KYW with Kaitlin: Topics and TV to Radio Scriptwriting

Swift+demonstrates+her+wisdom+and+journalism+knowledge+after+taking+part+in+the+KYW+Newstudies+program

Christine Swift on Adobe Illustrator

Swift demonstrates her wisdom and journalism knowledge after taking part in the KYW Newstudies program

  Good day readers and welcome back to KYW with Kaitlin, the column where I share my knowledge gained during my four-week newstudies program at the Audacy headquarters! 

   The second week of my internship started with driving across the Ben Franklin Bridge from the Garden State to the City of Brotherly Love as I wiped the sleep from my eyes. I arrived at the immense headquarters thirty minutes early, and went up to the fourth floor with my peers, eager for another three hours of journalistic joy.

   While we waited for the presentation to begin, I learned one of my classmates has a cousin who goes to the same school as me and is in the same grade! Small world, right? It’s crazy seeing how many people in the tri-state area gathered together to learn a communications course for a few weeks and explore what could soon be their career’

   Our lecture this week came from the wise former NBC reporter Lu Anh Cahn, who is currently the director of career services at Temple. We watched an interesting broadcast where she uncovered corruption and alcoholism in the  Pennsylvanian government, and she explained how she was able to tackle it without getting in legal trouble. It’s very important to know your journalistic rights, and, if done correctly, reporters can help uncover shady situations and help law enforcement catch criminals. 

   During the lecture, we also worked on a project where we had to turn a television script into one for radio and figure out which segments were most important. My partner Lauren and I ended up eighteen seconds over our mark, which reiterated that writing a script for radio is very different from that of tv. Sticking to the facts and having a time limit is more difficult than one may think.

   After Cahn’s presentation, we presented our topic to our teacher, Hadas Kusnits and got some feedback on our approaches and who to interview. Fellow students chose topics in their community like gun violence, student deaths, and defunded art apartments, and while I heard about these intriguing topics, I couldn’t help but feel that mine was underwhelming. Reporting on a school club is much more lame than modern day social issues.

   However, I learned that human interest is still a very prominent field, and sharing a topic that spreads hope for the future is a great thing. My DECA report concerns the entrepreneurs of today, and having a more positive spin on an article will be very intriguing. It’s all about how you tackle your interviews, and making them seem more interesting than expected.

   I’m looking forward to interviewing the DECA advisor, officers, and second place champion this week and finding out what makes DECA such a noteworthy extracurricular. I’ll be finding the best quotes from my interviews to start writing my script so I can record my report during the fourth week of the program.

   Thank you for tuning in, and be sure to read next time on KYW with Kaitlin!