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A common discussion I have with news managers and universities looking to place recent grads, is the huge workload journalists face today.

It is becoming more of the norm for reporters to barely make deadlines not because they are lazy, but because there is so much to get done. Scarier yet, there are producers in top 5 markets, still writing in the booth during newscasts. And not because of a breaker. Why is this getting so common?

Two reasons.

First, the workload is truly much larger. Producers for example are now often editing vo’s and vosot’s in addition to writing them. Producers are also making their own maps and graphics for air. And that’s not even getting into all the responsibilities they have on the digital side. Reporters are turning more than one piece, on completely different subjects, often on different ends of the market. And the social media expectations for them are often even higher.

The other reason why a lot is being pushed to the last minute, is that journalists are not taught tricks on how to speed up their writing time. They spend too much time prepping for writing instead of just getting the stories done.

Bottom line, in a tight deadline situation, you will have to do some calculated short cuts when gathering information in order to make it. So check out some of those shortcuts in the full article on survivetvnewsjobs.com.

 

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