19/100 - Producer File: Breaking News Friday

Any news that can break, will break.

Breaking News Friday. It's real and it can get crazy. Above is the first thing you see when you walk into the newsroom where I currently work.

There's a concept understood by anyone who works or has worked in a newsroom... it's known as Breaking News Friday. It is basically a kind-of Murphy's Law... but for breaking news (Any news that can break, will break). If you search #BreakingNewsFriday on twitter, you'll find journalists talking about it. Breaking News Friday is what happens when every story "breaks" at once, or at least in rapid succession. Breaking News Friday doesn't happen every Friday, but when crazy stories break, they usually do so on a Friday.

Today was one of those days: a seven-hour standoff with a man in a blue bus, a heavily-followed trial verdict and a missing plane found.

Three things are true about huge breaking news situations in a good newsroom:

1. There are a lot of decisions being made that you never see

Should we fly the helicopter? Can we fly the helicopter? How many reporters do we have? Where is every reporter? Who is closest? Is it confirmed? Can we report that? Who will talk? Where is the media staging? The list goes on. We're asking and answering a lot of questions behind the scenes, so that what you see on air is a seamless product. One of the best ways to deal with everything, that I've seen, is gathering everyone who is in-house for a quick meeting. We all get on the same page and then tackle a breaking story. It doesn't take much, we all know what needs to be done. We need to tell the story.

2. All hands on deck

You will never see a busier newsroom, than when every story is breaking. You'll hear a lot of people saying "what can I do" and "how can I help" and "what do you need." There will be a lot of shouting because we are doing our very best to get all of the information.

3. Something will go wrong, but more things will go right.

A good newsroom's top priority is to "get it right." It doesn't always happen that way. We're working quickly, computers usually want to slow down at that point in time. Typos happen, batteries die and sometimes the system just won't play audio. Glitches happen. You learn from them, create workarounds for next time, and then next time is even better. When you have a good newsroom team, the story you told better than anyone else, far outweighs the things you couldn't control on Breaking News Friday.

Sunset at the tv station earlier in the week... before Breaking News Friday,

10/100 - Producer File: 3 things that happen during the commercial break in live tv

I'm job searching and I find that a lot of people don't always understand what a Producer does. I currently produce tv news, but I'd like to move into the production of documentaries, sitcoms and dramas. A Producer is responsible for a lot of things, especially in an environment where fewer and fewer people, have more and more job roles. As a Producer in tv news, I not only Produce, but write everything the anchors are reading.

Here are three things happen during the commercial break of a live broadcast. There are many more but for now, I'll focus on three.

1. Write a breaking story: Just because you are in the control booth and the show has started, doesn't mean your job is done. I've had to write a story during the two-minute commercial break when breaking news hits the newsroom.

2. Answer questions: You have to know the details of every story in your show. Sometimes an anchor will have questions about a certain statistic in a story... or an Executive Producer will want to know what technical glitch caused the video not to roll on a certain story. The list goes on.

3. Evaluate time: Some people say a Producer's job is to start the show on time and end the show on time. There's much more to it than that, of course. However, sometimes a reporter's story is longer than everyone thought, or there's a lot of banter surrounding a fun story... and before you know it your show is two minutes longer than it should be and you have to make that time up somewhere. That's when you drop stories from the show.

BONUS: You stay calm: You're the one holding the show together so you have to stay calm and give everyone the direction they need. That includes the director and the on-air talent. I can stay calm through all of this and that's part of the reason I'm searching for a new challenge in the form of a new job.