• Podcast
  • Home
  • Better News
  • Contact Us

It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.

  • Podcast
  • Home
  • Better News
  • Contact Us

#230 – That timed we killed a beauty pageant …

December 8, 2016 by ItsAllJournalism

Every journalist comes to their respective newsroom in a different way, but almost all have a similar starting point: a high school English teacher.

For this week’s podcast, the three producers discussed their trials and tribulations in the newsroom, trying to find the humor and personality in covering the federal government and how to go about covering difficult stories in which reporters are treated as hostile witnesses to painful events.

It's All Journalism producers Nicole Ogrysko and Michael O'Connell (Photo by Steve Johnson)

It’s All Journalism producers Nicole Ogrysko and Michael O’Connell (Photo by Steve Johnson)

But mostly, it’s a discussion of the vast variety of odd news stories they’ve covered over their careers.

There’s the time Michael O’Connell went to a Star Trek collectable card game tournament. “The card company had released a set of new cards a few days before the event. Some of the people, who were very smart card players, realized there was a fault in the mechanism they’d introduced in this set. They were just cleaning up and knocking out all these people who’d spent months and months strategizing how they were going to win this thing. There was all this emotional turmoil going back and forth over this little card game. That was what the story was.”

Or when the Miss Springfield Pageant in Springfield, Virginia, crowned a winner on a Thursday night and, by Friday morning, the winner’s crown was in danger of being revoked. By the time the newspaper’s new issue went out a week later, a different queen was crowned and the pageant never took place again. It’s still one of Amber Healy’s favorite stories to recount.

For Nicole Ogrysko, one of her first journalism projects was covering the efforts to raise money for new cafeteria chairs. The headline on the story, “25 grand? I’d rather stand!” remains a fond memory. In her college newspaper, a series on the school’s cafeteria company may or may not have resulted in the service workers getting a well-deserved raise that she swears is not directly linked to her team’s reporting. “That was a huge learning opportunity for me. At that point, I didn’t know how to go up and talk to people and say hey, can you give me this thing you’re not allowed to give me,” she said.

— Amber Healy

#50 – Podcast Special: Jeff Bezos buys The Washington Post

Share Button
If you like this post, please share it along:

Previous Post

Melissa Zimdars is an associate professor in the department of communications at Merrimack College
#229 – Uncovering fake, clickbait-y and not really ‘news’ news sites

Next Post


#231 – Jessica Abel: Words, images, storytelling and beyond

Related Posts

  • Robert Hone, acting director of the American University Game Lab Studio, and Maggie Farley, a professional fellow with the Journalism and Leadership Transformation (JoLT) program at AU.#259 — Making a game of finding fake news
  • 469. The Defiant breaks down cryptocurrency
  • Jason Fraley is a movie critic for WTOP. (Photo by Michael O'Connell)#51 – Jason Fraley and Matt Razak shine light on world of movie criticism
  • 385. LA Times podcast unravels 15-year-old mystery in Room 20

Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter

Design

With an emphasis on typography, white space, and mobile-optimized design, your website will look absolutely breathtaking.

Learn more about design.

[footer_backtotop]

© 2022 Copyright by AllJournalismPod LLC 2012-2021 All rights reserved.·Pintercast Child Theme · Genesis Framework by StudioPress · WordPress · Log in