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Communications Context: Internship at WBOC-TV

Communications Department, Salisbury University

COMM-49: Winter Internship in Communication

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Communications Context: Internship at WBOC-TV

Over the winter break of 2022, I was blessed with the opportunity to intern in the

news department at WBOC-TV. As a communications major with a focus on journalism,

working within a TV newsroom for six weeks was the perfect opportunity for me to

understand what the business is like outside of the classroom. During those six weeks, I

learned more about communication from real-world experiences in daily interactions with

the ones around me. This internship gave me a chance to expand my knowledge on the

many aspects of communication such as being responsive, sharing feedback, and using

the proper method of communication in varying scenarios.

Before my first day on the job, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had

no idea what the inside of a newsroom looked like nor did I understand how one

functioned on a day-to-day basis. Like everything in life, there is more than one side to a

story. We only see the anchors and reporters on TV and we do not think twice about the

dozen other people behind the scenes working alongside them to produce a show. This

opportunity showed me a different side of the story and allowed me to get a better picture

of what the industry is really like.

On my first day, I was met by my former professor and on-site supervisor Ron

Krisulevicz. Ron showed me around the news plex and introduced me to everyone

working that day. He introduced me to the reporters, producers, editors, and directors. He

then let me shadow Doug Cortese, one of the reporters, for the day. Shortly after our 10

o’clock meeting in the newsroom, Doug and I hit the road. We spent the day gathering

interviews, shooting b-roll, writing his script, and editing his news package. Doug opened
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my eyes to one of the crucial aspects of communication that applies to both media and to

life, responsiveness.

Everything in the media revolves around one's ability to be responsive. Whether it

is an accident that just happened and you need a photographer on the scene to capture

footage, or it is a crucial interview that must happen before noon, one's ability to

communicate quickly can be the determining factor in whether or not you land that story.

For this particular day, Doug had to Produce a news story for both the six o'clock and the

seven o'clock show. This meant that we had to secure at least two interviews at the

Salisbury Civic Center by noon, interview Travis Brown of the Worcester County Health

Department by one o'clock, write our script by three o'clock and start editing our stories

by four o'clock. For this reason, we left the news plex as soon as we could.

Doug also emphasized the importance of responsiveness the following day. We

had a story lined up about Phillips's Crab House closing in Ocean City. With it being a

45-minute drive to the restaurant, we had to make sure our time was productively spent.

We reached out to the owners of the crab house, but no one got back to us. We were

hoping that we could get somebody who worked there to speak about it, but it did not end

up working out for us. We then had to resort to “man on the street” interviews for our

evening stories.

In TV, it is not always easy getting people to talk to you. Time is not only

valuable to us, but it is valuable to the people we are trying to interview. When we asked

bystanders for a statement about our story, we told them it would only take a few

minutes. When we asked them questions, we made sure to get straight to the point and

not to waste anyone's time. I found that it was easier for both us and our interviewees to
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keep the question short and simple. I also learned that we only use a portion of an

interview, so it is not worth asking anyone a ton of loaded questions. When in TV, less is

more.

I also learned the importance of responsiveness when it comes to landing an

interview. During my 4th week as an intern, I was given the opportunity to play the role

of a reporter. After both Doug and Kayla had left the news plex, we heard of a viral

Facebook video of a camel walking into one of Salisbury’s local stores. Since our

reporters were in the field, I was given the responsibility of contacting the Funny Farm

Petting Zoo about their newly acquired furry friend. Shortly after, I made contact with the

woman who posted the video and I attempted to land an interview with both her and her

camel.

Although I did not end up landing the interview due to safety concerns of the

petting zoo, I was granted permission to use their video in our nightly newscast. I learned

that my responsiveness in that situation granted us another story to run in our show. If I

had not contacted her when I did and if she was not as responsive as she was, we would

not have had the opportunity to use her footage for the show.

The second aspect of communication that I learned more about during my

internship was the importance of sharing feedback. Without constant feedback in the

newsroom, issues would not be fixed and mistakes would continually happen. I found

that it is very important to accept both feedback and criticism in a professional

environment. I learned from my many mistakes on the job through the feedback of my

superiors. If I were to continue my work without this constant feedback, I would have

continually made mistakes without the knowledge to fix them.

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When working with Kye Parsons, I constantly asked him questions about my

online web articles. I asked him questions regarding proper attribution, APA formatting,

inverted pyramid style writing, active tense, and proper use of acronyms. I learned a lot

from Kye because I listened to his feedback and I improved with each question I asked. I

took each piece of information he gave me to heart because I knew how good of a writer

he was. Even when Kye was brutally honest with me about my articles, I took it as a

chance to improve my writing skills for web media.

When I had submitted my first article to Kye for proofreading, it had been close to

a year since I had written my last web article. I thought I had written a good enough

article worthy of publishing. To say the least, I was very rusty. After Kye had read my

story and shared his feedback, I felt ashamed for a moment about what I had given him. I

felt that I had let him down and wasted his time. After looking over the mistakes myself,

I realized that these errors were simple fixes. I used the information he had given me and

I rewrote the entire story from scratch.

Before I resubmitted my article back to Kye for proofing, I triple-checked my

work to make sure I did not make the same mistakes twice. After I had felt confident in

my work again, I submitted it for a second review. Once he had looked it over, Kye

expressed to me that I did a good job with the revisions and he uploaded it to the website.

