Give a Gift to News 13
We’ve entered into the time of year in the news world where things seem to slow down. It’s strange that it is the case because during the holidays most things in life speed up. We run from this Christmas party to the next, write and mail dozens of Christmas cards and purchase gifts for people we see twice a year, including Christmas.
Here in the newsroom we often joke about pulling and having the new reporters re-voice last year’s stories on Christmas tree light safety, protecting your home from burglaries and great gifts for under $20. It seems all the holiday pitches have been done before. It may not just be the holidays with repeats. My news director says he’s heard ALL the pitches before just the names involved and the reporter change. I don’t know that I’ve been here long enough to experience that yet.
The reasons for the lack of stories are endless. Our ratings period ends Wednesday and that’s when the vacations begin. We have many staff members who are from other states and need to go home to see their families. Some even have to celebrate Christmas before it gets here. Luckily most of my family is 3 hours or less away.
Another contributing factor is there isn’t much going on other than Santa’s arrival at the mall, Christmas decorations around Lake DeFuniak and charitable organizations collecting donations for the holidays. Not that those things aren’t important, they are and we will be reporting on them. We just need more “news” stories.
What I’m trying to say is the best gift you could give News 13 for Christmas would be to let us know about your news story ideas. Yes, normally it is unethical for journalist to receive gifts but in this case I believe the news director will be just fine with it. Send your news tips to and we’ll open them up.
Comments (0)
Event Coverage
We get several calls to our newsroom everyday with people who are calling to ask for coverage of events. We appreciate your input because without you we wouldn’t know what’s going on in our community.
The best practice to submit your event for news consideration is to send us a fax or email. We just need to know the basic information who, what, when, where, why and how. We will also need a contact name and number. Our email address is and our fax number is 850-872-0922.
After you send us your information, we then add it to our planner for the date of the event. The planners are reviewed every morning during our editorial meeting. We look at each potential story idea, breaking news and stories that reporters present before deciding what we will be covering for the day. If we decide to cover your story we will call. We can’t return all phone calls because the amount we receive.
We do not decide on our coverage in advance. Due to the nature of the business things can change very quickly. We don’t want to promise coverage and then not be able to send a reporter or photographer.
In addition to submitting your event for potential news coverage, News 13 offers many other ways for you to get promotion of your event.
Often on News 13 This Morning we will schedule interviews relating to community events. The schedule fills up quickly so you will need to contact them for consideration 2-3 weeks in advance. There are opportunities for in-studio and on-location interviews. Please contact the morning show producer .
You can submit event information on http://www.wmbb.com in our Community Calendar section. It takes 24-48 hours for events to post to the web. To submit your event for our Community Calendar commercial you must send it 4 weeks in advance to .
We also have a Citizen Publishing Section on our website. There you can publish your own articles, photos and videos.
Good luck with your events and please continue to keep us informed about what’s going on in the Panhandle.
Comments (0)
Back to Normal
It’s nice to get back to a little normalcy, if you can call a newsroom “normal”.
For the past week and a half I spent most of my time at Juvenile Courthouse covering the boot camp trial. I was in charge of blogging what was going on in court so people who couldn’t watch all day or people who wanted to go back and read what had happened could.
At first I’ll admit, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I was probably putting too much information in an effort to be thorough. I think by the end I was able to put some of the more important highlights and to break things up by subject so that it was easier to read.
We had the blog and our streaming live coverage on our special page we made for the trial. We all think the time and effort we put into it paid off with some of the largest web hits that we have ever seen. In other words, what we were doing was beneficial and of interest to you.
Many of you wrote in to our “Share Your Thoughts” section. I was getting copied each time they came in and I know there were dozens and dozens everyday. Thank you for your contributions.
The last day of the trial I had butterflies. I guess I was nervous that we would miss something in our coverage. That was soon replaced by a shot of adrenaline.
After the verdict I was running around all over the place trying to get the different people involved to do an interview with us. Many of my co-workers told me they saw me running around on Court TV. I was in the one in the News 13 shirt and jeans. So I made national television, awesome, although I prefer to be behind the scenes.
Today we are trying to follow-up with some of the defendants and see if any of the jurors are willing to talk. We are also talking to the family of a bicyclist who was hit and killed by someone who left the scene. And finally we are working on a story about an 800 something pound shark caught in Destin. Yeah, things are back to normal.
PS: Heather’s Headlines will be back up and running again tomorrow.
Comments (0)
About The Assignment Desk
When people ask "What does the assignment desk do?" I often have a hard time answering. That's one reason why I've decided to create this "Behind the Scenes" blog. This is a fast paced business that is very addictive to those of us who would most likely now be put on some kind of medication for ADD if we were still in school. The better question might be what doesn't the assignment desk do? I've heard many people equate it to air traffic control. I schedule our crews, assign stories, gather information on story ideas, answer phones, work with reporters on their stories, provide information for producers, work on special projects, fill in for producers and the list goes on and on. With a growing emphasis on web news, I am also very involved with the content on wmbb.com. This includes Heather's Headlines which previews our story line-up for the day. My favorite part of working the assignment desk is dealing with breaking news. It's such a rush and feeling of accomplishment gathering information, sending crews out where they need to go, and getting the news on the web and on our broadcast as quickly as possible for our viewers.
Recent Entries:
- It’s My Birthday
- Seeking Volunteers Who Love News
- Commission Super Tuesday
- Give a Gift to News 13
- Event Coverage
- Back to Normal
- Running in Circles
- Away from the “Desk”
Other News13 Blogs:
- The Casual Historian - Larche Hardy
- Behind The Scenes - Heather Kretzer
- The Resident Gator - Megan Albright
- The Newby - Jessi Chapin
- Bloggin' From The Beach - Bree Sison
- Gainesville, Georgia's All American Girl - Tuquyen Mach
- ... and yes, my hair is naturally curly - Jessica Foster
- Derby Girl - Enocha Van Lierop
- Cracker Cat - Jeannie Weller
