Black Friday

It doesn't matter that I've lived through 20 of them in my lifetime - "Black Fridays" never cease to amaze me. I've never been one to follow the masses to stores at 2 a.m. in order to save, mainly because the crowds and chaos freak me out, but I've always been one to follow the news coverage of the day. Black Friday has become the new winterizing story - the news prepares you for what to expect and how to get the most out of your experience. It's become just another annual story, yet it's still fascinating.

This piece from the LA Times could be written about any city in America on Black Friday, but it paints the exact picture readers expect to see. I'd like to find a story that shows you something different about Black Friday. It seems like the day would be a great opportunity to learn how the stores prepare for the day. Or how companies decide what items will get what markdowns. Black Friday has become such an orchestrated event, yet I don't feel like I know anything more about it than I did five years ago.

Instead of stories taking you inside the inner-workings of America's retailers - or even a local business who has to compete with big time department stores - we get stories like this.

I'm not saying that this report from the Dallas NBC station is bad, it's just been done before. It's understandable that this is what was done - I'm sure the reporter was working on a deadline and it was obviously all done in a day - but I wish he had gone further. While it could be considered "riding the tricycle," it would at least be something different if the reporter andLea photographer stayed the night alongside these eager shoppers and attempted to see what kind of deals they could get. Or, on that same note, followed a customer and what deals he or she got. I just want to see more than people sitting in a line waiting to get into the store. I want to see inside the store.

Luckily, there's always next year.

Everyday's a School Day

I haven't reported in about two weeks, and I've probably taken that time for granted. Sometimes it's such a relief to have to to worry about deadlines and improving your skills. But I'm starting to worry about getting rusty, which makes me nervous. The more time you spend away from the world of news, the more disconnected you get from it. That's why I've made myself more of a news junkie than ever before. I'm watching more, reading more, listening to more. I'm starting to realize that the more you can absorb, the better you can become. By just watching the local and national news every night this break, I've already come up with a few ways to think differently about the stories I cover in Columbia. I'm even excited to get back and knock out my last reporting shift for the semester.

Social Media Mess?

I get a lot my news from social media. From Twitter to Facebook to Youtube, I'm plugged in all day. But I've come to realize that sometimes social media isn't the most trusted source when it comes to getting accurate information. A couple of weeks ago there was a shooting in a neighboring town and emergency teams brought the victims to an on-campus hospital. That's when some mass social media hysteria broke out. A lot of students posted on Twitter and Facebook that a shooter was on campus. This led to a snowball effect; students claimed the shooter was in a bunch of different places and that he killed three people on campus. Luckily, none of the local news organizations posted any of this information. All of the local outlets waited until official word came out, and they were able to dispel a lot of the rumors.

This got me thinking about social media. It seems like my generation relies on it more and more as a news gathering and breaking information resource. I think one of the people I follow on Twitter, Natalie Eshaya, summed up the trend pretty well when a mystery missile launched in California this week.

@NegativeNatalie: So. A missile launched. And nobody knows why? But I know where lindsay lohan is every second of every day. I'm scared.

While I too know where Lindsay Lohan is every second of every day, I hadn't heard of the missile incident until I read Eshaya's tweet. I don't know what the best way is to combat this is, but I hope to be a part of the social media movement that can help improve everyone's use of social media resources. I think it's great to know where Lindsay Lohan is (though she probably wishes we all didn't), but it's just as important to know what's going on in the world. But I don't want it to come to this:

(The Dallas Fox station roasted social media for the local Emmys earlier this year).

Hurry Up and Wait

I sometimes have a patience issue. When I'm ready to do something, I want everyone else ready to go, too. I'm starting to learn that my dreams are far from reality. I came into the newsroom this week already knowing what story I wanted to cover. I pitched the idea - a look at homeless veteran resources in our area the day before Veterans Day - and started to get to work. Then it was a waiting game. I put out a bunch of calls, but everyone seemed to be busy, or out of the office. I waited almost two hours to hear something back. By that time I had already started the leg work on a different story. But then the pieces started to fall into place.

Broadcast news is all about time. The news doesn't wait around for you, and you can't force the news to happen. You can't plan it, which is something I'm dealing with. I'm very much a planner. I don't like the unknown or stress. This businesses is teaching me a lot about my capacity for both the unplanned and stress. I'm learning that I can get everything I need to done, but it's not always going to be perfect. There are always going to be things you could have done differently or better. There's always going to be that moment after you finish your story where you realize what would have made it better. But that's the whole point of working - to learn. Without experience, you can't develop new ways of thinking about your work. I'm learning I can come up with a set of plans for different scenarios (to feed my need for structure), but I can't plan for specifics. The more I'm able to see and do, the more comfortable and confident I know I'll feel.