A silent newsroom—the Annenberg Media Center is never a silent newsroom. This November 14th, a Thursday morning, defied that notion.
The producers discussed plans for See it Live the afternoon before, as Joe Biden was in town and we needed a press pass. However, when the news broke of an active shooter at Saugus High School, 40 minutes from campus, just as our team was walking into the Media Center, all plans changed. A quick glance at Zoe the executive producer, Yannie the lead producer and Stacy the faculty advisor and I knew we were all thinking the same thing: we need to get there.
By 8:10 a.m., Chace, Kally and Becky were en route to Santa Clarita.
With heavy hearts, the video team joined together in the edit bay for our regularly scheduled 8:15 a.m. pitch meeting; although given the subject matter, this meeting felt anything but ordinary. We discussed stories about the quest for notoriety, the oral history of mass shootings, the commonality of post-traumatic stress all while following with the on-going breaking news.
Team Thursday leaves these pitch meetings with an especially established and developed story selection for two reasons—one, we only cover one topic and two, the producers leave for producing class from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. During this time, Zoe fills the gaps and leads our coverage. We leave her with a great deal of responsibility as a teammate, but also with a strong trust and belief in her ability to communicate on our behalf.
When Yannie and I walked down the Media Center staircase, that shock at the silent newsroom hit us both. We saw leaders from all teams gathered around the whiteboard drawing out where we had reporters and where we still needed to send others. Also on that whiteboard was the home address of the suspected 16-year-old shooter. I looked up and saw various local TV stations at that home address, interviewing one of his neighbors. It felt wrong. Covering the shooter went against the discussion our team had that morning about notoriety. So, Stacy and I voiced our concern and as a newsroom, we decided to cross that story off the board.
At 12:30 p.m. the leaders met in the upstairs conference room for a group call with all our reporters in the field. Yannie and Zoe stayed downstairs to build the rundown and assign our multimedia journalists and I went upstairs for the phone call—a divide and conquer strategy.
We continued to work together throughout the remainder of our coverage, checking in with one another and assisting outside our established roles. We took extra time to check the audio levels of soundbites and had longer discussions with MJs who were cutting emotionally heavy soundbites. The extra care allowed us to accurately capture the events that happened that morning.
At 5:59 p.m., I took a deep breath, looked around the control room and was overcome with a sense of connection, pride and appreciation for the coverage we, as a team, produced. Thursday’s show was full of emotion, but due to the heavy subject we covered, I saw my team work together, check in on one another, in a way I had not yet taken a moment to pause and admire.