stand-up was something new to me. I've done tons of packages before, but I pretty much did interviews and then just an intro and outro on camera. So that was something that I really needed to learn. It still takes me a little bit to think of a good stand-up, since at that point of the process, you haven't written the script yet.

Something that I believe to have improved on during this class is pacing myself while reading the teleprompter. Before I didn't mean to, but did, read really fast through everything... causing me to slur or mess words up. I will continue to work on everything that I learned from this course. However, on major thing is the sound of my voice while speaking on camera, for example NOT speaking from my throat. My weakness as a reporter is the whole package script and thining of everything fast, to get the story done in a short amount of time. I think that's something that I'll get better at as time goes by and the more I do it. One major strength that I have is my persistency. I'm very persistent and any station who I work for will find that out...so no matter what, you know I'm going to get the information I want and need for my story.

My ultimate career goal is to be an anchor of a morning show, like "Regis and Kelly". However, to get there I'll have to put in my time working as a reporter and anchor. For those reasons alone, this class helped me to grow and open my mind on some of the things I was doing wrong before, and how to improve them. Talking to Jill and Virginia Kerr were two of the main parts of this class that helped to streamline my goal as a morning show host. They put me at ease and let me know that I can do anything I put my mind to, if I want it bad enough. I really enjoyed this class. In fact, the only negative thing I have to say is that I don't like the fact that I can't take it again!!

KPLR

The first thing I noticed while watching KPLR was how the CW11 set didn’t look as professional as the other stations in Saint Louis. The anchors were Melanie Moon and Rick Edlund. Melanie was wearing blue eye shadow (it may have been the smoky-eye look, but it looked blue to me), bright red lipstick, a red blazer, and a white undershirt. Rick was wearing a black suit, white undershirt, and red striped tie.

The reporters that I saw within the first ten minutes were Tony Miller, Grant Rampy, and Theresa Petry. I did see the three packages, but I don’t believe that any of them were live, because it’s dark outside at nine o’clock and in their packages, they weren’t dark out. Tony Miller was the first one that I saw and his stand-up was in front of a building, I don’t know what building it was, but there were a ton of windows and I’m assuming it might be the court house.

One story that I remember was reported by Tony Miller and was about a man named Clifford Rowling. Police arrested Clifford because he entered an elementary school and abducted a little girl. He is currently in jail and his bond is set at 1/2 a million dollars. Another story that I remember, because it was so sad, was about two puppies. A pit bull and a golden retriever were tossed over a Saint Louis overpass and fell about 30 feet in traffic. The pit bull is under care with broken legs, while the golden retriever ran from the scene. One last story that I remember was reported by Theresa Petry about Saint Louis police officers wanting a pay increase. It used to be that officers must live in the city to be policemen, but was changed that if they’ve been officers for 7years they can move out of the city. One man said that they do have good pensions. However, they make about 4 thousand less than county officers and 8 thousand less than Chesterfield officers. Saint Louis is requesting a 5 percent increase of pay, and without it people are afraid they might walk away. One proposal intended to pay for this is to have a two percent raised sale tax.

The newscast was good, but it was something that I would think to see in a much higher market, not a market 21. The scenery of the studio just looked kind of amateur. The news team does seem credible, because they are in a market 21, but also because they were dressed appropriately and presented themselves nicely (voice and pacing of story). I will definitely watch this station again…just not for the news, because I don’t watch television at 9pm, I either watch it at 10pm or in the morning.

TV Jobs Assignment

#1 - Market number 145, KSNF-TV, in Jopin, Missouri. They are seeing a morning show co-anchor who can bring a sparking on-camera presence and interview skills to the show, and can interact well with the other co-anchor and forecaster. The ND is Jim Jackson.

I would be very interested in this job, and I would probably choose it over the other ones, because it's in Missouri (so i'd be willing to move there), it's a good market size for my first job, and it's a morning show co-anchor, which is what I want to do!!!

#2 - Market number 132, WHBF-TV, in Rock Island, IL. They are looking for a weekend anchor/producer who is sharp and aggressive on both sides of the camera, and can do GA reporting as well. The ND is Scott Frederick.

