Krista Roberts

For the first day of my online producing shift, things went pretty smoothly. James did a great job of leading us through the procedure to get things onto the KUJH site. I do wish that there had been some sort of handout we could follow. We did a lot of clicking on this and changing that, but (writing as fast as I could) I still wasn't able to get it all down. Since Brad & I were both there, hopefully one or the other of us will remember next time.

I'm wondering if it might be more productive for me to move my shift back by an hour (1-5pm instead of noon-4). It seems like there is very little to do between noon and 1:00, but then when everything goes crazy at 4:00, Gretchen is left with a lot to do by herself. I think having someone there overlapping the two shifts slightly might make for better coverage and make the afternoon/evening easier on everyone.

Today went pretty well (especially since we didn't have lab last week). Brad and I had a chance to learn how to post to the Beyond Lawrence part of the site. I remembered most of how to do the 3pm news brief and then posted a J415 story before I left. Thanks to Justin who showed me how to resize the image that was eclipsing my Web story!

This week I changed my shift time to 1:00-5:00 p.m. I think the move worked pretty well. When I got in, Brad had everything under control. He posted the 3:00 p.m. news brief since he had not had a chance to do it before. Working a later shift also gave me time to write an extra story for Gretchen. We'll see how things go on the 24th.

Stayed with the later shift time and it seems to be working very well.

Shortly after I came in there was a J692 story ready to go. It was only a VO, but there were a couple of links to extra info. I worked in the extra info and put links with them. We also went with a pic from the USDA because it showed the tree problem much better. I put in for a courtesy on the pic and it came up in red letters. James said it's probably the first time we've put a courtesy on a pic on tv.ku.edu, so we guessed that red was the default color. It's not long for the site though because when Gretchen is able to post the newscast, the courtesy will be eclipsed by the video.

Same thing happened when I put a courtesy on the Danforth Chapel story, but again, it should go away once Gretchen puts in the video.

We got a lot of the reporter pieces in earlier than we had been which made the afternoon much easier. Plus, we're getting a little faster at posting too :)

Great shift today. I felt for the first time like it was a fluid process. From getting the information from the reporters to repurposing (which I had some fun with) to getting it onto the site-- everything worked out great. I'm glad that I'm getting to the spot where I don't need to rely as much on my notes about how to do things like prepare pictures in photoshop, add a link or post a story. Doing this shift once a week has made it a bit of a challenge to retain the information from week to week (especially since we had a Monday off for Labor Day), but now I'm hoping that I'm on the backside of the learning curve. I look forward to my Monday shift a lot more when I feel like I've got a handle on what I'm doing :)

Brad and I got right to work today and managed to get everything written and posted before Gretchen came in for her shift.

Having my shift overlap Brad's and Gretchen's shifts is really working out well. Brad can pick up early stories, Beyond Lawrence and the 3pm update. I can pick up the later stories and I'm still able to get out on time at 5 p.m. Gretchen can focus on editing the pieces out of the newscast and linking them to the stories we've written.

This was probably the smoothest that the Monday afternoon shift has gone this semester. Hopefully, it is the sign of things to come.

This week I switched to the noon-4pm shift because Brad had a morning flight into KC and didn't know if he'd make it back to Lawrence by noon. Getting in early gave me some time to play with. I found three new stories to post to "Beyond Lawrence." I enjoy hunting out those interesting tech stories from around the world. Today, two of them had video components, so I linked the image to the video and the text to the original article. Pretty neat.

We had a lot of items to post today and everything went very smoothly. I got a package and VO repurposed along with the text for the 3pm news update. Brad added the news update video and did a couple of stories too.

My big breakthrough of the day was that I was able to write out basic links without having to go back to my cheat sheet. Hopefully that knowledge will stick with me through the midterm on Thursday :) and beyond.

We appear to have this shift down. Brad was already nearly finished with re-purposing a package when I got in at 1 p.m.

We had 2 VSOTs and 1 VO ready to go not too long after that. Each of us took a VSOT and I did the VO plus the script for the 3pm update. We had all of it done by 4pm. That meant that Gretchen only had one VSOT and the video to put in for her shift.

I was also able to do the coding for the links without having to refer to my notebook. Repetition is a great thing! And I've gotten pretty good at manipulating/sizing images in Photoshop. Both of these are skills that I was hoping to obtain by taking this class-- so as far as those are concerned-- mission accomplished.

This week, my shift shifted to 2-6 p.m. The change lets me work one-on-one with an editing student from 5-6 p.m. This week, the plan worked well. I was able to get some things posted before Breiun arrived. Then I had her copy edit two stories. The first had some great basic style errors. The second was one I had written. In the first, she caught nearly all of the errors and got them fixed. On the second, she found a way to reword and improve something that I had written. I hope that this one-on-one time helps her gain some confidence and real-time experience in copy editing.

Today there wasn't a lot ready to go when I got in at 2 p.m., but I did happen to notice that the Beyond Lawrence section had two items I entered which meant that some of the content had been up for two weeks. I found two new items to freshen the section up a bit.

By the time I was done with that, John DeVore's story was ready to be re-purposed, so I had a chance to get that done before I started working with Brieun on copy editing.

Overall, our shift (Brad, me, Gretchen) goes very smoothly and we're usually not leaving Gretchen with a whole lot of unfinished stories, so it seems like the work is getting divided pretty evenly among the three of us.

The best part of the shift today was getting to help Brieun with her editing. Not only is she doing a much better job spotting AP and grammatical errors, she and Doug Ward also found a significant error in facts on one story from the week before. We were able to go in and correct the story, so that it will be right in the archive. I think that Brieun was really excited to be able to help correct a story that is actually on tv.ku.edu and we're the better for it.

Too bad that as each week gets easier, each week also brings us closer to the end. Today's shift was great. I got two new Beyond Lawrence posts up, then had time to repurpose the story on the library's book sale and the Festival of Trees before Brieun got here to do some copy editing. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I managed to squeeze in the completion of my final blog. Whew!

I do have to say that I'll be sad when these shifts end next week. At first, I really struggled to get the stories repurposed and the pictures created in a timely fashion. Now I find that with practice it comes much more easily. Too bad I won't have a chance to practice these new skills in the real world.

I've really enjoyed getting the opportunity to try this new and different (at least to old dogs like me) kind of journalism.