I felt a greater sense of accomplishment knowing that I failed my first attempt, used what

I had learned for my second, and wrote an even better article than before. If Kye had

fixed my writing for me and not given me the feedback I required, I would not have had

the opportunity to learn from my mistakes.

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I had another teachable moment a couple of weeks after my web training with

Kye about the importance of feedback. During my 5th week at WBOC, I was learning

how to edit a show together with the help of Pete Evans. When putting a show together,

each story must have a separate tape code. Tape codes are individualized codes that

differentiate stories apart from one another. If two stories have the same tape code, the

system does not know which one is which, and the producers are forced to drop one of

the two during the show.

Normally, stories are assigned their proper tape codes and the shows run

smoothly. However, the producers ran into this issue during one of the shows I had

edited. Initially, I was upset with myself. I thought that I had duplicated someone's tape

code and messed up their entire story on live television. I convinced myself that, as the

new guy, I had made a mistake and that the reason the show was interrupted was due to

my negligence. As soon as the show had ended, I went directly to Pete to apologize for

my mistake.

To my surprise, I was not the one who duplicated the tape codes. Pete told me that

Todd was the one who made a mistake with the tape codes and that he had accidentally

repeated one when he was producing the show. He told me that while it was not directly

my fault, we should have checked the rundown to make sure there were no repeating

codes. Since Pete and I both worked on the four o'clock and the five o'clock show, we did

not know which stories the other had completed. After discussing the issue with the

codes, we realized it was best to only focus on one show each the following day.

This solution prevented any confusion as to who edited what story the day that

followed, and we were able to avoid any duplicate tape codes as a team. To find this
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solution, we had to share feedback with each other in order to correct our mistake. The

feedback shared between both Pete and I allowed us to find the cause of the problem, find

a solution for future shows, and prevent the same mistake from happening twice.

The third and final major takeaway I learned about communication during my

internship was determining which method of communication is best for certain situations.

In news, it is usually best to conduct interviews face-to-face. When interviews are

conducted in person, both the audience and the reporter have an easier time connecting

with the person who is talking. Viewers tend to care more about the person speaking

when they are speaking in front of a reporter as opposed to when they are recorded on a

Zoom call. However, I also learned that it is not always possible to conduct interviews

this way.

During my 6th and final week at WBOC, I was asked to conduct an online zoom

interview with an official from Delaware. In this particular situation, we did not have

enough time in advance to send out a reporter to ask the questions we needed for our

evening news story. So instead of not having sound for our story, I recorded our zoom

meeting and used his quotes for our evening shows. It would have been ideal to interview

him in person, but certain situations require different communication methods than

others.

I also learned that choosing the correct communication method applies to many

other situations outside of interviews. When I was shadowing Kye under the web

department, we came across an issue with Virginia’s Sheriff's Department. We had heard

of a deadly car accident that occurred in Accomack County, but we did not receive a
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press release from the sheriff's office. WBOC normally receives these press releases via

email, but we had been having this same issue for weeks.

Seeing that this was a recurring issue, Kye assigned me the duty of contacting the

Accomack County Sergeant to find the missing press release. Kye advised me to call her

directly, as it would be faster than emailing her. After getting in touch with her, we

worked out the issue regarding the email chain, and I asked if she could add us back to

the list. After we finished our conversation, she informed me that she was not at her desk

at the moment and she would do it first thing when she got back.

We needed that press release in order to put it in our upcoming show. If I had

emailed her as opposed to calling her, she would not have responded as quickly as she

did. The email would have been pushed to the bottom of her inbox and it would have

taken her longer to respond back to me. The phone call allowed me to be direct and

responsive with her, and it allowed us to run that story in our four o'clock show. In this

situation, calling her directly was a better communication method than e-mailing.

I mentioned earlier that I was given the responsibility to reach out to the Funny

Farm Petting Zoo on Facebook about their camel video. When we researched their

information, we did not find a phone number on their website nor did we find one on

their Facebook page. This meant that the best form of communication was via direct

messages through the Facebook Messenger app. My conversation with the petting zoo

occurred solely over these direct messages.

I updated both my on-site supervisor and the producer of the show when I had

heard back from her. When I informed Ron of the situation, he asked me if I had spoken

on the phone with her at any point in our conversation. I told him that I had not spoken to
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her over the phone, but that she was very responsive in her messages. Looking back, I

now realize that it would have been a better decision to have her call me and talk directly

to me over the phone. Even though she messaged me back fairly quickly, it would have

been much faster having a direct conversation with her. In that particular situation, I did

not use the best method of communicating. I have now learned that if I need an answer

faster in the future, I will have the other person call me directly.

When I first learned about the internship requirement for my communications

track, I was worried that I would not have the opportunity to learn new information about

real-world scenarios. I feared that I would be shredding documents and making coffee

runs for those doing real work in the office. In my mind, I imagined myself doing the

stereotypical tasks that interns are known to do. I did not realize the value of an

internship until I started one.

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to intern in the news department at

WBOC-TV. I learned more about how the industry operates, how important proper

communication is, and how to better problem solve in the future. Going into this

internship, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. Being able to try something

different each week and learn more about the various roles in the industry allowed me to

better visualize what I want to do with my degree when I graduate.