 outside so we'll just be respectful when they come in and just make sure to seek for that. So hello everybody and welcome to our 2015 media panel hosted by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Roger Williams University Career Center. My name is Stephanie Ressler and I will be your moderator tonight. I am a fourth year journalism major and I'm the president of the Society of Professional Journalists. But enough about me, let's get on to meet our very accomplished group of panelists. So first we are really excited to welcome back two star alumni, also SPJ alumni, who have succeeded in the field of journalism since their very recent graduation. We have Chris Guerrero and Sam Roblesky, give them a hand. And we also have Chris Hustinger, Patrick Little and Nicole Gerozier. Let's give them a round of applause. Alright, so let me introduce our panelists. First we have Chris Guerrero, a 2014 graduate of the journalism program and has worked in TV since then. He currently works as the morning producer with Seven News, the NBC affiliate in Boston where he produces their 9 a.m. hour of Today in New England. Then we have Sam Roblesky, he is a global broadcast journalist and 2013 graduate of the communications department. Since his graduation he worked in both television and radio and most recently as the digital editor for the leading news talk station 630 WPRO. And a few congratulations to Sam. In just a few days he'll begin his next journey as the inaugural digital reporter for NUSB kind of news. Congratulations Chris. Here we have Chris Hustinger, he has a cleaning time, he's not printed, so just remember his name, that's Chris. He is a creative manager and senior writer at Oxford America's Department of Communications in the organization's headquarters in Boston. He works with the staff writers and designers to produce material for Oxford America's website and publications. We have Patrick Little, he is the weekday morning news anchor for Eyewitness News this morning and Eyewitness News at noon on WPRI and Thoughts Providence. He's been working on WPRI since 1998 and was previously the sports director for 10 years before becoming the morning news anchor. And we have Nicole DeRosier, she is the producer for the ABC Boston affiliate WCVB. She works on the program Cityline, which focuses on issues affecting communities of color. She has been with WCVB for five years working under the Community Affairs umbrella, spending time in Chronicle and now for their internship. So those are our panelists everybody. So let's get right into the question portion, but first let's let people get in here. You guys can come right ahead, don't worry about us. Come on, there's plenty of room. She was right in front of us. I know who you're trying to do, sit in the back, I did the same thing. Come right down to the front. I have a question for everybody. I've got a question. Where were you guys in 1998 when I started a channel tomorrow? Just break the ice with that. Very nice. Once everybody sees it, we'll start with our first question. And our first question is for our alumni, Chris Ferrara. Chris, you started your career in Montana, then you ended up in New Hampshire and now you landed in Boston. What has your post-grad experience been like? And talk about the transition from working in a really small TV market to now in a top 10 market. Yeah, it's been ridiculous, I guess this is a good word. Coming from New England, which is pretty popular, there's a lot going on. I went to Montana six days after graduating here from Roger Williams last May. And it was just like a different country. I had no idea where I was. There's moose running around, there's bears everywhere. It was totally crazy, but it was great to get my feet wet. I actually went out there, I'm a producer now, but I started as a recorder. So I was pouring out there five days a week on whatever pops up. And in Montana, that could be anything. From murder to a bear attack to a car accident, anything. So that was a really great opportunity to go just straight out there from college, jump right into things, get my feet wet. And like Stephanie said, I went to New Hampshire after that. We got off for a producing opportunity at a new station there. Just some totally different news markets working. Obviously with the presidential election coming up, politics are huge in New Hampshire. So I did a lot of politics, a lot of live interviews on my show and stuff. Kind of your more day-to-day, pretty similar to what I wanted to say to you guys. And then I went from there to Boston this past July, which is like a totally different place. Breaking news, not stop, I've reached the 9am hour usually. So if you're just in some sort of car accident or something breaking during my show, you never know what's going to happen. So I went from Montana where there's nothing happening to Boston where there's too much happening. And I have too much news in my show and I have to figure out what I want to put in and what I want to take out. So this transition has been not crazy. I got to see a little bit of everything a little bit. So you have some more people filing in. Welcome guys. All right. Our next question is for Sam. Sam, you worked in radio for the past few years since you graduated and now you are heading into TV. What made you make that decision? Actually, my career started in TV. In my senior year, I had been interning over at Channel 12 where I'd actually met Patrick before. And towards the end of that internship, someone ended up leaving and there was a part-time position available. So being the studio's young man, I just jumped right into that and I was working at 3am shifts on the weekend during my college career which is not recommended if you want to be a healthy person. So from there, I was on a producing track today except it was only part-time that I graduated and I've had time I was on a crossroads of do I look for something else? Do I get a part-time job to go with this part-time job when the radio gig opened up as a digital editor and black reporter for the TV talking station in the state of the PRO? And a lot of that was to turn over a lot of coffee for the reporters turn that into a usable web story. Eventually that transition into doing some live work, some amount of pre-recorded radio work. The highlight, I think, of my time there was during the Black Lives Matter protest that spilled over and shut down my 95. I was there that night covering that and I got to do the live hits from that. So I got to bite the bug and do a little bit of reporting and that is a really, really addicting feeling. For anybody who gets to move on in the future and do a little bit of reporting, you're going to find when you're chasing a lead and you're following up on something and you know you almost have it, just that feeling of anticipation. There's a bit of a high that goes