I would be willing to move for this position, because it's only one state over, so it's not that far away. Also, it's a weekend anchor... so that would be a good start. Producing would be fun and I could still report. It's like the best of all worlds!

#3 - Market number 132, WTVO/WQRF-TV, in Rockford, IL. They are seeking a GA reporter/fill-in anchor who is aggressive, is creative, is highly motivated, loves to break local news stories, comes to the table with story ideas daily, is a team player, can handle the pressures of deadlines and breaking news in a competitive fashion; must be able to go live, with experience is a plus. The ND is Kent Harrell.

I would move here...again, because it's somewhat close to home. I would like this job, because I would be doing the reporting, but still have a chance to anchor, fill in anyway...which is better than nothing!!

Weather With Beth

No... the title of this comment isn't a mistake...now I realize that I'm meant to be an anchor (lol), but I have to put in my time and try other positions. Today we did the news live... so that means that if I mess up... I mess up, and everyone who watches it will see my error made. But I didn't mess up, I did it perfect!!! OR SO I THOUGHT! We were all getting ready to leave and what happens, "Beth, we need to do weather again because we did it wrong in the control room and we switched it to the wrong camera." AHH!! So, I go to do the weather forecast over and... wouldn't you know it... I messed up! Someone (Ed) once told me that we mess up when we don't do shows live, because in our minds we know we can, but when we do it live...we we do it right, because if we happen to make a mistake then we just have to live with it and there's no option to go back and change anything.

Needless to say though, it was a good day and I did get some good information from Jill. My favorite was the list of all the stations in the country and what they ranked. So, now I can start looking up information on the places that I would like to get my first job at, and know that i'm not applying for a station that is a top 75 market, when I would think that they would be ranked like 120...so that'll help me out!

St. Louis Ban

Today myself, Neal, Dustin, and Katharina joined together again to shoot package number two. We decided to do our package on the ban that St.Charles is proposing to put on bars and restaurants. We shot an interview with the R.T.'s owner and a Lindenwood University graduate. It was FREEZING cold out, but we were all outside for a good three hours. By the time we were done I wasn't even cold anymore... I was just frozen! lol. We were able to find a sign to do our stand-up by, which was just perfect! When we were done shooting, we went back to the tv studio, which was locked... thankfully there was a janitor that let us in. If he wasn't there, we probably wouldn't have been able to log our tape... resulting in a bad grade. While we were logging, I was already thinking ahead about what my script is going to look like. So, that's good that I do have some kind of idea and now when I sit down to write my script tonight, it shouldn't take as long as my last script did.

Something else that I wasn't too happy with was the fact that I didn't get my KPLP news analysis done, because I didn't know that they only had one newscast a day, for a half hour, and it was at 9 pm. YIKES!!! But I felt better this morning when I got an e-mail back from Jill, and I wasn't the only one with that problem, so we will have a chance to re-do it tonight! Thank You Jill!!!


Also, I wanted to post a picture I got from our tour at Fox 2 on Tuesday.

Tour time.

Yesterday we didn't have class in the tv studio, or in the classroom. We met at KTVI, My Fox, Channel 2. I didn't know this before, but out school actually had a J-term class that was working at Fox... that's pretty cool. They were doing all sorts of things that had to do with the web... but they did a ton of blogging. That's really neat that they had the opportunity to go there and do that. Then who ever wanted to ask some people at Fox some questions were able to. Lastely, I was able to shoot a stand-up outside of Fox 2. You see, while our class was there talking to people, Ed's class was there shooting b-rolls and interviews. By the time we're done with everything, we'll have a package.

Speaking of packages... today is the day that our group has to get together, again, and start shooting for our next package. Today we'll go down to Main Street and talk to some people about the who banning of cussing in bars. I think that this story is going to be fun to work on and I know that a lot of people have an opinion on this particular subject, so we should be able to get tons of footage. When we're done with that we will be logging our tapes... but this time they have to be hand written... not typed!

