Chris Vlahos Blog 12

REFLECTION
I am experiencing what is widely known as the calm before the storm….It has almost been too quiet…free time, socializing with friends…wait a minute I’m majoring in journalism at Mizzou that’s not supposed to happen. But that’s okay because quiet time officially ends of Friday May 1st. From May 1st to May 8th I have three reporting shifts in five days, two finals and a presentation. While three reporting shifts in five days don’t sound ideal I am looking at it positively. I feel this is a great way to find out if Broadcast Journalism is a profession that’s right for me. Actually that’s a no brainer maybe I should rephrase that. This will let me know if working in a newsroom is something I may want to pursue in the future.
Anytime someone asks I tell them my dream job would be as a play-by-play announcer and I have gone to camps where for a week all we did was wake up and call games from sunrise to sunset. (That’s when I knew play-by-play was right for me.) It didn’t feel like a job, and every morning I woke up with energy and excitement. I have always assumed that given a choice I would do play-by-play, but the three shifts in five days may actually change my way of thinking.
I am also not naïve enough to believe that everything is going to go according to plans while at KOMU. Sure I would love to do three award-winning stories, but it rarely works out that way. I plan to approach these shifts the same way I would when I used to play baseball and compete in fencing tournaments. I must take the good with the bad, use the fundamentals I have been taught, never lose confidence in my abilities and see the light at the end of the tunnel…and hopefully it’s not a train….


GOOD OR BAD JOURNALISM
I found this story interesting due to the way it was presented to the viewer. Rather than do a basic live shot explaining what happened the reporter opens the package using a motivated pan to show the viewer what the story is about. Then he mentions his CCC and tells the audience that she is actually receiving an award for what she did. I loved the way he led into the bite. He used a woman speaking at a podium with Emma next to her saying, “You’ll hear more about what Emma did”, and then Emma is on camera describing what she did. Although the reporter did use a jump cut I liked the way he let Emma and her grandmother tell the story. He then uses good referencing saying they were racing down the road headed towards danger and shows a car driving down the road.
The most graphic part of the story is hearing Emma describe the wreck and looking at a photo of the car after the collision. This is by far the most telling piece of video. It made the story more real to me. The reporter didn’t use a stand-up, which I thought would have helped the story. He could have done the stand-up at the site of the crash or on the road where the crash occurred, but overall I liked the story because I thought the reporter let Emma and her grandmother tell the story. He avoided becoming the story.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009