Individual Blog Post 3

I watched the ten o’clock news on channel 2, KTVU. Most news packages wrote to the video, especially a story that was about gas prices. This one included action shots, people were moving on screen, pumping gas, doing things. Action shots provide better footage than static ones, and they are more interesting. This package had lots of different shots, which furthered the story. It also had different angles of shots. There was one of a freeway from high above so the viewer could see down on the freeway. This angle of looking down provided more variety.

KTVU also mentioned to look on their website for information about traffic updates and other things that viewers would be interested to know. I thought it was a clever way to get viewers to visit their site.

All of the anchor introductions to stories were well written. One news story an anchor read, however, should have had footage. He read the teleprompter for too long. A “talking head,” is not good in news and it is always better for action. I thought this piece could have been improved if he spoke for a couple sentences and then pictures showed of what he was talking about.

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Individual Blog Post 2

I watched KTVU Channel 2 News Tuesday night at 10p.m. The newscast had strengths and weaknesses. The show provided a variety and mixed types of stories, packages, vo/sots and live shots. Anchors also shared equal talking time taking turns on reporting the stories. Over the shoulder boxes were used on all stories, which I thought made the introductions more interesting because it was nice to see a visual as the anchor was speaking.

The top story was about the large amount of public drunkenness is San Jose and that Latinos made up 30 percent of those people receiving citations. I did not think this story should have been the first one because there were other stories that I felt were more important, like the fire in Montecito.

There was a news package about a 93-year-old woman that died in a fire in San Francisco and I felt it incorporated great soundbites. The soundbites showed the emotion that was present. There was another package about the budget that I thought did not do as well. This was because the b-roll shots we’re too long and didn’t move the story along. If they had been shorter and more shots I believe the story would have been better and the shots would have moved the story forward. In this package the reporter did not write to the b-video. They could have mentioned things that were on screen, but instead the reporters spoke of other things.

The teases right before the commercial breaks were well written. They definitely kept me wanting to see what was to come. The majority of the stories also had very interesting content and I wanted to hear about them.

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Individual Blog Post 1

The medium I used for election coverage was news television. I watched NBC because it is a national station. I chose to receive my information on the election on television because it was immediate and continuously updated its information as soon as new news was discovered. I also liked the live footage the news station provided, places around the nation where events and people gathered such as polls and election parties. The results were shared as soon as the polls were in. There was a large map of the U.S. and each state would be painted either red or blue depending on which candidate won that state.

Throughout the program, both democratic and republican representatives were brought on and discussed what was going on at that time. Also, they had projected winners of the states that had the polls still open. There was video footage of voters in action at their polling places. Soundbites from these voters were also included. These people said standing in line for hours was worth it because they were making history. I felt like it was a well-rounded and balanced news coverage that showed what was going on.

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