It’s been a while since I’ve started my internship, but things definitely move quickly at WGRZ! I’ve been spending 18 hours a week at the station, and I couldn’t be happier. One of my biggest fears going into “my dream job” was that once I was there, it would no longer be as picturesque as I imagined. I can’t believe how fortunate I have been to land an internship here, but not only that, the amount of freedom and things that I have already done in the short amount of time I’ve been working here.
On my first day, I remember being absolutely elated that I got to sit in on my first official staff meeting around the round table. My supervisor and producer for the 11 o’clock news, Matt Pitts, introduced me to everyone, including anchors I had grown up watching. It was all a little surreal as I told them about myself, and they listened intently, welcoming me.
Not only that, but as soon as the meeting broke, Matt sent me out with a photographer on my first story! (New stations usually use the term photographer, or “photog” to mean someone who primarily shoots and edits video.) I traveled with Photographer, Scott May, up to Niagara Falls to cover a story about “Barrels Through Niagara,” an art series featuring painted oak barrels throughout the city. Scott and I conducted the interview, came back, I wrote the script for that story, as well as writing the web story, and putting the video on the website! If that weren’t enough, I wrote about 3 or 4 more stories that went into the 11 o’clock script that night.
I think that may be one of the coolest parts of this job that whatever words I write, are the words that the anchors say. Now, when I tell people this, some people laugh and think about the scene in “Bruce Almighty” where he writes ridiculous things on the teleprompter and the anchor reads it without knowing what he is saying. As funny as that scene was, I know that what I write matters and it is being taken seriously.
Since that first day I have written dozens of stories for scripts, a few web stories, taken photos of events for web galleries, been in court, driven around the Buffalo/Niagara region a lot… You know, the usual.
I don’t want to jinx it, but this internship has seriously been great. All the people I have met so far have been really nice, welcoming, and also have given me some great advice. I am excited to be writing at lot at work, and being able to improve my scriptwriting as well as web writing. I know not every day is going to be easy or perfect, but as far as I can tell, this is where I love being.
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