Today was the beginning of the rest of my life! I really cannot believe I'm an intern for 6ABC. I've been watching this station since I was in elementary school. Now, I'm sitting next to award-winning journalists, directors, producers who've been doing this for longer than I've been alive. It's quite surreal.
Prior to entering the newly built 6ABC building, I didn't know what to expect. Security made my ID badge which will grant me access to every door in the building. The assistant director of Creative Services (Tim Fenstermacher) came and welcomed me to the department. Thereafter, he showed me to my desk and the producers and coordinators I'd be working with over the next four months. Maria, the Social Media producer (who sits directly behind me) is very bubbly and pleasant. Diane, the Creative Services coordinator is also very nice and welcomed me to the department!
Tim explained that I'd be working closely with Maria to facilitate the station's growing social media pages. She gave me access to all of the anchors' professional Facebook sites as well as the general Facebook page for the department of meteorology and a few popular newscasts such as "6at4" and "The Thanksgiving Day Parade."I was surprised that Maria gave me access so quickly. It made me feel powerful.
I also met the VP of Creative Services, Mike Monsell, who is a bit intimidating. I've dealt with worse so I'm not complaining. Right away, he gave me an assignment. He showed me an old calendar of 2011 and told me to update it to 2012. All holidays, annual special events and projects were to be transported to the 2012 calendar. It wasn't difficult at first until I realized that different holidays and special events fall on different days in 2012. Google really came in handy today!
Being that I am a perfectionist, the calendar project took an hour. Mike was pleased with my diligence and commitment to the small project so hopefully he'll warm up.
Executive producer, Mara Webb gave me a brief tour of the building. I met tons of producers, anchors and reporters! I was so excited to meet them! Adam Joseph, Alicia Vitarelli, Brian Taff... the list goes on. Today's an exciting day.
Today, I learned the art of writing topicals. Topicals are teasers that the Creative Services (Promotions) Department is responsible for writing for the upcoming newscast. For example, Mara writes a 20-30 sec teaser that airs at 3:30pm everyday for the 4:00pm newscast. Every day she checks in with Matt Dennis, executive producer of the 4pm news, to see what stories are upcoming. He gives us 4-5 stories to choose from and Mara takes them and condenses them into a 30 second teaser. It's definitely harder than it sounds. I practiced writing my first teaser which actually ended up reading more like a newspaper headline. Whoops! I have to remember that I work for Promotions, not News. She reassured that I would get the hang of it soon enough. She said my writing is strong! (Thanks PITT)
As the day wrapped up, I got to sit in on the first department meeting where Mike officially welcomed me to the department. He gave me a couple assignments for the upcoming weeks:
1. Get 100 of my Facebook friends to like the 6ABC Action News Facebook page.
2. Write a haiku for the next meeting.
3. Be prepared to shoot the behind the scenes footage of our big promo video shoot on Saturday.
Thats right! I started just in time to be apart of the first big promotion shoot of the year. This is gonna be BIG!
Overall, today was so exciting. I can actually see myself working here after this experience is over. Round two tomorrow!
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