On Thursday, November 2nd, The Hive along with the Journalism class visited WCAX’s Channel 3 news studio for a tour, a Q&A, and a live viewing of the noon broadcast. The outstanding tour was led by WCAX’s own Darren Perron, an award winning reporter and executive producer for WCAX.
The group also met with several other journalists, reporters, and video technicians. This included John McMahon, the newest anchor for WCAX as he had his debut only a couple weeks ago, Peter Kvietkauskas, the weekday weatherman for their morning and noon broadcasts, and many others.
While there, the group learned that the brains of the production are all in the coding room. Here, a team of technicians and coders deal with putting the show together digitally. They snap together clips and create the smooth flowing show people are used to on TV. This is just one of the many activities that happen behind the scenes.
“Each broadcast is truly a team effort and everyone on the team plays a vital role,” Perron wrote. “It’s the only way to get our news on the air. You have videographers, reporters, editors, producers, production staff, graphics workers and engineers all working together.”
For longer segments, such as investigative stories, this can take much longer to produce.
“It takes, on average, eight hours of work for every one minute of news you see,” Perron said.
The tour group also met with John McMahon, the morning and noon anchor, at the beginning of the tour. Students learned that he sets his alarm for 1:00 am, hoping to arrive at the studio two hours before the broadcast to rehearse.
Despite these long and irregular hours filled with hard work, many of the journalists and reporters including Perron have great things to say about their jobs.
“I love most everything about being a journalist,” Perron wrote. “This job allows us to expose injustices and to celebrate victories.”
“We get access to people and events that many other people do not, in order to tell those stories, but by far the biggest reward is making a difference,” Perron wrote.
Because of this truly honorable role that the WCAX team has in being able to share the lives of others with the world, reporters and journalists have to make sure that they are disciplined and respectful while on the job.
“It’s a privilege to be invited into people’s homes at the most triumphant times and the most tragic times too,” Perron wrote. “I take that responsibility very seriously.”
These stories can not be pushed aside by the lighter stories as they are some of the most important.
One of the goals of the visit was for young journalists to gain some insight as to what it takes to turn this into a career. Perron believes you have to love storytelling, and feel the need to “expose injustices.” In the end, you get to “celebrate the victories” of what being a journalist is all about.
