TV NEWS REPORTER by Anonymous
At 8:00 p.m. television news reporter Libby Znaimer was at her desk in CITY-TV's crowded fifth floor newsroom, preparing her evening assignment-troublesome youth gangs in a Toronto neighbourhood. Suddenly all her plans changed. The run-down for the late news had just come through and no one was covering the premier of "Apocalypse Now," the biggest film news of the decade. "Get on it, Libby," came the instructions from the assignment desk and Znaimer, one of seven Citypulse news reporters, immediately set to work on the story
The 24 year-old reporter thought fast: the weekend papers would probably have background information, the station should have a press release. The film finished at 8:50 and she could be there with a cameraman in time to interview some of the audience. She had an hour to get to the theatre, tape the interviews, get back, write the story, get the videotape edited and, if she was lucky, make the 10:00 news.
Such a lightning quick pace and last minute changes are the order of the day in a newsroom, explained Znaimer who, in just three months on the job, has learned to take it all in stride.
Her first assignments weren't nearly as easy. Although Znaimer had worked for two and a half years as a print journalist for the Associated Press (AP) wire service in Tel Aviv and done occasional radio reports for the CRC, her television training was almost nil. With a lot of gumption and a borrowed camera and cameraman, on her own she made a sample news report on the basis of which she was hired by CITY-TV. Her first day at the Toronto station (she is now at CFCF-TV in Montreal) was on-the-job training of the most demanding sort-with 50,000 people watching.
"The first couple of weeks were murder for me," recalls Znaimer. "First you have to learn about structuring a story, how to say it all in a minute and a quarter. (Everything has to be very clear-simple language, no repetition and no wandering off topic.) Then, (to be able to advise the cameraman on the kind of shots you want) you have to learn what makes sense visually"
Perhaps the toughest part, though, was learning to work "on camera." Znaimer says she had "a hard time looking straight at the camera, talking to it just like it was a person." Though she was never nervous, she says she found it "very hard to get conversational."
But television reporters spend only a few minutes of their day (in Znaimer's case on either the 9-5 or 1-10 shift) on camera. Znaimer also reads newspapers and magazines, researches her stories (one for the 6:00 news, one for the 10:00), tracks down interview subjects and pre-interviews them over the phone or at the scene. When an interview is taped (Znaimer usually ad-libs her lines) she writes the covering story to be read by the newscaster which is then approved by a writer. Often she oversees the editing.
Znaimer has found that her print journalism experience trained ber well in the basics of interviewing technique and writing, but working with a camera poses unique problems. "Sometimes you have to convince people to go on camera," she explains, "and you have to be able to pre-interview them so that you'll still get a spontaneous reaction for the taped interview."
The reporter points out that there are no hard and fast rules about how to interview. Sometimes she will need only a few facts from a subject; other times she will want something more personal or candid. She tempers her manner to what she senses the situation demands.
Nor are there rigid standards about how to behave on camera. "Every reporter is supposed to have an individual style and personality," she notes. But she allows that there are a few basics: "You want to sound authoritative and it's obviously not great to have a high, scratchy voice."
What you also need are an ease in front of a camera, skills in written and verbal communication, skills in interviewing and research, and a lot of initiative and persistence, not to mention a touch of aggressiveness. Znaimer points out that her thrown-before-the-camera route into television reporting was not typical. Most young people in her position are graduates of radio and television arts courses, and she advises that with the fierce competition for jobs, aspiring television reporters get as much training and experience as possible.
Women, she notes, are definitely not discriminated against in journalism; if anything, there may be an over-supply of them. But she is aware of possible drawbacks to being a female reporter. "Often men do the serious stories and women do the fluffier things," she says, though personally she hasn't found this. In her first three months on "general assignment" she covered an enormous range of topics: cerebral palsy, the gas shortage, teacher firings, a tornado, child abuse-"everything." While most reporters eventually establish a "beat" and often initiate their own assignments, they must be extremely flexible. Explains Znaimer: "Assignments come up during the day and whoever happens to be there has to go out on a story."
Deadlines, she finds, are the toughest part of the job. And almost always there is incredible tension and, on top of that, crazy hours. But for Znaimer, who isn't even thinking about future possibilities like anchoring or producing, that's what makes it so exciting.
"The television medium is so immediate," she enthuses. "It grabs people the most and in certain ways it's the most informative because it can transmit emotion . . . It's also hard work that really drains you," she adds, but she accepts that. "If the job is not the most important thing in your life, if you don't give it everything, you won't realize its potential and your work will suffer." And you, she points out, will be the first to know-as soon as you switch on the 6:00 news.
©1999 TG Magazine/Le Magazine TG
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