Mommy The Journalist: 2013

I have a confession to make. I'm a worrier. I worry about money, work, family, friends ... and the list goes on and on. I can't seem to help myself.

But in 2014, I'm going to make a concerted effort to worry less ... about everything. I'm going to start the new year off with a new outlook.

I spent entirely too much time in 2013 worrying about money and whether I would be able to afford food if I put gas in my car. Those may seem like legitimate worries, but why should I spend countless hours worrying over whether I have enough money when I could be doing something to improve my financial situation? 2014 may not see me any richer than I've been in 2013, but I can at least budget my money a little better. That way I can have my gas and food to eat, too.

In 2014 there will be less time spent feeling guilty about not visiting, calling or keeping up with people ... especially those people who never visit, call or make an effort to keep up with me. It won't mean I care any less for them (some of them anyway). It just means I've grown up and know how I should be treated in any type of relationship regardless of if it's romantic, familial or friendship. All relationships are two-way roads, and 2013 will be the last year I waste my time walking both sides.

It's inevitable that work will follow you home sometimes, and although I'm certainly not plugged into the station 24/7 it does occupy a lot of my free time, and by that I mean my thoughts. I spend a lot of time thinking about the next day, schedules, story possibilities, etc. Work is also a predominant theme in my out-of-work conversations. Venting is healthy, but I know I tend to dwell on things ... and I'm sure my husband would agree. So next year I'm going to try to keep my work-related conversations and thoughts to a minimum. After all, how can I live in the present and enjoy the little things if work is always intruding?

As 2013 comes to a close, I wish you all a Happy New Year. May all your endeavors be fruitful and your adventures fun.

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Have you ever been so in-tune with your career, on the fast track to success, when all of a sudden, Bam! That burnt-rubber smell hits you out of nowhere? Then you realize that fast track was leading you straight to a burn out.

I read an article in Cosmo recently that talked about burning out on our careers. It said more people, women especially, are turning their Monday through Friday 9-to-5 jobs into seven days a week, 24-hour a day jobs. I don't know if I buy into their reasoning (insecurity, fear others are rooting for our downfall), but I know first-hand how easy it is to crash head first into a burn out.

I've talked before, here most recently, about the stresses of my chosen career. Unfortunately, college doesn't necessarily prepare journalists for the reality of the newsroom. If something doesn't go your way in school, it's no big deal. The same can't be said if it happens at your news organization.

Each day is filled with deadlines - you've got to have that story written by this time, video needs to be edited by that time - and the people you're relying on to help you reach those deadlines don't always take them into consideration. The closer you get to a deadline and aren't getting the goal accomplished, the more stressed you become. Sometimes it feels as if the clock is your worst enemy.

Then there's the stress of the story itself. In this profession, you're on the front line of pretty much every bad situation that happens in your coverage area. We all try not to be affected by the bad things we see, but when we're forced to re-see a senseless tragedy over and over again as the coverage moves forward, you can't help but to be affected in some way.

Then there's the reality that the newsroom doesn't always run as smoothly as you think it should. As a producer, I feel this particular type of stress acutely. A quarter of your scripts aren't written 30 minutes before your show airs; the video your show depends on isn't in two minutes before you start; stories are falling apart left and right all day long; and you have no idea how you're going to fill your time.

Then when you add in the stress of your personal life, it can be overwhelming.

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record in this series, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach to handling stress. However, Poynter.org has put together a list of five tips to help manage your stress in this career. I use all of those techniques on a daily basis, along with some other self-perfected methods.

My favorite way to unwind at the end of the day is with a hot, relaxing bubble bath while reading a magazine or book. I know many journalists who prefer a glass of wine (or maybe three) and others who like to sweat it out at the gym. When I'm not at work, I don't check my work email and I don't watch the news. No matter your method, the point is you have to find some type of outlet, otherwise you'll be headed straight for a burn out.

For me, it's a balancing act. News is important, but never more important than my personal life or my health. I understand the needs of the business, but I also know when to pull back. When you figure that part out, you'll be good to go.

For the past several days, my station has been dealing with the fallout from US Open tennis coverage. Somewhere between the first and thousandth phone call I've taken from outraged viewers, I realized not everyone understands the way local television news stations operate. But never fear! I, your resident expert, am here to save the day and educate the masses on the reality of the newsroom.