with it. You can't quite replicate that with anything else. I'm sure if you're producing and everything goes off of that hitch after something broke, I'm sure you have the exact same feeling, but I just couldn't shake that and this job I'm working now just didn't have enough of it. So when I saw that Channel 10 had something opened up in their digital side, they were expanding that department and there was the opportunity to report and follow up on my own leads. I guess get my hamster in the Rhode Island market even more and it's not an opportunity to pass up. So put that at the ring and it looks like I was selected to do that so on to the future I guess. Alright, thank you so much. And our next question is for Chris H. Chris, you have written and produced videos on projects from all over the world. Some of which include Ethiopia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Bolivia, Haiti, Vietnam, Honduras, Cambodia, Peru, Zimbabwe, the list really goes on and many others. So what is it like traveling for your job and what is one of the most remarkable stories that you experienced in Ethan Devers? I think we have enough time for that. But yeah, so first of all, international reporting comes with a lot of very unusual challenges we'll say ranging from cutting across cultures and languages. Sometimes the logistics are just mind boggling if you can get to where you intend to go and you can talk to the person you intend to meet with on any day at all. It's sometimes quite a good day. I don't know, I've had a lot of weird stuff happen. I got stuck in Haiti for three days. I was supposed to leave the day of an election a primary preliminary sort of presidential election about ten months after the earthquake there in 2010 and had some logistical problems and before I could get out of the country they shut down the airport and just everything, there was a lot of violence and I was stuck in a house for three days just trying to hope nobody saw me there. I wasn't in any danger, but it was just super inconvenient and of course everybody at headquarters all flipped out and didn't know where I was so that was fun. And go to some really bizarre super remote places like up along the border with Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam on the corner and there are some really very diverse indigenous communities there facing some very unusual political environmental and various types of social problems and trying to figure out how to translate that into a video or a story that people here will relate with. I work with a lot of specialist like practitioners in community and community development and many of them are like social scientists and the way that they communicate about their work is not conducive for somebody like me who has a background as a journalist who wants to speak a very plain language so there's a lot of challenges that go along with that and I'll have to reflect on the crazy story. I've had some very unusual experiences working at Nigeria just this past June in an area that has recovered from a very serious conflict down in the Niger Delta and trying to just get access to a community and negotiate the privilege to go and talk to people there and achieves who all wanted money and lots of things that I didn't kind of provide to them so there's a lot of bizarre sort of negotiation that goes on in a lot of the communities where I have to work but I can talk about that stuff more later if there's time. Alright, yeah. A lot of people are going to want to probably chat with you after the panel so if you think of any more, feel free to share them. We'd love to hear them. Alright, so the next question is for Patrick. So a lot of people here are interested in bringing into the competitive sports industry you were in for many years before becoming the news anchor what tips do you have for young journalists that are trying to break into sports journalism and why did you leave sports and move on to hard news? For young, for you folks that are thinking about getting into television in general the first piece of advice I will give you is ramen noodles and the reason I say that is the journey to and these folks up here can probably relate as well the journey to a, I want to say successful career but a, yeah, where you're not eating ramen noodles is a tough one, like he went to Montana, right? I mean, I started my career in Manchester, New Hampshire and it was in 1994, right out of college I was like super intern and I went into this TV station in Manchester I went to St. Anselm College, kind of like Roger Williams sort of the same size and I did an internship and I was just like a mosquito I would not leave these people alone, I would not leave the building I would just be there seven days a week I interned after I graduated from college, seven days a week I mean, I really wanted the job so that's how I got into the industry I was a business major in college and then I went into the intern I became like a professional intern and how I got into it was I was just hanging around and I would suggest to anybody and stuff that you can tell you that if you do an internship it's kind of like a it's like a scholarship to grad school because you're at a TV station or a radio station or newspaper you're hands on, you're helping out probably more than you thought you would when you got there so I got the job in September of 1994 anybody want to guess what my salary was my first year in television in 1994 someone just raise your hand and just throw it yeah $40,000 it's going to get embarrassing $13,000 a year wait a second, I paid four times that I'm about to go to school here for a year it's $414 every two weeks after taxes there was no manager so there was no tax there's no taxes there so that's a good place to work so the point is, is that when you get into it, be prepared to really want to enjoy it and I don't speak just for television, it's the same for radio and until you get to the market that you hopefully get to you'll see the rewards for your hard work and my scary story is not quite as scary as yours but the first time I was on television September 21st 1994 I did a half-time report for a UNH football game my first time on live TV I practiced this two-minute live broadcast the night before I picked out my suit the night before I was ready and I went on TV that little red light came on I went and I talked and I sounded like Mickey Mouse I flew through this two-minute thing the light went off and I threw up in a trash can underneath the anchor so I called my dad he's like, how'd it go? it went great he's like, well, tell me about it and I threw up and he goes, wait a second they're paying $13,000 a year and you're getting sick at your job are you sick? what are you doing? well, I haven't thrown up since so 21 years and then I went from Manchester to Providence I got hired in 1998 I was doing