Full Circle

In a weird series of overlapping work experiences, I received an email this morning (well two weeks ago when I began writing this) from a teacher’s union I am a member of due to my work as an adjunct professor. The email included a video of an interview with the president of the union discussing back to school safety measures. What I realized almost immediately upon clicking the link to the video was that I had in fact directed the interview as a segment of my normal broadcast a few days prior.

Working in television I often see people I know in real life when I glance at a screen, I know that in some small way I am a part of many of the biggest events that shape our storytelling and thus our everyday lives. But ask anyone who works in live TV and they’ll tell you that the shine wears off pretty quickly, we forget that the media we produce IS a part of the daily habits of millions of people, our work can affect people in tremendous ways.

I try to talk to my students each semester about the basics of storytelling, and because I work in news, I include a section on storytelling in news. I tell them the textbook definition of what makes a subject “newsworthy”, timeliness, prominence, proximity, consequence, and human interest. It is easy to argue that not every topic on your nightly newscast will hit all five of these points but when life comes full circle like this email I received it serves as a good reminder of how lucky I am to do what I do, and that I should never take it for granted.

‍