KTVI

The first thing I noticed on the show was the background, behind the anchor, it’s Saint Louis and has a blue tint to it, it just popped out at me. However, something that also “popped” out at me was that the anchors were holding a little baby Jesus in a crib. I guess they found it and said that if anyone was missing the baby Jesus to call Fox 2 and claim it. The anchors were Randi Naughton and John Pertzborn. Randi was wearing a red jacket and John was wearing a light brown suit with a yellow undershirt and tie. After they talked about the baby Jesus Glenn Zimmerman talked about the weather and informed me that today will be bright, but not necessarily warm. The high for today is 36 degrees. After a few stories ran Glenn came back on camera and played the song of the day, “On a Clear Day.” While this ran it showed what it currently looks like outside, at the Lambert Airport.

The reporters I saw in the first ten minutes were Shawn Lindsey and April Simpson. Shawn Lindsey talked about how Kenneth Hall Regional Hospital might be closing. There will be a hearing at nine this morning to decide what they are going to be doing with the hospital. Her stand up was in East Saint Louis, in front of the hospital. April Simpson was also live this morning in Kirkwood to talk about the excessive speeding on I-44. To help with the traffic situation they added another lane, however it is more narrow than the rest of the lanes. That doesn’t stop people from driving extremely fast in the lane, at speeds of 90 degrees. April talked with the highway patrol and they said that just because there isn’t any shoulders on the interstate, they will still pull you over. They had some b-roll of a car in the far left lane speeding, quickly passing cars. After that came Real Time Traffic, with Monica Adams. She showed that there was a huge back-up on 270.

I think that the newscast seems nice and likeable. They are communicating with each other, as well as looking into the camera. They seem credible, because they sound confident in what they say, are dressed nicely, and the stories they report on sound well researched. I will definitely watch this station again, FOX 2... not only because I like the newscast, but because I’ll be interning them and helping them out with their morning show this coming Monday!!!

I'll get it this time...

Today we met in that classroom to have a little lecture. I was able to watch some of Jill's newscasts from when she was in college. I was surprised to find out that she was only 17 when she started college. After watching one newscast from her freshman year we watched one from the stage in her career that she felt most confident with herself... it was a HUGE change. So, that gives me hope that I'll be able to get better and improve on my voice and look. We also had a little girls session and Jill showed us girls what make-up she uses and how she uses it. She also told us were to go to get it! Something else I found interesting that we talked about was in these packets that she gave us. It was all about breathing techniques and how to keep from getting nervous. There were some things that I would not have thought to do... like yawning... who would known?! After that it was time to go over to the tv studio.

Today was my day to be one of the anchors. My co-anchor was Davina Horton . We both had a lot of fun together! Granted...we did both mess up a few times... it was funny because I was like "Okay, I got it this time!" But yeah... i messed up again. Sakshi was so hard for me to say, I kept asking her in class... "How do you pronounce your name again?... Did I say it right?" lol. Don't worry though we got the news done!

Edit...Edit...Edit...

Yup...It was that time today....EDITING!!! I already knew how to edit...so it wasn't really anything new to me. You see… I took video production and got very involved with Avid. I might have...perhaps...annoyed everyone in my group, because I'm a huge perfectionist and I think that everything has to be perfect. But if there is one thing I've learned from Jill and Virginia, it's that you don't have a lot of time to edit your packages when you're actually on the job and working at a station. You may have only 20 minutes to edit… and that is definitely something that I have to work on, because I can spend hours and hours editing one two minutes package.

Today we also had our scripts due. Out of mine and Neal’s... Neal won. :( I’m just kidding... Congrats Neal! Now don’t you think that mine wasn’t good... because it was great... in my opinion I did a good a job and it was just a person preference on who’s scripts we got to actually use to edit. However, we did use Neal to do our voice-over and stand-up, because when we did stand-ups Dustin and I wore jeans (booo) and Neal dressed nicely... in black pants and a nice collared shirt.

We also met with Jill and she gave us a little voice lesson. She gave some good pointers on how to speak, breath, and pace myself while reading. She was very informational and told me about some things I was doing... that I didn’t know I was doing before... so now comes the tough part... fixing everything!!!

Operation Camera

In class today we turned in our logs for our packages. We also talked a little bit about interviewing and how to get the people that you’re interviewing to say what you want by asking the same questions in different ways. Plus, it’s hard to interview children because they all want to be on television, but when it comes time and you have the camera set up, lights up and rolling, they freeze up and don’t want to talk anymore. They start saying yes, no, and I don’t know to all the questions that you ask.