sports the whole time and the sports thing is I was a college athlete but at 5'9 and 165 pounds unless they had openings or jockeys I was not going to play pro lacrosse and just was not going to happen or pro soccer or be a professional skier so I said I want to get into something that is a little bit different than what my friends are doing maybe and you know that are into finance or working at Enterprise Rent-A-Card and locker rooms and being around these athletes and traveling around the country and long story short I did sports for 16 years then to 5 Super Bowls, 3 World Series NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals Ryder Cup, Daytona 500 and so on and on it goes just a lot of cool things in NCAA tournaments and then 5 years ago I got offered the job to be the morning news anchor and some of these folks will relate that a lot of sports anchors are making the transition to do more to do the news and I have it 3 o'clock in the morning every day you only need to do it twice a week 3 o'clock in the morning every day so I'll answer more questions about it that's how a little snapshot of my puking in this success and I still eat ramen noodles by the way this is easy our next question is for Nicole so you work for community affairs and you are doing an internship application so I know a lot of students here are really interested in working and interning at WCVP in Boston so could you share with us what makes a good applicant and what are some immediate red flags that you would see in an application McDonald's job we all have to work so I totally understand that a lot of the TV internships are unpaid so but we also want you to have experience on your application, on your resume that is going to reflect experience that you can grow over there at Channel 5 or any other radio station so like I said as much as you got to get paid your burger clipping skills aren't really going to be applicable when we need you in the newsroom so I would just say the volunteering and the internships and the coursework are going to look a lot better than extremely irrelevant job experience that's a red flag for me that's a huge red flag for me grammar or internalism so I hope that everyone can write other than that it's the experience or taking the coursework that you have whether you don't have as much experience and just flipping that and showing us how you're interested in and how you want to use what you already have to learn more we want to know that you want to learn or Barnes & Noble alright well thank you so now we're going to go back to Chris F so as you mentioned before your first job was as a news reporter and now you're producing is there a reason that you switch it to producer is there one that you prefer over the other if so why? yeah to be honest it's kind of got curious and I just wanted to see what producing was all about reporting is a lot of fun but it is a lot of work and you're out constantly especially in Montana I not only thought of story ideas in the morning I had to go out and shoot all the video myself I had to do all the interviews myself I had to edit everything and in Montana when it's like snowing it's not always easy to be like holding a camera and doing an interview it's crazy it's a lot going on it was a little over time right? exactly so it gets a little overwhelming but honestly a friend of mine that I worked with there he moved to New Hampshire and he just said which we're interested in applying for a producing job I just got curious, applied, got it and I really wanted to move back to New England this is definitely where I want to be I'm from Connecticut so this is just home to me came back trying to producing I was in New Hampshire for about seven months and I loved it it's totally different than reporting instead of focusing on one story for the day you have 20, 30 little stories that you have to know a lot about but you might only spend 20 seconds on that one story and you have to decide what's more important than the other and it has so much going on I love it, I'm constantly busy sometimes too busy but it's great, I don't know if there's one that I like more than the other I really miss reporting but I feel like if I went back to recording I'd really miss producing so I'm just going to keep an open mind see whatever pops up next but I like producing right now there's nothing about it I don't like and then our next question is for Sam so Sam, your experiences include working for the digital departments in the local media outlets so our question is going to be about the reliance on real time news and the social media age so what do you find more important breaking the story first or getting all the facts and information right the first time any of you guys can also add to it that's a really relevant question right now because you're already seeing it on the broadcast I've got a cast site especially on television that I've rushed to be first and it's great to be the first one out there when you get the story right but there's a lot of casualties that come with it and it's the exact same thing you'll see on the digital side if you get a number wrong they'll say I can redo a story easily on the internet I have the power to edit all day long but those first initial eyes that see it are going to get the wrong information and when you have several competing stations so we're the only leading radio station but our digital department it's got to go total 12, 10 everyone who has reporters on the scene and if three out of four are getting something right you're looking at your number and it's different you really have to sit there and wonder what's going on especially in radio when it's much smaller there's a lot less people watching you so there's a lot of pressure to get the right I can actually give you a quick story about getting a number wrong it was a situation where the governor was announcing a new and highly controversial it was her highway tolling proposal for traffic and we had a reporter on scene and he'd sent back some audio of just something get on air very quickly and I was monitoring twitter listening to what he was sending in they'd given us a very initial press release so we knew what was going on it wasn't very number heavy though it had a few numbers but it wasn't very number heavy and as soon as the Margo lifted I typed up what I had and knew what was there was a solid story already had some quotes in there threw it up online he I think it's all good the reporter comes back a few minutes later there's only a few minutes later he looks at me and he goes all these numbers are wrong and it had been up there for about 15 minutes already up on social media there's not a lot of take backs at that point especially when the number is in your headline and that was not correct so that was quite the sobering experience and I I'll take the blame on a lot of it it