With post number one now in the books, I now want to talk about my news gathering experience so far and my struggles to find out what the real story is from some of the things I've covered. I want to go back to my first story of the year: which had to do with the safety of kids walking to school in Columbia, Mo.
I didn't end up knowing that would be my story until fairly 'late in the game.'
I first thought that my story would be about the East Columbia Area Planning and Zoning Meeting that was going on and how the plan's draft to the city council might be affecting a family within the jurisdiction. I feel like that's a fairly decent idea. What was not a good idea was shooting as much footage as I did. I shot a lot of the planning and zoning meeting that night, a lot of stuff that was absolutely boring and irrelevant, no offense to anybody that was there. The fact was it didn't relate to my story.
When the planning meeting was over, there was a little comment q&a session. One little old lady stepped up and started talking about how she thought there needed to be more sidewalks in neighborhoods in future residential areas. I thought okay, this person might be my central compelling character, until I find out she doesn't live in the city limits. She thought there needed to be more sidewalks within the Columbia city limits, but that there really didn't need to be out in Boone County. So when I got a critique on my raw video afterwards, it was very low. I know now to never shoot as much from a city council meeting like that or all the video I shot of her and her husband at their home when what they want doesn't even have an affect on them.
So I went to a neighborhood that didn't have sidewalks and talked to some people in that neighborhood and asked them if they thought it was an issue. The problem was, they all said no. They told me to go near a school and see if the neighborhoods there had any sidewalks because that is where they'd definitely need some. One person pointed me in the direction of Smithton Middle School and Paxton Keeley Elementary. There I finally found a woman willing to talk to me. She had a daughter who walked to school every morning and the traffic by her house was absolutely horrible. When I was trying to shoot her as she was walking home from school one day, another kid got hit by a car. I started recording video no more than 15 seconds after it happened. Fortunately the kid was okay, but that kid getting hit there made my story complete.
If people didn't think safety was a concern at that intersection for children walking to school, they should after that happened. I was extremely lucky in getting video right after that incident. However, I remember something my teacher told me in lecture: 'Those who work hard get lucky.' I thought to myself: man this is that in a nutshell. I had been to so many places to find that story. My grade didn't necessarily show how hard I worked to find that story, but it did give me a bit of confidence in ways that I can 'go get' the real story in the near future.
See a story the Columbia Tribune did on the video I got at the scene:
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/sep/10/
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