Blogs | WNCT

“A Day In The Life”

By Abe Nelson
Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Morning Everyone,

4:05: In the forecast center with Phillip and Scott working on a special project.

The afternoon meeting was buzzworthy. I think you’ll see what I mean when you tune in tonight for the Nightside. Laila Muhammad will be bringing that to you later tonight. I’ll be looking for some additional information on the subject and we hope to offer that to you folks as web links for additional information.

Btw, Scott Sumner has given me some additional resources for the links page at 6 and 11 tonight. They’re tropical weather related so I think you guys will find them interesting.

Back with another update soon.

2:54PM: Back from the Department Head meeting. I managed to escape unscathed. *LOL* That’s my running joke with myself.

I tell you this meeting is always a challenge for me. I really enjoy attending, but it’s sometimes not hard to feel inadequate. After all, the folks in this meeting have been in the business a lot longer than me and really know their stuff. When you’re still a newbie, and I feel that way often, you don’t want to sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Fortunately enough, the web really is my arena. The other part of my job, which you don’t see everyday, includes monitoring traffic flow to the site, who’s visiting when, where, and why, what’s popular and what’s not. That’s analytics. It’s not always pretty, but it’s definitely fun to look at- most of the time anyway.

Time for the afternoon meeting.

See you back here in an hour.

1:53PM: Ok, so it’s more around 2 than 1… Sorry about that. I had to run out and grab me some lunch. It’s almost time for our weekly Department Head meeting. This is usually just a look at the week gone by and what’s still on our plate for the week and, in some cases, the months ahead. Unfortunately, I don’t have much to report today besides those special pages/revisions that I’m working on. I think my time at the “podium” will be relatively short. Time will tell…

I’ll let you know what happens in a little while.

12:10PM: Well, it’s the Noon hour. Carley and Gannon are on-air giving our viewers the latest news. Tom and his photog are back and working on their package for the 6. It’s going to tie in nicely with the tropics, which have finally awakened. Philip Jones had some feeding problems from Morehead City which nixed his new video in the Noon show. Meanwhile, Marisela Burgos and her photog are tied up in court all day covering an interesting case that some of you may or may not be familiar with.

Around the newsroom, it’s relatively quiet which gives me an opportunity to work on a couple of specialty pages/revisions I’ve been working on… Among them are revamping the page(s) for “A Place To Call Home,“ “Five Minutes With…,“ and “On Air Links”. I think you’ll like the changes coming to these pages. They’ll be a lot more informative and user friendly which is always a good thing.

I’ll probably grab a bite for lunch around 1. That’ll give me an opportunity to pick up the movie “300” from Best Buy too! Can’t wait to see this movie again!

Around 2, I have a weekly Department Head meeting which is always lots of fun. *LOL* We’ll see what that brings a little later…

See you around 1PM.

11:15AM: BTW, I just posted the @ Noon Webcast. Check it out!

11:00AM:

Wow, that 45 minutes sure went by fast. I’m starting to wonder if the hourly updates today are the greatest idea. I neglected to mention that Tuesday is usually my most hectic day with meetings galore and the like.

I’m still in the state/regional… a large amount of stories came down from the time I left last night and the time I came in this morning. I’m glad Laura is here to give me a hand; I think she’s in National/International right now.

I’m glad to see that the Viewers Voice blog is starting to get some comments from you folks. That’s a great place for you to voice your thoughts and concerns so please feel free to use it as such. I’m going to pass along your comments to respective folks and, of course, they’ll be dropping in on their own to take a look.

Time to get back to the grindstone…

See you in an hour!

10:15AM:

Just out of the morning meeting which ran a little long today. We expected it to be brief considering that two of the dayside reporters are already out in the field. Funny how what you expect doesn’t always come to pass. Even with just Tom Brockman in the morning meeting pitching away, it still lasted a good hour, which was about half an hour too long so I could get back to you folks.

Right now, our EP, 6PM producer, and Marketing are breaking down the 6PM in the conference room. We’ve got a great web element coming for later today so I’m good to take the escape hatch from the meeting.

About to start updating the stories on the site. I’ll start with state/regional, move to national/international next, and then on to video for the noon hour.

See you back here at 11AM to see how it’s going.

9AM:

Well I promised I’d be here with you every step of the way. Just got to work, getting caught up on the e-mail. Glad to see the tropics are waking up but hope they’ll steer away from any land masses. Still, makes for an eventful start to the day. Tropical Storm Chantal. Doesn’t sound too threatening to me.

Gannon’s back here in the newsroom now and our EP and 6PM producer are about ready to gather up everyone for the morning meeting. So, I’m going to say adios for now and I’ll meet you back here at 10AM to find out how that shook down.

All the best,

Geo