News..News…News..And

Who knew that finding it could be so hard.

Here is a recap of the stories I have done and hopefully soon I can post them on here.

1) Forrest production is down in Missouri.

2)Columbia community comes together to break record donation amount at Polar Plunge.

3) Missouri professor creates online suicide prevention course.

4) Associated Press dubs economic downturn the “Great Recession.”

and tonight I will be covering the Columbia Mayor debates for Missouri Students.

However, I feel like I have taken a step back in the past couple of weeks as a journalist. I try to envision what would be great and sound great and try and match everything to what I envision.  My last story on the Great Recession took a simple press release and then I tried taking that and stretching it out into a big deal locally in Columbia.  I envisioned sound bites of businessmen that discussed how the Great Recession is a reality in Columbia and that wasn’t the case.  Yes, some businesses closed, but the fact is that what is going on nationally may not relate to Columbia and that could’ve been the bigger picture.

What I’ve Learned from this….

1) Be flexible with the story… Don’t expect it to be exactly what you would like to hear because there may not be anything there.

2) With interviews, call ahead of time. Interesting thing is that I just tried showing up these past two weeks because I was getting a lot of “No, thanks!” over the phone.  However, when I showed up it killed my time frame waiting for people to talk for well over an hour.

3) Plan ahead….I forced this into a news piece that could’ve been a fifteen second reader. If nothing huge is there, then move to something else. Planning ahead could’ve given me ample time to switch to another story.

I know this may not be the most entertaining post but I hope I can look back later to see some progress…