Brittany – COM Ambassador Blog

Brittany: Stuff Journalists Like — #17 Breaking News

Stuff Journalists Like — #17 Breaking News

My first experience with breaking news came during the fall semester of my sophomore year. I was in my COM Newswriting and Reporting class when all of a sudden we heard sirens coming from right outside the building. We all ran to the window and saw police cars up on the sidewalk and people running down Comm Ave. None of us knew what was happening, but my professor immediately dropped the lesson plan to give us a chance to cover a real life breaking news situation.

Some of the photojournalists in the class had their cameras with them, and went to shoot stills of the action. When they came back, we learned that there had been a bank robbery and the police had chased down and caught the suspect—so we combined the stills and wrote a report on the story.

That day was only my first time covering breaking news—since then, I’ve had a hand in a few other instances as well. This past fall, news of Joe Paterno’s resignation came during my Newsroom class on the day I happened to be the live reporter. Myself and another student in the class took to the streets at about 8:30 a.m., and had a package shot and edited by 12 p.m. It was an exciting story to cover, and you can check out the final product here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb0_LF4j88U.

Then this semester, a project that I was working on fell through, and I found myself starting from scratch at 11 a.m. for a 3 o’clock show. This was the same day as the second day of the Supreme Court “Obamacare” hearings, so I packed up some equipment at Field Production Services and headed down to the State House to get reaction and film a quick report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiuZk9N3gww.

Although it’s tough to turn a package on a deadline, those two pieces are some of my best work. As a journalist, I was forced to tighten up my reporting; as a broadcaster, the adrenaline that comes with a looming deadline ups my on-camera performance: it’s do or die at that point, and not turning in a package isn’t an option. My COM education has placed me in real-life situations, and I know I’m prepared to cover a breaking news situation when I finally arrive at my first job.

Brittany: Back up your Back-Up

The other day I was one of the COM editing lounges putting the finishing touches on a video package due later that day. For whatever reason, I turned my chair around and accidentally snagged the USB wire connecting my external hard drive to the computer. As my hard drive went crashing to the ground, one of my friends jokingly said from across the room: “I hope you liked your hard drive.”

I laughed it off and plugged it back in to resume work, but then the worst happened: my hard drive started making a loud whirring noise, and didn’t show up on the desktop. I immediately snatched the hard drive out of the computer and went running straight for the tech crew down the hall. He plugged it in, held it up to his ear, and said two syllables: “uh oh.”

As a broadcast student getting ready to enter the job market, an external hard drive is of utmost importance: on it was every package from every class I’ve ever taken at BU. There’s anchoring clips, live stand ups, sports features, hard news stories—everything!

Currently, my hard drive is in the hands of the BU IT department, and I’m hoping for the best. However, in the event of a worst-case scenario, all hope is not lost. Past and current professors have stepped up, offering their support (“We’ll do more projects to replace what you lost!”) and assistance (“I have some of your packages saved from the class you took with me”). I’m confident that between what might be left over on other people’s hard drives and what might be hidden in the archives of BUTV, I’ll be able to pull almost all of my content together.

Throughout all of this, the funniest thing is that most of the people I’ve told this story have had a similar reaction: did you back it up? I never knew I had to back up my external hard drive, which is supposed to be my back up! So to everyone else reading this, do yourself a favor and back up your back up! And if you don’t back up your back up and your back up fails… make sure you have people behind your back to help you figure out the next step! 🙂

Brittany: The Beanpot

In my last blog, I spoke about my Hockey East internship with NESN. Over the course of the last few months, my big project has been to work on Beanpot feature stories—this year was the 60^th Anniversary of the Beanpot, and I spent hours working on footage of interviews with past and present Beanpot players for the celebration of that anniversary. The culmination of the project came this past Monday when BU met BC in the Beanpot Finals.

For both teams, there was a lot on the line for the game: either BU was going to with its 30^th title overall (half of all 60 Beanpot tournaments ever played!) or BC was going to win its 3^rd straight. As I walked through the Garden on Monday night, I recognized the faces of many Beanpot greats—many faces that I had become very familiar with while logging their interviews. The atmosphere was exciting, and I knew it was going to be a good game.

