CMIR Life

Life here as a CMIR journalism student at UF has been full of great opportunities and experiences. Every time I walk into the 21st Century News Lab to work on a project or to put together a news piece for the day, I'm constantly reminded of how privileged and blessed I am to be in a school where we have the opportunity to work hands-on with so many great and knowledgable people. I can easily say that I have friends studying journalism and working to get into the industry at other schools, and they don't have what we have at our fingertips.

Working in the INF has its benefits because it's all-encompassing and all-inclusive. In the newsroom, everyone from all different facets of the station are all working under one roof. Web, TV, and radio all come together and work with and for each other to have a better and finalized project.

Typically, I come in once a week for my news shift. The crew for that day will have a morning meeting at 9:30, where we'll all pitch our stories for the 5:00 and 6:00 shows to our producers and news directors. There will also be reporters sitting in the meeting from web, radio, and weather. The producers then assign us our stories based on whatever we discuss, and we're off either in pairs or on our own to tackle the news of the day.

I usually am done with my story and am back at the station around 2:00 or 2:30. I then begin to work on my script and edit my footage, whether I'm reporting, photographing, or both on the given day. I'm usually done with my stories a little before the show starts.

There will be times where it gets very stressful. Producers and directors are busy, so they're unable to edit your copy. Computers crash all of the time and packages get lost. ENPS will suddenly shut down and there goes your whole script. When there's a news break, you literally have to either drop or throw out whatever it was that you were were working on and start all over again on the developing story. A day in the life of a student journalist isn't all that easy.

What I mostly like to work on are my personal projects. You can view one of them here, and other student projects here. The newsroom is emptier and less crowded and chaotic, which allows me to think more freely and relax as I work. It also allows me to focus more on detail as opposed to working under a time constraint and making myself more prone to make mistakes.

I also like to study in the AHA! Lab. It's bright and colorful, so it brightens your mood as you work, there's coffee machines at your disposal (my favorite part), and I like to think of it like a miniature version of Library West's graduate floor, but accessible to everyone. There's study pods, interactive whiteboards, study booths, and more. It really is a great place to study, hide out, or hang out.

Working in CMIR facilities such as these has made me realize how truly fortunate I am to attend a university such as this. By working in both the INF and the AHA! Lab, I've learned how to work more effectively, more efficiently, and I've greatly expanded my talents beyond my wildest expectations.

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point was, for me, a very long yet insightful read, and if you apply the context and different strategies to online and multimedia journalism, you can easily see how the text directly affects how we conduct ourselves in this sort of virtual, interactive, journalistic atmosphere.

The first part of the book mentions three different types of people: Connectors, Salesmen, and Mavens. We, as multimedia journalists, are Connectors. We connect different groups of people everyday through our stories and through our interactions with people, and that goes for in-person reporting and online reporting. Everyday when you walk into the newsroom, you never know who you're going to meet or which way your story is going to turn or who has some sort of contact or connection in relation to your pitch until you go out there and connect with people. That is literally the foundation of our occupation-- connectivity.

Another good thing that I thought the author brought up, especially in relation to connectivity and connectedness, is how the greatest of things always come from something small. For example, in the introduction, the author brought up the topic of infectious diseases and how they usually start out in a random, small group of people or from an area that isn't well-known or occupied, and yet these huge diseases that have affected us throughout the course of human history and that even continue to affect us today (ie: STDs) came out of these tiny places.

The same goes for ideas or basically anything else in life. If something were to grow big or if you want something to get bigger, you need to start small.

Lastly, and this is what I think stuck out to me the most, was that in life you have to work hard and put things out multiple times in order to make them stick. I think that this point was ironic because in today's world, especially in news, people complain about always seeing or hearing the same movie or song or news about the same accident, actress, disaster, person, etc., yet if we didn't put out multiples of something, how would someone remember it? How would it stick out in someone's mind?

(Also, shoutout to Sesame Street and Blue's Clues for making it into the book. Thank you for the childhood memories and helping me learn my ABCs and 123s)