Individual Blog Post 5

I watched a segment of 20/20 on a story of the rape and murder of the morning news anchorwoman, Anna Pressly, of Little Rock, Ark. This was a two party story, the first revealing the crime and then the achievements the police had made in the case. The second segment was of another woman, Kristen Edwards, who was also sexually assaulted by the same suspect but unlike Pressly, she was not murdered. This segment reveals how the police were able to catch the suspect even without witnesses.

This story was well edited. It showed visuals of what the reporter was talking about. The reporter wrote to the script well and addressed things on the screen, saying, “this house,” when the house of the killer was on screen. Another thing I thought was good that the story did was b-roll the bites (when someone was talking, the camera would be on the person for a few seconds and cut away to whatever it was they were talking about). The reporter also included reaction shots which were good and provided variety.

An improvement that can be made would be to include action shots. There were a lot of still photographs of houses, or grocery stores, but not a lot of shots of people doing things. This is essential because action shots are what cause people to pay attention and what viewers are most interested in seeing.

The reporter sometimes included himself when he asked the interviewee questions and then showed that person’s response. I think this worked out well, but a reporter has to pay attention to how many times he or she does this because otherwise the story will start to look like it is about the reporter, and not the interviewee.

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