wasn't entirely my fault because there was a second press release that went along with the first one that I didn't get but it's one of those situations where if you don't have that right you get laughed at and you don't ever want to be the laughing stock especially if you're this young scrappy news team or you've got something improving you're trying to demonstrate to somebody you're worth it you don't want to get things wrong so I'm going to say that as long as you got it up on the digital side all your periods are in the right spot punctuations flawless that I'm saying that's a better story can I just expand on that in this world that we live in now that I didn't have when I was your age first started in the business you guys can probably get down there is the internet and twitter and all these things that you have people who aren't necessarily had bloggers that aren't necessarily journalist fact checking or putting things out there that you know you wouldn't believe everything you read and a lot of times but sometimes it's not the case so if I'm sitting on the anchor desk at 6.30 tomorrow morning and I'm on my phone you know looking at twitter Facebook and I see something pop on from Johnny Sixpack and Cranston saying there's a 10 car pileup on 95 I'm not going to go hold on we have breaking news everybody there's a 10 car pileup on 95 because oh I saw it it has to be true it's on twitter you know be right there's a big thing there you go like for example a couple months ago James Skeffington who was the kind of driving force behind the Red Sox sorry the Paw Sox trying to build that stadium in downtown Providence I went to high school with his son okay so I know Jim and I'm from Barrington originally so he died and I got the call a text that James Skeffington is dead and I said to my friend okay well how do you know well he's a cop in Barrington and he found the body he was jogging on a golf course and Barrington dropped dead so I have this information and I tell my news director Jim Skeffington is dead and she goes well how do you know I said because my buddy is a cop in Barrington he just told me because he was there alright well let's let's make sure now I have it in the picture if you wanted to but he did but I had it like beyond a reasonable doubt this guy was as dead as it gets but until it was checked by like two or three sources including like Larry Lucchino we couldn't report it because that's one of those things you know you don't want to just say that's got a body in Barrington he's a cop and not that he would you know try and trick me on something serious as this but that's the point is that you've got to be extra careful you'll see that throughout your career it's so tempting to see something and then you know if you get burned on TV it's okay if Johnny Sixback grants it against Barrington or if he gets burned or I get burned or any of the people that are reporting it that you rely on they're going to stop relying on you they're going to stop watching yeah it's something I deal with every day just increasing live TV Nicole Station you know WCVB I might see something pop up on her station during my show that we don't have and I'll be freaking out you know I need this on you know you want to compete with them but I can't just go with the facts that they have or Fox or you know WBZ might see something you have to always be aware of what the other stations are doing but you can't go all the way to the newspaper, Twitter or anything it has to be aware of it but you have to you have to confirm it first there have been stories at any of the stations I've worked at that you know we've heard about and it could take hours before you have to confirm it's frustrating too I know it's true I produce weekend mornings also it's me and one of the producers for a few hours until our assignment manager arrives so I mean we can make calls and stuff but the chance of you getting some info on you know an accident or something like that or some big legal case at 2 in the morning on Saturday is not likely so you can't just go off you know WCM Twitter or WCM a different station it's hard but you just kind of have to you have to make sure that's right because if you don't there goes all your credibility absolutely thank you is anybody else that I think they want to add on that topic I just want to say it's sort of on the topic but also I think the main thing like we want to make sure the facts are right and we want to make sure that we're the first to get it out there but what I notice and I got to give it up to you guys so much credit because on Buzzfeed or these other blogs everything like there's always a word missing the headlines are always spelled wrong there's always something and it's just you really need that extra second to look it over I don't have editors anymore so the news they work so hard to make sure I do a weekly show so I had a little bit more time than a couple of hours to get a story out but it's just so important to look it over and make sure everything sounds right because a wrong number is huge but so is just just poor again I think something like that grammar that spelling credibility that is so important to us as journalists you know what's crazy about this whole thing is TMZ, you know we laugh at TMZ they're always right like as crazy as they are like they told me Michael Jackson died they told me all these crazy and you think like it's like they're almost in the room when this happens right I mean it's amazing that you think about credible sources and for a while TMZ you're like what these people are out of their minds you know it's like no way but right I mean it's unbelievable they're everywhere like it's almost like they've got the doctors in the operating room I'm like tomorrow just OD is on foot again you know it's crazy but it's true like and so that's one of those things where you're like no way they can't be right but they built it out and they kind of got away from that reputation of being just you know thrown out there and hopefully it sticks so it's really amazing to turn this out that's just one example that was you look at it before like 10 years ago no way Harvey is that true now you're like who's on it let's go on to the next question thank you guys for all those responses those were great our next question is for Chris H Chris so you're reporting on issues of poverty and injustices happening around the world do you have any advice on how to report delicately on these sensitive matters yes we spend a lot of time thinking about this despite the fact that we're not a news organization we believe that one of the best ways for people to understand some of the complicated issues that we're working on is by taking what we call the narrative approach what we found in studying our donors and the US public is that very few of them would really understand what our organization