This week i completed my second and final set of shifts at KBIA this semester. My story was about the discontinuation of the Columbia festival of the Arts after 17 years. While this was not my first shift at KBIA, it was the first reporting shift I had, as last time I edited a story for a capstone student. Although this was supposed to be a day turn story, it felt a lot like a team story because of the amount of work I put into it. My first shift was on Monday and I worked on it for about 3 hours. Then I did interviews on tuesday and wednesday afternoon. Once I finished the interviews I wrote my script. I finally finished editing the story on thursday. I worked on the story every day of the week, and although I spent more time on it than I would have liked to, I think it turned out well. I really enjoyed working at KBIA, mostly because of the editors and other reporters. The atmosphere was much more laid back than the Missourian, and I was able to get more feedback from the faculty editors and news director. I also learned some cool tricks in cool edit this week, and got a lot more practice editing audio. I learned how to blend audio clips and the correct format for writing scripts for KBIA. This story had some more angles that could have been explored and easily would have made a good team story if i hadn't used it for my KBIA shifts this week.

Wallowing in the Muck is Fun!

Ok, I didn't really wallow in the muck for this story...but one of the CARP program volunteers said that is why he joined the program and I thought it was a great quote. Anyways, this week I completed team story number 4. Right of the bat, let me just say that this week's team story went much smoother than the others. The story pitch went well, as we were not told that we needed more information or that we had to re-pitch completely. Shannon and I were able to get in contact with quite a few sources on friday afternoon and set up all of our interviews for monday. Although we had some equipment troubles on Monday morning (two marantz's we took out did not work), we were able to reschedule our interview for later that day. On monday evening we went to the Columbia Aquatic Restoration Project instructional class and talked to program directors, the horticulturist, the volunteer coordinator, and volunteers, both experienced and unexperienced. Everybody was very helpful and happy to answer any questions we had. With all of our interviews done by monday night, we had the rest of the week free to work on the script. This turned out to be a good thing, because the script needed a lot of work. With Karen's guidance, Shannon and I must have re-written the script about 6 or 7 times, each time improving on it and expanding it. When shannon and I voiced and edited the approved script the audio piece ended up being almost 6 and a half minutes. At the last hour we asked Karen to listen to the piece and she made suggestions for shortening it, which I think greatly improved our piece.

Shannon and I did a great job getting nat sound for this piece, a component that many other of my audio pieces have lacked in the past. I think it really added a lot to the story because it made the piece much more engaging. I also learned a lot about writing for the radio and using more descriptive terms. When talking about the CARP class, Karen made the great suggestion that we should describe what type of attire the people in the class were wearing. This added more visual writing to our story and again made it more interesting to listen to. Armed with the knowledge I gained during this week's story project, I think I will be able to turn out much better stories in the future

First Shift at KBIA

KBIA is great! The staff and news directors give you a lot of freedom to do what you want. The atmosphere is very relaxed, and there are a lot of people willing to help and answer any questions one might have. My first 4 hour shift at KBIA was not a traditional reporting shift, but I do feel as if I learned a good deal about producing stories for the radio. The story I worked on was a audio slideshow about the True/False Film Festival. One of the convergence reporters working at KBIA for their capstone, Jacqueline (not sure if that is the correct spelling) asked me if I would edit and produce a audio slideshow about the festival. The interviews had been done and photos had already been taken, but it was my job to put it all together. There was a substantial amount of audio to go through from the interviews, but unfortunately some portions of it were unusable due to technical problems with the recording. The first time I went through the audio I pulled out bites that I thought would be good to use in the slideshow. When I had the reporter who assigned me the story listen to it, she said that they were good bites but they needed to be shorter. I shortened the bites and arranged them the way I thought they should be arranged. Again, Jacqueline told me that I needed to shorten the bites even more, and arrange them in a way that was "fun and artsy." I must have rearranged the bites about 4 or 5 times before the sequence was approved, and although it was frustrating, it gave me a much better sense of the structure of a radio story and what makes it interesting. Radio stories should have a variety of voices, and those voices should be animated. The natural sound needs to be intertwined throughout the story, not just in the beginning or at the end. The next step was choosing the pictures to go into the slideshow, and then arranging them to go along with the audio sequence I had created. Although the other reporter picked out some photos she wanted to see in the slideshow, I had the final say about which pictures made it into the story. I looked for a variety of photos, including close ups, wide angle shots, and action shots. The whole process took me over 4 hours, so I had to work on it at home and brought it into KBIA early the next morning. The slideshow turned out well and they put it onto the KBIA website. My next shift I pitched a story about the new fire station, as the groundbreaking for the new station was that day. Jan thought it was a good idea and suggested I go out to the site to get nat sound and talk to people. After about 20 minutes of getting lost I finally made it to the site, but alas, there was nobody there! I called the PR contact for the new station about 6 times, and his phone was busy every single time. i also attempted to contact several other officials but with no luck. It was about 4p.m by the time I made it back to the newsroom, and by that point it was too late to pick up another story so Janet told me it was alright if I just went home. It was discouraging to not be able to get the story, but I worked very hard in trying to do so. I am glad that I at least put together an audio slideshow for the KBIA website, and I thought it turned out pretty well.

P.S. NOTE TO THE EDITORS: When looking at the file in my finished stories folder look under KBIA/TrueFalse2009/truefalseslideshow.ssproj

Here is a link to the slideshow as well: http://real.jour.missouri.edu/content/kbia/slideshows/TRUEFALSE/index.html

-David Goldstein

Week 6 Team Story- Kids without computers

I am happy to report that team story number three went very smoothly. Our story was about how students without access to computers at home are affected by teachers assigning work that requires the use of a computer. We identified our sources early, gathered our information soon afterwards, and had a decent amount of time to edit the story. There was no shortage of people who were willing to talk to us about this issue, as it i something that effects many people. In fact, we faced the problem of over reporting. We talked to so many people and got so much good information that we didn't know what to include and what not to include. As a result, our piece ended up being much longer than we wanted it to be. Although we got a lot of good information and sound bites, we were not able to find a student affected by this situation who was very articulate. All of the students we talked to were very brief in their responses and although they conveyed to us that they were negatively impacted by not having home computers, they did not provide us with any really strong bites to use for our radio story. Looking back on the situation now, I feel that i could have asked more open ended questions to perhaps draw the students out of their shells and make them feel more comfortable talking to us. I also think that we could have focused more strongly on certain aspects of the story. I think the focus of our story was too broad. I also think there was too much narration. By the end of the story I was tired of listening to myself talk, and I am sure those listening to it felt the same. Elizabeth and I had some issues putting the story together, but I still believe it was a strong story and an important issue to tackle. Perhaps with a little work the story could be ready to air on KBIA.