Then we went over to the television studio and taped the news. It was my day to run the cameras. I set the camera up to tape the sports with John Walsh, entertainment with Dustin Bailey, and weather with Davina Horton. When we were done taping those segments I had to rearrange the cameras and set them up for the news. I lined up camera three to set on Michael Calhoun and camera one to set on Neal Steinbach. Mike had to be more positioned on the right of the screen because his graphics were going to be on the top left of the screen and it was the complete opposite for Neal, so I positioned him more on the left of the frame. Even though I want to be in front of the camera…it is essential to know how to do the work behind the camera too! All of the students that did the newscast did a great job…I’m proud to call them my classmates!

KSDK

The first thing I noticed while watching news on KSDK at 10:00 am was Art Holliday. He just stood out in his black suit, with a pink undershirt and pink and gray, checkered tie. Art Holliday was a single anchor and worked by himself today. I saw all kinds of reporters that included Christine Dalwin, Lee Ann Ray, and Jay Gray. However, these reporters weren’t local here in Saint Louis. Jay Gray talked about Life-ware and how it now runs just about everything inside the home. For example, if someone rings the doorbell and you’re watching a movie the television actually pauses itself. Also, when you turn your home security alarm off then the lights come on, shades pull up, and music can come on. I don’t exactly know where his live shot was…there was a bunch of computers behind him, so I’m thinking it was done at his station. During his live shot he said that they weren’t as cheap as you would think…that they were actually quite expensive.

One story that I remember was when Christine Dalwin reported about Debra DeFay and how she is currently going back to court to see if she has violated her probation. Earlier she had sexual relations with a student and now she has been talking to a seventeen year old girl about sexual relationships and more. Another story I remember was when Art Holliday talked about Johnny Grant dieing. The found him in a hotel room, which he stayed in often, and believe that he died from natural causes. He was eighty-five years old. One last story that I remember was when Lee Ann Ray reported about autism. Researches have found that chromosome 16 is either missing or duplicated in most people with autism. However, this is only one important piece in the whole puzzle of autism.

We also saw Scott Connell and he gave us a little weather update. He said that we will have a little bit of filtered sunshine, but clouds will be getting thicker and today we might see a little bit of rain and possibly a tad-bit of snow tonight, but this weekend we shouldn’t see much precipitation.

I thought the newscast and anchor were comforting…the stories were interesting and Art seemed like he was speaking conversationally. I believe the reporters definitely have good credibility, because they are working in a market that is even “higher up the charts” than Saint Louis. The stories sound like they were well thought up and researched, which also helped their credibility. Art Holliday also seems like a credible source because he presents himself very well by dressing nicely and speaking confidently in what he says. You would catch me watching this channel again, because Channel 5 is the “number one station” in Saint Louis.

Tape Rolling

Today we taped our interview, stand-ups, and b-roll for our packages. We interviewed Mike Wall. It was a lot of fun...but it did take a lot longer than I expected it to. To be honestly...I thought it would take like an hour, but it took all of three hours. But then again, we did spend some time just goofing off and talking to Mike about all sorts of random things. It was a really “natural” interview, because I do know him and so that helps me to just feel comfortable around him. Plus, he’s a really fun guy…for example, we were just taping some b-roll of him and he was walking into him office and next thing you know…he just runs smack into his office door…on purpose! It was hilarious. One thing that cost us some time was that our wireless microphone decided that it didn’t want to work, and we still had one interview to do…so, we started really worrying about what we were going to do. That’s when Mike Wall came in handy…again, since he’s in charge of KCLC, he just happen to have a microphone and a cord that we could use! Yesss… it was kind of crazy that we didn’t think to ask him sooner…all well, we got the situation under control! All in all I think our package is shaping up to be really good...so I'm excited to see what it turns out like! We did log our package, but we still have to write our scripts and everything. We edit on Friday…so we will see….

KMOV

The first thing I noticed when watching KMOV's “4 In The Morning” at six was Virginia Kerr. I will admit that it’s because I was looking for her though. I wanted to study her before I interview her, to get a feel of how she does things, so I can make sure that she feels comfortable. However, besides that I noticed the “News 4” logo behind the anchors. The two anchors were Virginia Kerr and Marc Cox. Virginia was wearing a turquoise sweater, bulky necklace, and some dangly earrings. Marc was wearing a black suit, white shirt, and a red dotted tie.