does but they do remember the stories we tell them about people who are involved in the projects the narrative is extremely powerful and it's an approach that people have taken for centuries eons we remember stories now we want as we're just talking about the stories have to be right the facts have to be straight and you need to check things and I think what we've been talking about here just now is when you're working on it's a slight digression when you're working with a team of people you didn't have a share of mental model about what standards you're going to apply you hear that somebody's dead you can get it from a personal source you can get it from the police and then you can get it from the family and maybe you know you need it three ways I don't know I mean so everybody has to agree on when you're going to go out with somebody so some of the standards that we work with are what we call informed consent where I go and I meet with people and this is one of the difficult things about working across cultures and languages that I was describing before most of the people I meet with don't know what the internet is if they do it's a little bit easier but I try to explain to them who I'm writing for what I want to do and I get their permission and some of the stories that I write are about very great rights violations and terrible injustices what I found is that people who are most willing to share their story are the ones who have been involved in some kind of a project that we've been funding particularly domestic violence survivors women in El Salvador and Guatemala particularly where we have a very well established program who have been working with our partners it's not work that we're doing we're funding local people to do the work because we feel that's the best way to build a sustainable solution to a problem of poverty or injustice but anyway we try to work with people who have been involved in some kind of a project because they have gone through an experience where they learn about their basic rights they learn about their value as a person and they they sort of change their perception about who they are and their place in the world and usually when they get to that point they want to talk even to some guy from War and Rhode Island no idea who this guy is if I can go in there with somebody they know and I can sit down with them and explain to them what I'm trying to do and how I want to use what they're giving me I can usually get a pretty good outcome there are people that I speak with don't really understand where I'm coming from and they don't give me consent and I sometimes negotiate can I talk about your story and not use your name and we have some certain standards around that we look at situations of vulnerability people in situations where there's a low degree of accountability in regard to the state and we may find I may decide this person is in a very vulnerable situation if somebody saw this story on the internet and decided to persecute this person they could lose their life they could lose their job they could have all sorts of things happen to them and I sometimes even though they're giving me permission I don't think they understand what the stakes are here so I've killed stories myself that I've actually reported and seen them come up on the internet the equivalent of the TFC where I see the person later I'm like well I hope they know what they're doing because it's serious I don't like the mess with people's lives so anyway I have criteria that I try to apply which I can go through in more detail if anybody's interested absolutely I'm sure some people will come and talk to you again after the panel so our next question is for Patrick so every morning you're anchoring live TV news for hours on end what is your daily work routine like as we mentioned before you get it every morning at 3am so what are you doing from then on until when you get on TV and what is it like when there's breaking news happening while you're live on TV what's going on at your earpiece well the producer basically you just ignore them and just babble and babble and babble and they yell you just screw up the entire timing of their entire show especially myself and Daniel but the day starts at 2.55 when the first alarm goes off that one gets thrown to the ground then the phone alarm goes off at 2.59 the first one that's a snooze and then 3.02 the second one goes off and I actually wake up for some reason I think I might get another 4 minutes of sleep it's kind of like just drastically change my day snooze is a bad thing so I get to work I get up you don't know what happens when you get up I get to work at like a 3.35 is a good day if I get there at 3.35 and the producers that write the show have been there since probably 11 o'clock at night and then do all the writing and us lazy prima donna anchors roll in and look at the scripts and we prove freedom and we say why aren't we doing this story and they go oh here they come because we're the producers and we know what's right so read through some scripts get dressed because as you go to work in like you know the summertime literally like short split flops in a t-shirt just bring the suit with me and get dressed and yes I do put makeup on and I do it myself that stays in this room can you leave that for that day sure that's not the same we're on the air at 4.30 we start live tv at 4.30 a.m that's probably most of you are coming home college dudes shutting down about quarter to four let's just have one more the news is coming on let's stay away so but we actually start taking things about 10 past four the cut-ins that you see on the national news are three top stories and then I'm on tv from 4.30 a.m. until nine straight through there's breaks for weather and when the weather's on anchors like to wander around I don't like to let them wander I don't like to let them wander we do have to go to the bathroom so we wander around so 4.30 to 7 is on WPRI which is CBS 7th to 9th is on Fox and throughout the course of the morning there's more times when there's well that's a long time to be on tv first of all so there's always things changing and evolving breaking news we have this little earpiece that's called an IFB where the producers can talk to us and tell us oh listen we just got a story about blah blah blah that's going to be coming up at the end of this block and a lot of times we won't have a script in the teleprompter we read the teleprompter most of the time you know when you see us on tv and it looks like we've got it memorized we're really smart sometimes in this breaking news there's no teleprompter it's like alright here's the deal three alarm fire, warwick, two people injured firefighter might be killed we're working to get the angle on that story you're going to go on in 30 seconds and say it I'm like write this down and the next thing you