Brand New Territory

Hello, hello!

As part of my final months in the Journalism program at Algonquin College I am required to take part in a work placement. The prospect was a little scary when it was  first discussed. Where would I be going? What would I be doing? Could I afford to devote 6 weeks solely to unpaid work?

The search for a placement for me began in February. We looked into everything from community newspapers to online music magazines, communications positions and political reporting. We ended up going with a placement at an all news radio station. I was nervous; I have a little bit of experience working with audio but not enough to even think of calling myself an expert. I went for a tour at my placement the Thursday before I began and had the chance to meet some of the people I’ll be working with for the next month or so. Everyone seemed really nice and excited to have myself and another classmate around.

Monday I got myself all prettied up in my “real people clothes” and headed out for my first day. My mentor for the first couple of days was a guy named Josh who was beyond nice and also a graduate from Algonquin (he rocked the radio broadcasting program in 2008). He familiarized me with the programs the station uses and the schedule they run on. As an all news station they are constantly on air which means that they have to be as up to date as possible. I spent my first day slack jawed and awed.

Throughout the week I got to work with Burli which is an amazing program where I can harvest stories from multiple news wires, cut/edit audio, create scripts and submit copy ready for the editor to look at and decide what will air and what won’t. At the beginning I was so nervous to submit anything I’d worked on but then I decided to take the chance. My second day I had a few scripts I’d put together hit the air and it felt really good.

Today, my fourth day on the job, I had the chance to go into the master control room and watch the anchors run the casts. The desk is really awesome, there’s so much going on but the anchors make it look like nothing. They fly through the news and adapt to cast changes at the drop of a hat.

Next week I hope to pitch some ideas to my boss and offer up my photography skills for the website. I’m looking forward to finishing my placement with an entire new set of skills that I’d never considered before.