Bureau Blog

Working as a bureau reporter was very interesting. It gave me some good insights as to what one would expect when interviewing different people and how they will react to certain questions. Of course, not everyone wanted to participate in the interviewing process. They either were evasive of the questions or gave one word answers. On the other hand, some people were very cooperative.

Working in a group also has its ups and downs. For example, when you have a large group of people (or even just a duo) going out and trying to get people to interview, there are many different ideas and questions going around and taking turns takes some getting used to. I think that it was important for our group to come up with a formula of sorts so that the interviewee wasn’t overwhelmed by all the questions shooting around.

Dealing with the group as the bureau chief was a little different, and I must say, more comfortable for me because sometimes when I am in a group I don’t feel like I can have as much input into what is going on. But as the bureau chief, I felt very effective in gathering the quotes from my team members and putting them into a story that was cohesive and fluid. I’ve always felt that I worked better as a behind the scenes sort of person rather than someone who does the “leg work.” I feel that my skills lie in writing and not interviewing people as much, though I don’t have that difficult a time going up to random people and asking them questions. I also think that being a bureau chief gave me some level of control on the piece and I liked that because too many people trying to write the same thing can get coagulated in a way and the story might not come out as glossy as it could if there was only one or two people writing it.

It was hard to interview people as effectively as would be necessary for a professional journalist when there was not much time for preparation. It was more like an informal survey rather than an interview when we were asking people questions about their tuition or being an international student. It also hard to plan when to be back on time especially when we had to run all over the campus and sometimes we wandered astray from our “designated area” in search of more people to interview. That made it especially difficult in getting back in time to try and help the bureau chief in writing the piece.

I thought that the bureau reporting days were good experiences for us to have as potential professional journalists. Working in a team is both beneficial and sometimes difficult but with enough practice and working with many different people, those kinds of skills can be strengthened. Getting the story down with everyone’s quotes was difficult but with a good team, we got it done on time.