Blog 5

Story Ideas


As I expected one of my weaknesses have been my story ideas. While I work hard to follow leads and track down sources, some of the stories I pick don’t lend themselves to television. Realizing this I decided to rethink my strategy and re-evaluate how I choose my stories. I spent time talking to classmates, trying to figure out where they find their story ideas. I also took a walk downtown in search of anything. It took a day, but I think I found a good story. The True/False Film Festival is back in Columbia for the sixth year, which I thought would be a perfect story to cover. The festival runs from Thursday February 26th to Sunday March 1st and in my opinion has a number characteristics that contribute to a strong story. On Friday there is a parade that goes through downtown that should have strong visuals and great Nat Sound. I can use shots of people getting their tickets, and walking into movie theatres. In my interviews I’ll ask people how often they attend the festival, what they like about it, and how will it affect Columbia’s economy. Another reason I feel this will be a good story is because this weekend’s weather forecast calls for some extremely frigid temperatures, which should cause more people to find things to do inside, like go to the movies.

Journalism

I always try to blog about non-sports stories, but I couldn’t help myself this week after witnessing NFL Network anchor, Rich Eisen run the 40-yard dash. While covering the NFL combine in Indianapolis Eisen ran the 40-yard dash two times. All of the highly touted NFL draft picks attend the combine every year in hopes of impressing NFL scouts with a display of wit and physicality. The 40-yard dash is arguably the most popular event at the combine and Eisen wanted to show viewers what the task entailed. We have been told countless times not to ride the tricycle and in this particular instance I don’t think Eisen rode the tricycle. He may have sat on it, but he never rode it. I think by running Eisen showed viewers how an average person would perform at this task. What made the piece more effective was when the NFL Network ran a simulation that compared how Eisen ran with how some of the other athletes ran. I loved the idea and I feel that if the NFL Network would have made an ordinary person run the 40 instead of Eisen it may have actually been more confusing to viewers because they would not have understood who this other person was and why they were running.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZb3DRt6_Gk