Life on the Fifth Floor
January 28, 2010
So I made the move to Northwest Cable News this morning. In fact, as I type this I am sitting at my own little desk in the writers pod. I know it’s silly, but I always wanted a job in a cubicle and now I have one!
The change thats bothering me most isn’t the lack of people (there was always a pretty small crew on the weekends at KING) but how quiet it is. Dick even went so far as to call it a tomb today. I’m used to sitting on the desk with three ringing phones and a bank of twelve or so scanners going non-stop. Not to mention the conversation and the yelling between people on the floor. Here my phone never rings, there’s no scanners to speak of and it seems like anyone is afraid to speak above a whisper.
Other then that, this is going to be a great job. I’m really surprised at the amount of responsibility that comes with the job – not only do I write the stories, but I get to build the graphics that go with them. The pictures that go up over the shoulder of the anchor, the box with all the bullets in it and so on and so forth: all me. Eventually I guess I’ll also be typing up the ticker blurbs that scroll along the bottom of the screen. I have no doubt that my spelling will be flawless within the month.
Today I’m not doing much more then sitting back and observing. I was given a couple practice stories to write up which I knocked out pretty quickly, and now I’m blogging. I’ve asked just about everyone if there’s something I should be doing but they’ve all said no. I *will* be prompting for the 1:45 15/45 segment and the 2:00 show though, so it won’t be a total loss of a day.
They were also really understanding about a weekend coming up where Joe and I had reservations made before we knew that my schedule would be so drastically changed, and instead of swapping me with the afternoon shift like I expected they gave me the whole day. I’m not too terribly worried about the hours – if my experience up here is anything like my one downstairs, there will be no shortage of extra shifts to fill in.
In the meantime you can probably see my desk when NWCN goes on air. The studio is immediately in front of the desks and has a clear glass background – the anchor and the main camera are lined up almost exactly with my head. In case you have nothing better to do and want to play “spot the writer.”
