Today I was a good intern. This means, in short that I both did the menial tasks that no one else wanted to do while also fulfilling my own agenda.
After writing a reader I collected the writings I could find and found a tape, I then brought them into the recording studio and recorded a voice over. I played it back and I sound like a real anchor, which I find SO SO SO exciting... makes me reconsider my future in broadcast.
I also shadowed a woman in sales. She explained to me her "exciting" job and others in the department.
Perhaps you haven't been in a station's building before; if not here is how ours is set up: As you enter there will be a beyond extravagant entryway with Cinderella stairs and marble floors (thank you political advertising), the first floor is all news- a busting shuffle of button-down shirts pushing past each other with a constant murmur of ringing phones. The room is full of television sets, they fight the incessant ringing with their horrifying pictures which flash simultaneously with their perky faux mid-western voices. The fluorescent lights highlight the bags under the eyes of each reporter and seem to extract the effects of the burnt coffee which cools on each desk. Hovering above this insanity is the second floor- sales. This floor is a different world from the ringing caffinated one below. Here everybody is quiet, the desks aren't scattered haphazardly but every person has their own sanitized glass cage with their organized desk and framed photographs hanging above them. Below reporters seem to be playing a game of musical chairs- switching desks, computers and resources like Wallstreet-natives. Here, in sales, each person knows their tasks; the ones incomplete from yesterday and the ones on the lists in their minds.
I felt the need to paint a picture, because that is exactly what it is. You would think they soundproofed each office. Having been in news all summer I feel a little bad for the sales hamsters. The woman assured me that they like their jobs stating she'd been there for 27 years.
I asked all the producers to write, as I always do, but this time I decided not to wait for them but to go ahead and write them anyway and if they delete them that is fine, I wrote about how fat is contagious. I don't make this stuff up.
I spoke with the "big guys" and they refused my request to leave the studio with a reporter to see the full process of how a package is made due to insurance reasons. I talked to a reporter who has taken a liking to me and told her that I would soon be seeking a part time job at a station in Bangor and she told me that she used to work at a station there and could refer me to someone there. I plan to take advantage of this. I told her I would probably end up behind a camera, she told me I was beyond that and should be a producer. I'm pretty sure my voice squeeked a "really?". I was shocked she thought that I could be a part-time producer with my lack of age and experience. I'll go for it.
Perhaps I should take to writing literature instead.
9hrs