know you're on camera and you get a deliver what he just told me the producer just told me and made him make sense and deliver it 20 years ago I sounded like a bumling idiot when I tried to break news out of the air now I've got a grasp on what I need to say how slow I need to say it's fascinating to get out there and you know hopefully you're relying on the producer to give you all the information you need because no and this is a big thing on tv nobody sees them right they only see me or Daniel or the other news angers if I get it wrong or if there's information wrong and if he gave you the right information either way if I get it wrong and I can't say well the producer told me it was wrong I got news for you they don't care about it but they don't we care about them but the people at home don't know that I got that information usually no one is telling me I'm here so I've got to rely heavily on the producer without the producers we aren't useless as anglers that's the bottom you know about being on tv and being behind the scenes they're literally like the big net underneath the high wire act of the circus that we need them and that's why at Christmas parties we buy them gift cards to the 1777 flickers and we get two gift certificates and take good care of them because we rely so much on them so I hope that answered the question Chris is there anything you want to ask that being on both ends of that spectrum yeah I mean just in the day to day aspect my day is pretty similar to that because I do the 9am news so I usually show up around between 2 and 3am I have a little leeway I'm tired I'll sleep until 3 and I'll just work that much harder when I get in but even though I do the 9 o'clock show I help out the 5 and 6am show before I start building my rundown for the day I help them out if they need some video cut I'll sort through that for them if there's breaking news I'll try to help them out and then I'll start on my show but it's like Patrick said it's a true team effort and I don't think a lot of people realize that until you work in the business like you said without the producer the anchors are nothing without the anchors getting the facts right and doing what we asked them to do it won't look good on air so when breaking news comes in like you said I might only tell them they will talk for a minute or two minutes sometimes or you know I'll just say hey we have Sky 7 our chopper up over a car accident two car accidents cars will buy or talk and they'll just talk for like 2-3 minutes well there's a car on fire they'll just go off the meter everybody's okay but like for example when the Boston Marathon bombings thing was going on we were literally like almost as much as Boston TV stations when they were looking for the two brothers the day when we knew one was dead the older one but when they were looking for a job that whole day it's like we were on TV for like 8 hours straight and when I say the breaking news is the best time for all of us I think anyway if you're in the business you just usually a bad thing it's a tragedy of some sort but it gets our juices flowing that's not bad but an interesting day-changing story I would much rather do that for 8 hours than sitting on the seat and look at the camera and talk about I don't know two along fire and fall river when everybody's fine there was a fender bender on Westminster Street in Providence last night one person was arrested and we did that for 4 hours I mean like really like it's just awful snow storms I love we're on the air for 4 hours we're on the air for 4 hours how was it out there? Captain Harvey is reporting for duty he's at home and I'm miserable and I want to be where you are sitting right? this sucks but you can't say that on TV so the whole breaking news aspect of it the play by play it's like live TV I love it I much rather do that what was the question again? you answered it now I've been up since 3 we're going to go on to one last question with the coal before we open it open the questions up to the audience the last 10 or so minutes you are working as a producer for CityLine and you also said that you are working under the umbrella of community affairs can you just give us an idea of what your day to day schedule is looking like with all that you're incorporating into one day no day is the same we can all say that no day is the same it is these days on Wednesday so we're a weekly show we air on Sundays but we're live to tape so we tape our show on Wednesdays so we're a talk show so the guests come in in the morning we get them all situated make sure they know what they're going to talk about and then it's kind of just getting the flow of the show happening within the hour that we have our studio booked I am not the host thank god but I have to make sure that my host Karen she talks about, she's prepped she goes over to the script usually lets me know before what changes she wants to make the director is usually yelling at me because I probably did something wrong but that usually varies and then if I have interns if I'm lucky to have interns they're usually one of the kind of facilitating getting the guests in and out just making sure that they're comfortable and making sure the conversation flows so our show is half an hour long and we have a talk show so if you do the math right that's about 7 minutes per segment to talk to someone and I highly doubt that any of you would ever be interested because we can't watch anything that's longer than a minute and a half so we have to make sure it's really interesting we have to make sure that we can incorporate video we like to try and find if we're talking about a little story a new state of coverage that might be relevant to us we try to incorporate that as well we want to make sure that we can incorporate that so it's a lot of coordinating and figuring out where the conversation needs to go but also we specifically cater to communities of color in the greater Boston area so now our content really has to be focused it really has to be local and specific to a target focused audience so most of the time during the week we're doing a lot of research going on through something national basically a whole show about social justice and social media and Black Lives Matter so we have to kind of take those national talking points and bring them into a local angle so we're doing that a lot and then I'm also making sure that the interns who produced their own half hour show so if you want to be an internal city line they're constantly making sure that all of their show material is prepared because that's basically a semester long process and then they're also helping me with the other things that I have to do so that's kind of city line in a nutshell and then under the community affairs umbrella which city line is under I'm also working with nonprofits so all the PSA intake and inventory