The news started with Matt Chambers and a weather report. He talked about storm reports and said that it will be getting “cooler, rather than warmer”. Just a moment later Paul Cook updated with traffic and stressed the flooding on roads, from the rain. Throughout the first ten minutes of the news there were no live shots of reporters. However, Christine Doyle’s voice was on the air as a live shot by the West County mall showed what traffic looked in that area. Christine also explained that even at six in the morning, there was already a ton of cars out.

One story I remember was about Southern Wisconsin and the January storms that hit them. They reached a new January high and about a dozen people were hurt from all the storms they had. Another story I remember was about Barack Obama pushed even farther ahead for the Democratic race for President. So far today, the presidential primary in New Hampshire is proving his lead on the other candidates. If Missourians want to vote, then their deadline to register is tomorrow. One other story I remember was about a tornado that passed through Webster County. In the tornado’s path was two people…which didn’t make it out alive.

The newscast seems credible because they work at a well established station. Also, they all look nice and appear to know what they’re talking about. I would definitely watch this station again. The casts’ voices are easy on my ears and they all dress nicely. Also, even though there was not a lot of news stories within the first twenty minutes of the newscast…there was a ton of traffic and weather updates. Since the show was about the time that everyone would be leaving for work or school, it seemed appropriate!

Virginia Kerr

Virginia Kerr came to speak to our TV Talent class and was very sweet. She had all sorts of information to tell us. I know that I kind of always thought that anchors and reporters had to speak a certain way...and well, she said not to try to be somebody else, that I need to stay true to myself and just be natural. So, that takes a lot off my back, I feel a lot better about things. She also shared some of her most interesting stories. One time she was sent off to get some news and she didn't end up coming home for a whole week. She went to Wal-Mart and had to buy shampoo, change of clothes, etc. That's crazy...just to go to work one day and next thing you know...you don't come back home for seven days! She was right though, it would be a very exciting job, you’d always be on your toes, and you would get to be right there when something happens! She also told me about the story she’s most proud of while being in Saint Louis. This story was about her getting the whole community involved in donating tons of clothes and presents together for a single mom with eight children. She said that they were able to get a hold of the families Christmas lists, shoe sizes, and cloth sizes so that they were able to get several truck’s full of things for the family. Virginia was also able to unfold this story live on KMOV…which is awesome to show all of Saint Louis something that you worked so hard on!


You can check her out at the KMOV Website or take a look at her blog.

Interview Time

Well...I did it, I interviewed Virginia Kerr I was a little nervous, because she's an anchor and i'm....well, not. But she was very nice and friendly. She answered any questions that we had and was very straight forward and honest. She started out by coming into our classroom and just talking with us. After that we went over to the television studio and taped my interview with her. Before and after the interview she took pictures with the class…which was very cool, because now I will not only have the interview with her, put pictures too!


After that we did our voice over for our class package.Our professor, Jill, picked Haley to be the voice over…she did a really good job too! Then we met in our groups…my group is myself, Dustin, Neal, and Katharina is our photographer. While we met we decided what we were going to do our personal packages on. Our final decision came to interview Mike Wall and have like a professor profile segment. We chose Mike because he's a hoot! We are probably going to get his credentials and history with radio. Plus, I think we want to get some information about him that people may not necessarily know about him. Then, we will need to probably interview some students about what their opinions are of Mike. Right now I’m not really sure who is going to be the student/s that we interview, because I don’t really know anyone that’s at Lindenwood right know, that isn’t in our class and is going to be busy working on their own packages…so we might just play that one by ear. By the time we’re done editing it and everything I know it will look good and be interesting. To tell you the truth…I’m looking forward to talking with Mike Wall and I think it'll be loads of fun.

Lights...Camera...Action

Time to do our own packages. Me, Neal, and Dustin, and Katharina are a group, and together we are going to get together and create, shoot, and edit a package. We haven't decided what we are going to do yet, but I have the feeling it's going to be GREAT!

