Panel Three Print

Chivone Smith

PANEL THREE

MMA 487

By Chivone Smith

“Every time you do a story, think about the one outfit in the closet that you want everybody to remember. When you put on that outfit, you want people to be talking about it…” 11 Alive news anchor DeMarco Morgan said.

Producer at WSB-TV Marcus Foster and 11 Alive news anchor DeMarco Morgan spoke to students enrolled in the new Jacque Reid Media Arts Studies course. The students were offered tips on how to pitch story ideas, how to report on a story and how to conduct successful interviews.

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Chivone Smith

PANEL THREE

MMA 487

The students were asked to pitch a few story ideas to Reid and after reviewing them, Reid decided that they needed assistance on knowing how to pitch a story idea in the right format.

“When you’re pitching a story, have a pre-interview already done,” Foster said.

Morgan suggested a more in-depth approach in pitching story ideas. He said, “The first thing you do, you want to make sure that it’s doable. The second thing is, how can I tell this story differently and how can I make people care about it?” He added that it is important to identify the who, what, when, where and why before pitching a story idea.

During the speech, students began to pitch story ideas on the spot and didn’t seem to have a focus on what their plans were on tackling their stories. Foster explained to the students that it is important to get the main point across and not mix the message with too many ideas at once because that will confuse your viewers and you will loose them.

According to Morgan, “You got to make it sexy. Find a character, focus on your story and find the one strong point that you want to tell. The

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Chivone Smith

PANEL THREE

MMA 487

point of focusing a story is so people can walk away and remember it.”

Some of the students also mentioned that they have a hard time conducting good interviews. One student mentioned how she sometimes forgets the next question she wanted to ask when she’s conducting an interview and Morgan told her that it is because she is not listening.

“If you get nothing else out of this whole workshop today, the best thing that you can do as a journalist…is listen, listen, listen,” Morgan said. He said the hardest lesson he had to learn, as a journalist, was to listen. He said, “I was anchoring for eight years before I realized I wasn’t listening. The difference is, now that I listen, the tone is different. Everything doesn’t sound the same.”

Foster suggested to the students that they will learn much more from an interview if they should focus more on having conversations with people they’re interviewing rather than interviewing them.

Students were also encouraged to be completely unbiased when pitching a story as well as reporting one. Morgan stressed to the students that it is important to be fair in reporting, gathering facts and asking questions. He also reminded them to, “Focus, focus, focus. One outfit, one character.”

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