that usually filters through me as well as Karen I'm making sure that it's going to traffic and that it's getting placed into my place the priorities are sent out to the services department and then if we're working with any walk so the ALS Association has a walk on materials from us that we have developed at PSA for them that's Erin and what's it oh like web stuff so you know take the content from the show the air is on Wednesday break it down to 30 seconds or less because I think no more than like 25 seconds like now I have to do it put it on social media only and then we can kind of put it on the show so that's it so it varies from day to day that's it alright well thank you so much for all of your thoughtful responses to my questions and now I would love to open up the audience to ask questions to any panelists just raise your hand if you have a question to ask John back there I was on Twitter at the beginning of old age you made it hard as journalists or employers to gather information harder just in terms of like accuracy oh yeah that's the big challenge well just for a lot of the Twitter stuff is amazing in how it's changed is that we used to wait dating myself but like the morning newspaper was like that was like the breaking news of the day so you get that on the evening newspaper and it's amazing how it's evolved from and I speak mostly for television where you would hold the story you'd hold the story that you'd get it like new for the 5 on 5 newscast or now you get the story in noon and it's on at 1201 there's no more holding the story so it's changed the game the internet has totally changed the game that I got into when I first started because there was no internet there was no phones, there was no electricity there was no cars airplanes I lost you there well it was at first because I said before that like the accuracy point you get the thing on Twitter and this thing's like what's this thing about why is this true right so it's made it different part of it it's more of a challenge to get to be as accurate because it's not always accurate I think I don't know days before my complete professional career has been with Twitter and all that but even when I was in Montana I'm not big on Twitter out there there's a huge car shop you're not going to see it on Facebook or Twitter first you're going to have to go there personally so going from there to Boston where there's cars and there's something it's on Twitter in a second sometimes so it's both easier and harder it's easier to get the info if I have info on a story you can get a picture to go on Twitter but it also makes it harder to get to ask permission you have to check the facts and I think about what you guys do where it's more of I say you can take your time doing it because there's no such thing as us taking our time we get it out and it's over where you're doing a show that you tape on Wednesday then it's on Sunday and you do stuff that takes weeks and weeks I started using Twitter a couple of years ago and I follow people I'm trying to keep track of some pretty obscure stories that most like you guys are going to be reporting on cases related to indigenous people conflicts with mining operations in the far western highlands in Guatemala now I know there's reporters around there because I bet them when I was there so I follow these guys on Twitter and when stuff starts to happen I get it from them over periods of time I just sort of try to keep track I was a little over a year ago recording on a case of human rights violations in this case near Guatemala city and there was a guy who one of my sources who was in Washington last week testifying in Congress doing some other meetings so I interviewed him and I've got a story of the worst and I'm hoping to get out either Friday or really next week so there's a few people who I follow in Guatemala who I know are following this story so Twitter helps me a lot because I can't be everywhere but I'm finding sources who are just all over the place people in Cambodia people in Mali there's like this crazy war is going on and the north and eastern parts of Mali that none of us have heard about and I'm following reporters who are in that area and keeping track because I'm trying to get back there and I know it's not safe so I'm kind of waiting and I'm watching what they're tweeting about trying to get a grip on what's happening it's an incredible news resource I'm finding the only thing I'll say now like what you're going to do now going into the internet when I first started TV because there wasn't it's almost taken over as I don't want to say a more important thing to do the TV news broadcast but the internet is 24-7 I'm just waiting for the time that I can be on TV for 24 hours a day I don't want to but you know I mean like the internet you can always write here so what he's going into channel 10 is more immediate and more like right now than even more of the right now stuff that I do and what he does everything right and you really got to be accurate there's more rules I think for the internet and there are for broadcast do you want anything on TV it's really one of those things where you are you obviously represent the brand when you go to work for any news institution you represent the brand of that building and if you're putting out information that's wrong obviously that reflects on the station so that you have to be very very careful when you're the one putting the information out on social media but in terms of I think your question like news gathering itself depends on what form of news gathering you're looking at this is more the standard like vendor vendor fire you know a lot of time people have phones they have pictures and they're tweeting about it that's a good indicator that you need to send like at least a photographer if it's an AM shift it's overnight send a string around to go get some video and then you'll have something for your news cast it gets a little more complicated when you're talking about a more complicated issue let's say in the event of for example Jim Skeffington if someone tweeted that and you didn't get that tip from a text message that's extremely dubious you know you already have to go through enough filters of people when it's a direct source now you're looking at social media you have to be very very careful what you're getting and then again unless it's that pick and you can't even count if it's a picture on the ground because you know in the age of Photoshop anything can be fake so it depends on what you're looking for if you're looking for that hard news if you're looking for something very data-driven you're getting tweets from a non-reviewal source it's like 10 foot pole don't touch it it's like a traditional day-to-day news a week or so ago there was a small Black Lives Matter protest that involved the Dunkin' Donuts coffee mug or something like