ABC Internship for TechBytes
How would you like to work the other 9 to 5?
I mean working from nine in the afternoon to five in the morning every weekday. Such was the daily schedule for my internship at ABC News - news that has to be made 24/7.
My internship was for participating in the video segment TechBytes, a tech news video chunk that gets sent nationwide to all local ABC affiliates (your local station). My partner for this adventure was Brett, who writes and produces the segment along with MoneyScope, a business related segment. TechBytes gets recorded and broadcast nationwide weekday mornings as part of your local news. This means that the tech news have to be suitable for all audiences, not just tech-minded people. Being broadcast in the morning means that the segment has to be ready the night before the morning it is to be broadcast.
The first thing Brett and I did when coming in on Sunday night was to find tech-related stories. This is something that felt quite familiar to me. Engaging in such stories in times when I usually should have been doing schoolwork, I happily looked through my favorite sites: Engadget, Gizmodo, Digg, Google News, etc, to find suitable stories to use. I started compiling a list of headlines and sources for story topics. I found a mixed assortment of popular stories that people should know about, and I also dug around and found some interesting stories that weren’t so popular yet. I showed this list to Bret, and he would like maybe one or two of the popular ones, but never really liked the more tech-oriented stories that I thought would be interesting to most people. He explained that my choice of less popular-but interesting stories wouldn’t make a good story for TechBytes.
But what exactly makes a story good for TechBytes? That question would interest me during my entire internship.
I first noticed that a lot of the stories that were chosen for the show were iPhone related. I was understanding of this since the popular news topic was the release of the new iPhone 4. But after a full week of what seemed like non-stop apple iPhone madness, I had to know why there was such a strong focus on a single topic.
One day as I was finding topics, I was relieved to find a lot of interesting tech news going on. I wrote down over ten possible stories for Brett to look over, only to notice that most of them dealt with news about Android, my phone’s OS. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the stories which I picked that seemed absolutely newsworthy were really geared for my interests. I picked mostly stories which interested and excited me, even though I was purposely looking for stories aimed at a broad national audience. Brett, who chose most of the iPhone related stories, doesn’t have an iPhone, even though he has an iPod touch. He cited that more people would be interested in the popular iPhone stories than the weaker Android topics; he was probably correct after looking at the number of people who bought the iPhone 4, but that lesson made me realize to keep my biases in check when finding articles for stories.
I eventually figured out some of the secrets to a good story. We used topics for stories that people could directly relate to. For example, because of a heat wave, we presented a story about a new air-conditioning technology that was more efficient. It’s a little weird though; the story gets to be popular because of the public’s interest in the story, and that’s how the story got to us to be published again. It’s this reason that less popular stories don’t get to be used as often.
One time, I found one story about battery terminals which could accept batteries being inserted in either direction, but Brett rejected the story, saying that it’s not difficult to know how to insert batteries correctly. Thinking back to my psychology and people design course, I tried to strengthen my argument, explaining that he was missing the point. The design of the new technology would make things easier and simpler for people, and that deserved the story in itself. Looking back now, I guess I could imagine people staring at their TV’s and wondering why it was a newsworthy story; the majority of people nationwide don’t have issues with their batteries, and would laugh at the concept of a need for such technology. Most of the country hasn’t taken psychology courses at Georgia Tech; they just wouldn’t get the idea, like Brett.
One story we used wasn’t very well known though. We used a story that described a new flying car which looked no more ready for production than all the other prototypes from over the years; but we put the story on the air anyway. A general audience can relate to a future tech story. The topic of human progression into the future is welcomed in tech related news.
After we gathered all of our stories, Brett had to write the script for the prompter. The news anchor would read this script and it would go to air. Brett, who is a talented writer, used clever phrases to explain different parts of the story and to paraphrase the important details. The thing to note is that he has to write five stories for a two minute segment, and he has about an hour to write all five.
As Bret started to write the stories, I split up and visited the editing department. I participated in capturing video for the segment. Whenever an anchor talked about a subject, for example a kindle, a b-reel video of the kindle would usually play full-screen for the story. The video could have been from numerous sources; ABC could have filmed it themselves at the product’s launch, Amazon could have sent us a press video, or we could have used the TV commercial for the product. When I asked Brett what difference it made, if it made one at all, he explained that we didn’t want to commercialize a product; it would be best to use our own footage instead of what the company sends us.
Finding the right video to use is a difficult job to accomplish because all these different video sources come in different formats. First you would have to search for what you want – in our case we would search for kindle related items. Finding a video we recently used would keep it in the editing system for up to a week, but after that, the search would return with no results and the video would be archived on DVD or in digital storage. The previous week’s related videos could turn up nothing. Then we would search all the scripts for the news shows that mentioned kindle hoping that some other show already tracked down a relevant video. If that worked, we could track down the DVD in big binders. If not, we would have to order the video on digital archive storage or find it in the building somewhere.
If the news were really recent, then we would have to capture it ourselves. We would capture new videos using a device called a scando. This expensive (and somewhat aging machine) would directly capture the output of a computer’s display, capturing smooth video. We used this for capturing websites and online videos, including YouTube videos.
After we captured all necessary video for the segment and Brett’s finished writing, he would rejoin us in the editing Department, and the editing process would begin. The videos would first be removed of all sound; that’s where the anchor’s voice and narration would later go. Then multiple videos would be quickly chopped and aligned to where the script prescribes them. This is the important part. The timing of the words of the prompter was matched up with the video. For example, if we were describing the features of the new iPhone, we would mention the new screen, the video-chat feature, and the antenna in the script, and the video would be edited to sync with the words of these features. So in theory, when the anchor talks about these individual things they appear right on the screen on queue.
Just as the editing finished, we would go to the set to watch the segment get recorded. Here, a number of things could go wrong on the first take. For example, the first time the anchor started to talk for my story, the wrong image was loaded for the story and the recording had to stop. Later the wrong video was loaded. There could be a technical reason the segment must be restarted, or the anchor could just stumble on the text. That perfect sync between the story and the video could be lost for a stumble on a single word. It’s humorous for a second when the anchor’s tongue gets twisted in knots, but it’s obvious that many people worked hard up to this point, and that it needs to get done right. The segment starts again and every word syncs up to the video, each image is aligned perfectly on the screen, every title and text has the correct words; two minutes of perfection. Finally, the segment is done and at this point it’s about 4:00 AM. I’m exhausted, but Brett has to continue working in order to meet his 4:30 writing deadline for MoneyScope, his other news segment. It’s only a matter of hours until TechBytes gets aired nationwide that morning, for people to wake up to and get their daily tech news.
My experience was a tiring one since I never really got used to the strange schedule. I fell asleep before the segment ever aired in the morning and usually woke up after the sun went down. I always felt like I only slept and worked and nothing else. Also, writing and finding stories for a broad audience was harder than I thought. I can take comfort in the fact that I only have to write for students in Georgia Tech majoring mostly in Computer Science. Brett tried to teach me that there wasn’t an exact science for picking a good story to use; he gives the segment his own look since he writes it. I’m glad that I got to visit and see how technology news get molded for mass public consumption, but for now I’d like to get back to a normal sleeping pattern.
