Intern Log: May 30 - June 5

Saturday, June 5

This morning, we covered Dam to Dam, a race through Downtown Des Moines. KCCI is the media sponsor, so we covered it and did several live shots for the live Saturday morning show.

After covering that, we went to Gray’s Lake, where I got to try a standup. We also stopped by HyVee Hall to cover a Methodist Church convention of sorts.

Friday, June 4

It's been a while since updating this, so I don't remember a whole lot.

I went with Keri Gavin again (and photog Alex Murphy) to do a package about a senator who got picked up for an OWI. We went to the corner where he was arrested, and Keri did a standup. She already had plenty of footage from that day, so there wasn’t a whole lot more to do that night.

But hey, you can check out my Camp Lakota story on YouTube, now!

Thursday, June 3

Today, I wrote a VOSOT for a story about a new bariatric ambulance. Pretty simple stuff.

The story was shown in the 5:00pm news.

Wednesday, June 2

Another early bird shift - at 1:00 a.m.

I came in and wrote stories for a few blocks with Hillari. Most of the writing involved looking at the script and packages for the video found through CNN’s and CBS’s satellite service.

After writing a few stories and filling in the news part on the ticker (the scroll that goes at the bottom of the screen during the newscast), I got to “booth,” or sit in the control room with the headset, for almost 30 minutes of the two hour show.

During that time, Hillari asked my opinion on what stories needed to be cut. We have to hit weather and traffic “on the 8s” (it’s a KCCI thing), so I had to pay attention in the live rundown when each story was estimated to hit.

If the time for the weather was off, we had to “kill” stories leading up to it so it would hit correctly.

I also did the negotiation with our traffic guy (who calls in every ten minutes for his traffic phoner). Basically, I answered the phone, found out if the status was still green, then put him on hold until he was needed.

Before we go live with traffic, we have to update the MOS CG template, entering the traffic cameras to be used. The switcher then brings up the CG for the traffic cameras, and I click on the camera control sitting in the control room to choose one of many traffic cams throughout the city.

I also did some communication with the anchors about the trivia question. Each morning, a question is given. During the break, viewers call in hoping to answer the question correctly. The executive producer then notifies the producer in the booth of whom the winner is, and we let Marcus know through the IFB line.

We did have breaking news - a fire happened.

Our photographer was on the scene and confirmed that a woman was found dead.

Hillari took over for the second half of the show and killed quite a few stories to make room for the breaking news.

Our EP then wrote up a breaking news story, and we put it into the newscast a couple times after we got tape back and cut.

It was another productive early morning at KCCI. More to come later!

Tuesday, June 1

Today I went out with Steve on a story about the levee repairs in Des Moines. Even though they've been approved, the contractor hasn't started work.

Steve had talked to the Army Corps of Engineers, who told him the project was a go but that the contractor just hadn’t started.

He got a phone interview recorded for his package, and the contractor didn’t respond to his phone calls.

We went down to the Birdland Levee area where a glass company was located. Steve interviewed Kevin Bauer, the President of the company that had to surround the building with sandbags and barriers in case of another flood.

The amazing thing is that they STILL hadn’t removed the sandbags after two years - mainly because the levee still hadn’t been fixed.

We got a lot of good sound from Kevin. I got to film my own standup, and Glen and Steve also filmed a cluster and a whip.

That’s about it for Tuesday - unless I’m forgetting something!