The best news I got today is that I get to interview Virginia Kerr tommorrow. I'm so excited...last year I would have never thought this oppportunity would have been MINE!! ...but it is and i'm keeping my fingers crossed that I look half as good as her!! Therefore…I stayed after class on Friday and talked with my professor, Jill Schroeder, about make-up. She gave me all kinds of tips on what to wear, where to get it, and how to apply it. For example, I would have never thought to have put make-up on my eyebrows…but apparently it really makes a difference. So….today, I went and bought all kinds of make-up from MAC. Jill said the people at MAC would know what they were talking about….but I told the lady that I needed everything…and she just looked at me, thank goodness that Jill told me Studio Fix was what I wanted and she brought in her make-up and showed it to me, because I pretty much had to figure it out on my own. The only thing that the girl did pick out for me was my lip liner and lipstick….but she didn’t even try to sell it to me at first…I had to say...”I need blush, I need lip liner and lipstick, I need stuff to put on my eyebrows, I need mascara”…You would have thought that she wanted to sell me as much as she could!

Package's

Today we learned all kinds of things I really would not have thought to do if we wouldn't have talked about them. For example...logging. Yea, I have seen people logging things before, but I never have. I normally just remember where things are on the tape and then search for them while editing. I guess logging makes sense, but it just seems like so much work... to me. After we talked about everything we were going to do today, we went over to the LU-TV26 studio and started putting together a package about our J-Term class. I was one of the people interviewed, along with Neal and Jen...Jill, our professor, interviewed us. It was kind of cool to see and hear myself on camera...it helped me to see what I need to improve on. Everyone in the class also had the opportunity to shoot a stand-up. We all came up with the stand-up together... even though, Jill kind of came up with most of it! ...It's just because she's been in the business and she has had a ton of experience. I hope to be able to just think of stand-up's and track's as fast as she does. But I'm sure that it just takes time to get that good.

Oh, incase I forgot to mention, we did work with Ed Voss's Applied Mass Communication's class today as well. They were the one's behind the camera and audio. They did a great job. They were prompt and knew what they were doing... which was awesome!

My First Day

You heard me right... I've already started school and today was my first day...NOT yesterday! (I came to school yesterday...thinking it was the 3rd, but it wasn't...lol) We did the usual first day stuff...review the syllabus and talk about what we are going to be doing throughout the next few weeks. I have to admit that I'm really excited that Virginia Kerr is going to be speaking to our class next week!!! Ahhh, I'm so stoaked...I have to chance to (somewhat) "pick at her brain" and hopefully learn several things from her! I know she won’t be shy because she’s used to being in front of a camera everyday, but the only thing I might be worried about is that she’s too professional or that she doesn’t “loosen” up enough so that we can talk to her as not just someone to look up to…but like a friend…in a sense.

We also did a "fake" news cast, which was pretty cool because we were able to see how everyone else in the class read the same script. I think I did okay…obviously it wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever done or will do…but after this class I hope to gain the knowledge of how to do everything correctly and hopefully I pick everything up in the short amount of time that we have for this course. I do however know that I am going to learn a ton in this class and I'm positive that I'll have a blast doing it!!

A Little Info About Me

First I just want to start off by thanking you for taking the time and visiting my blog! I'm Beth Haslag. I was born in Olympia, Washington and later moved to Missouri with my Aunt and Uncle. One thing you may not know about me is that I’m adopted. I still keep in contact with my family in Washington…I love them to death!!! I currently have two nieces, Bridgette and Alyssa... it might be bias to say…but they’re probably the cutest little girls EVER! Something else you may not know from my bio is that I have had to opportunity to intern with MyFox this coming semester.... starting towards the end of January. I will be helping them out with their Morning Show. I'm super excited about it. I went on a tour with my television class last semester and knew that I would like to intern there because everyone seemed so very nice there. So I called and e-mailed, and called, and e-mailed until they told me to come in and interview. I got some great feedback at the interview and before I left I was offered the internship! I know they're going to welcome me with open arms! They also said that I would be able to go out with the reporters and see how everything is done by professionals…first hand. So that’s cool!

Here's a little slide show with a little more information about me, including some of the people that I love and care about in my life…