Being a current BU student and a NESN intern presents an interesting situation—I’m really supposed to be unbiased, but in a crowd of scarlet and gold it gets a little tricky. During the overtime period, I was watching the game on a tiny screen right outside of the BC locker room. Every time something happened, I would make the opposite reaction of the people around me, prompting the NESN producer I was with to say, “Let’s go over to the BU side.” (Good idea.) So for the rest of the overtime period I watched with some of the BU athletic staff in the setting below:

With about 10 seconds left in overtime, BC retained possession of the puck and skated it into BU’s zone. The man standing next to me started saying, “Don’t do anything stupid…don’t do anything stupid—” and then BC sophomore Bill Arnold put it in the back of the net with 6.4 seconds left to give BC the win. Because I was there with NESN and not with BUTV, I had to run back over to the BC side of the locker rooms, where I watched the celebrations, postgame interviews, and trophy presentation from the BC bench. Talk about rubbing salt in an open wound.

The Beanpot taught me an important lesson on being a sportscaster in a situation where I might be biased. Journalism needs to be impartial, but I can’t imagine myself wanting to work anywhere besides in Boston. If everything eventually works out and I end up back in the Bean as a professional journalist, I will have had this time to practice my internal cheering and external neutrality. But for now—GO BU!

Brittany: COM-portunities

The last time you heard from me, I was interning at Chronicle on Boston’s WCVB Channel 5. I told you all what a great experience it was for me, but the best had yet to come. By the end of the summer, my hard work earned me the opportunity to be an associate producer for a segment of a show! I came up with my own story idea, organized, planned, made contacts, filled out paperwork, and accompanied the crew on the day of the shoot—all the responsibilities of a real (read: salaried) producer. The episode aired a few days after I left for school, and it was the best way I could have ended my time at the station.

After Chronicle, I started working for New England Sports Network (NESN) in the fall. I’m a Boston Bruins/Hockey East Studio Production intern—a position I’m convinced is the best job in Boston. When the Bruins are home, I ride along to the Garden, where I do one of many things—learn how to run tech equipment from the truck, stage manage the pre-, post-, and intermission reports from the in-house studio, or stage manage the color and play-by-play commentators from their booth. After the game, I usually run tapes of post-game interviews from the locker room to feed them back to the office. There’s a lot of running around the Garden, but there’s no place I’d rather be on game day.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of work for Hockey East. I was the time out coordinator for the Frozen Fenway games (check out the picture that Dean Sabovik took off of the TV that day!), and I’ve put in countless hours working on Beanpot features in preparation for the tournament in February. My internship at NESN is so multifaceted, I never know what to expect as I walk in in the morning. COM has given me the preparation to handle whatever is expected of me at any given time, and complete the task at a professional level.

Last semester, I applied and got into a class going abroad to London this summer to cover the Olympics with COM. Come next year I will have graduated, and I’m so thankful that I will be able to cap out my three years at BU with such an amazing work experience. You can read more about it here: http://www.bu.edu/com/2011/12/13/students-tapped-to-cover-olympics-in-london/.

The point of my post is this—everything that I talked about truly is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Through COM, I’ve had opportunities and experiences that many college students can only dream of. I’m happy to answer any questions about internships that you might have, and I look forward to sharing my contacts with the next batch of COM students!

Brittany: Summer Internship

Hey Terriers! I can’t believe how fast the summer is flying by! Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the time off, but I’m definitely counting down the days until Scarlet Squad begins (you can find me running around Warren Towers during both move-in days!)

This summer I’ve been interning at the local ABC station, WCVB (that’s channel 5 for all of you locals) working on a show called Chronicle, a nightly news-magazine program. Before I started, I thought having an internship would mean making copies, getting mail and running for coffee. Boy, was I wrong… on my third day at the station, I went out on two different shoots with one of the producers! From staying late to sit in-studio for live broadcasts of the show, to helping brainstorm ideas for show content, my internship has been hands-on from the get-go.

The last two weeks have been particularly exciting for me. I had gone out on a shoot a while back for a show about Food Trucks in Boston, and while on set the producer had me take a bite of a sandwich on camera. Turns out, they used that shot in the final show! So there I was, in my on-camera debut for a major network, taking a huge bite of a pita. Even though I was just an extra, it was so cool to see myself on TV! (You can follow this link to see my shining moment—It’s at about 3:00 in: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/28480458/detail.html )

The highlight of my internship came one morning last week, as I was watching the show from the night before. As the credits rolled, I noticed that my name was on the screen! They ran a longer form of credits than they normally do, and all three Chronicle interns had our names included. Even though it was only a few seconds, Chronicle is an Emmy-award winning show—seeing my name broadcast as a part of that was surreal.

Internships are about exploring the field you’re interested in and getting some real-life experience in a professional job setting. Although I’m not looking forward to my days at Chronicle being over, I’m looking ahead to future internships, where I know other doors are waiting to be opened. Next up, I’m looking for a sports journalism-related internship to try something new! But who knows, maybe someday my name will reappear in Chronicle’s credits as a more permanent fixture.