Sunday, June 14th

I'm only 3.5 hours into my shift today, but it has already been an EPIC day. Why, you ask? Well, I did another interview...this one flying by the seat of my pants (although it was a cancer camp..pretty straightforward) and then, when I returned to the station, the producer asked me to WRITE THE STORY! Sure, it was only a 35 second VO/SOT (Voice Over with Sound on Tape...basically a short story read by the anchor with video over the anchor's voice, and a quick interview with someone) but still...my words will be read ON CAMERA in a REAL news cast! So...I quickly learned how to find a clip of video on a linear editing system (not with a computer...old school.) and threw it together in about an hour. If they don't use it I'll be ticked.

However, my producer said the following: "It looks great, can't think of anything to change, it's really clean and written tight (aka he asked for about 35 seconds and I gave him 35 seconds, haha)...I wish I had known that you were a great writer earlier, I could have been using you all this time".

However, the craziest moment of the evening came during the 10pm newscast. Let me set the scene. We did an interview with an abortion doctor. Now, I'm not for abortion. However, I watched the story, and it was very fair. The doctor is hoping to take over for a well-known third-trimester abortion doctor, and that is illegal in NE. So it's big news, and very controversial. I watched our interview with him, and it was as unbiased as you can get when you're talking to a crazy abortion doctor. No abortion glorification from our station. The reporter made sure of that. So I get a call from a guy who is MAD. He is cussing me out, calling us everything disgusting ever. I say, as I was trained, "I'm sorry that you feel that way about the story sir..." and prepare to say "but we are just reporting on a topic that is of interest to the community" when he says, "Oh...I bet you've had a few, huh?" I say excuse me (duh) and continue to sit their, both baffled and humored, as he cusses me out. Then he hangs up because I wasn't ticking him off enough...because I wasn't defending abortion. Haha. Then I joked with some reporters about how I should have said, "Oh yeah, I get abortions every week! I go out on Friday, get pregnant, get an abortion, and go to work, woo!" Haha. It was funnier in real life :)

Peace Out. Tara.