Internship Experience at News 12 by David Balick

Something that was particularly interesting to me and that other students may also find interesting is just how much goes into putting together a news broadcast. With the help of others, I put together a short mock broadcast and filmed it so that I now have that for my portfolio going forward. However, just piecing together this 3-minute piece took the work of at least six people. First the footage that we use needs to be shot and edited into a piece. We then need to write a script for each of these stories that we are including as well as a script for closing and endings. We also need to add any graphics, credits or copyrights to each of these stories as they are needed. This process alone takes hours at least and can be days depending on the length of the stories.

After this comes actually shooting the piece. For this you need the actual on air talent who may or may not be also controlling the prompter... a cameraman, a producer, and a director. This is entirely a team effort even if you only see one person on screen, and a mistake by one is felt by the whole team.

The other part of this that I didn’t fully understand is how difficult it is to simply read the news, particularly in the case of sports. The professionals make it look easy to read a script while going through highlights but it is actually very difficult to time exactly what you are saying with what is going on on the screen because it is actually very difficult to read and watch a television at the same time. However, I loved every minute of this experience and cannot wait to get the chance to do it again soon. I cannot thank News 12 enough for this awesome experience.