that a worker wrote on it there was actually a protest that happened outside of the Dunkin' Donuts it broke on Twitter and then we went and sent people there to recover it but an instance is like that it has obviously its pros and its cons all right thank you does anybody have anything like that so obviously you love your jobs Chris you're saying that it's really exhilarating it's fantastic but is there an average like are you chained to your desk or can you go leave and do something else at some point I am a desk chopper I don't know I should say I mean I go when I did sports I travel a lot now that I'm a morning news anchor some things were called active anchors sometimes we go out and do a special piece not live day of but it'll air like like I did one this one blew my mind there's this powder caffeine stuff what are these kids doing seriously like you heard this stuff no good I went out as an anchor an active anchor to do this powder caffeine story that people are thinking it's like Kool-Aid mix and they have a teaspoon it's like having 700 cups of coffee so like kids that want to get like a jolt to go work out like we'll do like a little tiny teaspoon and put it in their water and drink it and just die and you can get this at GNC so that's like a story that I'll have coming up in November it's called a sweeps piece it's like a booster rating so people watch like here's how not to die watch Patrick Tuesday 96 so I get out sometimes most part of it I'm stuck to that desk but I travel a lot of sports and I'm fine with it now like I've been doing this you know 20 21 years and I've kind of worked my way up to it being an anchor it's not like it's an option it's not a bad thing it's kind of a it's like it's not the pinnacle of my side of business but it's pretty close I guess if you're going to strive to be something alright we actually have one more question before we wrap it up I'll take it all the time I just wanted to speak just very briefly to wrap up about what it is that they wish they had done more in college before they went out into the real world or what is it that they did do you know that they really wish they could maximize before heading out for the first game internships I was the kid that had I didn't have a McDonald's on my resume but I was the kid that was more focused on working and making money to go to the bar but not pay off all those loans at the average but I was more focused on making money working part-time than using that time to go and do that groundwork and have an experience that was unpaid so I mean I went to Northeastern so we had the call for work so it was a little bit more kind of forcing to the internships because it's part of the curriculum but the internships are so important and it's finding that balance between making that money not making that money because like I said you're not going to make money as an intern so just find that balance and have the internships but it's all about that resume and making those contacts also networking is so important so those are the people you will speak to and they'll be able to vouch for you later if your work is good did anyone else want to add to that yeah I'd say internships kind of all of a sudden go like I did a lot of internships I did three in college and I kind of wish I did more like I had so much fun doing them it's what really proved to me that I love this business just do as many as you can like the goal-set contacts two of my references when I applied for my first job were from my first internship and they just put in a great work for me and actually I remember Professor Prado I went to her and Professor Scully when I was applying to jobs and I said you guys be a reference and they said absolutely but it's going to look a lot better if you have somebody who works at a station like that and I think it's true as good as their recommendation would be you know the news record let's say an NBC affiliate puts in a good work for you it's going to look good because they're in the business right now do those internships, stay in touch with people I still email people who I've been with I haven't seen in years so do that they're fun to be with you don't get paid it sucks but they're fun I would say maybe half the people that are in the TV station that are there now at whatever department whether it be a photographer or engineer or director even not so much reporters because it's a larger market but although Steph will be reporting once she graduates in the next May congratulations you got the job but I'm just pointing to that interns like you look around the room at at our TV station in our newsroom and producers or whatever and a lot of these people and wait a second were you an intern here like four or five years ago right and now you left and when you got a job you know in Montana and then you're back real quick my only regret is that I went from Manchester to New Hampshire right to Rhode Island which was great at the time as I'm from Rhode Island and I didn't have to go all over but I wish that I had a chance when I was younger to do more of like go to get a job for a couple years in like a city that I've never met you know don't be afraid to explore and you know you might be from say you're from I don't know you say you're from Boston do you want to be a TV reporter in Boston don't be afraid for the first ten years of your career to go work in Phoenix and in Denver and you know what I mean or Miami like if you get those chances to bounce around and see parts of the country right it's totally worth it it's terrifying and you don't know what's in store for you but it's so worth it I'm regretting about it now like I said I'm sorry I want to work with you now but you've got to see something if you have the opportunity just do it I'm going to Haiti and stuff there that's actually a good point if you want to do international reporting it's good to travel to learn languages it's good to kind of what you're saying about working in other markets it's good to study some place or something interesting even if you don't pursue that as your life's work it shows that you have facility to become an expert in something and I think that's important I think you know languages are very important I am constantly in situations where I think to myself I'm really I should have studied it but you know I think it would have been so interesting because of all the different kinds of people I'm meeting I think it would help me ask the right questions so I talked to a lot of anthropologists and I read a lot of interesting stuff now but I often think that I should have studied that in school I think for international reporting it's good to get out it's good to go places and meet people like I said, study over languages alright well that concludes our media panel please sit around for our network reception it's happening right now in the lobby