After a long month of researching, reporting, shooting, phone calls, interviews, writing, editing, time in and out of the station my story for Hispanic Heritage month finally aired! Last Thursday October 1st, at the 10 pm show, my story on domestic violence in the Hispanic community was released to our viewers in Mid-Missouri. Honestly this was the hardest package I have ever completed and I am extremely proud of all of my work. The story ended up being about 3:30 with interviews, video and special graphics to really make it look visually pleasing as well as present the information in a clear and concise way. I also spent a lot of time with another reporter who translated my entire video story and written web story into spanish. Both the spanish and english video stories and written web stories are online.
One of the biggest improvements that I am trying to make in my personal work is to enhance the online version. I wrote an in-depth web story that includes more interviews and facts that have a hard time squeezing into an on-air package. One of the web masters also assisted me in designing an interactive map that shows all of the counties in our viewing area and as you scroll across them, places to go for domestic violence support pop up with the name and phone number. I also included images and links to various websites about the laws and protections of immigrant women who are trapped in violence.
On Thursday evening, I arrived at the station to make sure the english version was ready to air on the 10 pm show, the spanish version of the package was ready to be posted and both spanish and english web stories and interactive graphics and links were ready to go. After double checking, I put on my studio makeup, practiced my scripts and headed to the studio to do a microphone check and practice with my anchors Angie and Jim. I introduced and tagged the story live at the desk with the anchors and everything went very smoothly. I was extremely pleased the next morning to receive numerous emails and phone calls from my sources and other domestic violence agencies thanking me for putting the message out there. This kind of positive feedback and knowing that I can help the community is why I am a journalist. My adventure with Hispanic Heritage month was a challenging and eye-opening experience. My journalistic skills improved. I also had the opportunity to work with a part of our community and a new language that I had never experienced before. I hope men and women will see my story and know that they can get help if they are in a violent situation.
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