If you think your local news station is sending crews to cover major national and international events like the Boston Marathon bombing or the crisis in Syria... I have some ocean-front property in Arizona I'll sell you at a great price.

Most local news stations are affiliates of a major network like CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox. That does not mean we work for the network. In fact, we have practically no ties to the network until we do a story they're interested in. Until that point, we might as well not exist to them.

So what does it mean to be an affiliate? In a nutshell, we pay for our time slots and access to the network's video and stories. Even then though, we're not guaranteed that time slot if something better comes up, i.e. the US Open tennis tournament.

We have absolutely no say over which sporting events our network chooses to air, which shows come on at what time, what stories the network decides to include in their newscast, etc. Calling to yell at us because Hawaii Five-0 was an hour late or because you don't like tennis is a waste of our time and a waste of your breath. About the only thing we can do is give you the network's complaint hotline; however, I've found that most viewers would rather rant at me than call CBS to complain.

Affiliates are at the mercy of their respective network. Often we find ourselves in situations where we've had to condense a 30-minute newscast down to five minutes or watched all our time run out and not gone on at all. Like I told an angry tennis caller last week, we're not happy when the show we've worked on for hours just doesn't happen.

So here's my advice for all those people who like to call their local station and complain about what Ellen did today: find something more productive to do. If worse comes to worst, change the channel. No one's forcing you to watch, after all.

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In journalism school you learn a lot of things - what makes a story newsworthy, how to put your story together, AP style, etc. What isn't covered in depth is how to put your story into context for your viewers or readers.

Many of the stories we cover aren't just one-day deals. They're an issue that's built up over days, weeks, months, even years. And even if it's day one of coverage, nine times out of 10 we'll revisit the story somewhere in the future.

When you're immersed in those stories day in and day out, or even week in and week out, it's easy to take for granted that everyone knows what's going on. But that's simply not true.

There's always going to be that one person who's been living under a rock. And you can't rule out those people who watch or read every day and still can't keep it straight. Context is for them.

According to Journalism.org, the Pew Research Center's project for excellence in journalism, "Journalism is a form of cartography." Basically, we have to map it out for our audience. You can't start at point F and expect your story to have relevance. For example you can't go cover a protest over the verdict in George Zimmerman's murder trial without revisiting the verdict, and you can't revisit the verdict without explaining the charges, and the charges don't make much sense if you don't know why they were filed in the first place.

Even for those viewers/readers who've been following a story since it's inception, it's nice to lay out a timeline of events for them. That's not to say that you have to devote a lot of time or column space to those details, but in the words of my assignment editor you need a peg to hang the story on. It cuts down on confusion and helps set the tone for whatever you're covering.

There is a movement that seeks to put the context back in the news. They're calling themselves The Context Movement, and they recently had a panel at SXSW. You can read some cliff notes of that by clicking here. This group is trying to find a solution to what it calls "episodic" stories and is trying to answer this question: Why are we serving people the news without the background narrative necessary to make sense of the news?

The trend I see is that newscasts are filled with more and more content, but the context is decreasing. When you have about 12 minutes you can work with and there are 10 reporters each providing you with three minutes of content that your viewers are expecting to see, things get dicey. Fortunately, in most cases context can be provided with one sentence. It's not ideal, but it gets the job done.

In cases where you need more than a sentence but don't have the time or space, there is an easy solution. As I mentioned in Part 2 of this series, all aspects of journalism are converging in one place - the internet. We're all becoming multi-media journalists rather than a print or broadcast journalist and as such we should embrace the online counterparts of our shops. When you don't have time to break down three years of back story for today's version of your story, do it on your website and let people know they can find it there.

If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this - your audience can't take anything away from your story if they don't have the necessary information to do so. Set the scene; plot your course; start at point A. Context isn't a hard concept and it isn't difficult to incorporate. If you make it step one of your creative process, the rest is easy.

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By the time you get to college, professors generally assume you learned all you need to know about grammar in high school.

You would probably be surprised by the amount of basic grammar skills that either aren't absorbed or are forgotten. I'm not.

Obviously print journalists rely heavily on their grammar skills as they're tasked with telling stories using only words. But broadcast journalists aren't exempt from having good grammar ... or at least they shouldn't be.

Speaking conversationally doesn't mean you can dip into street slang or local dialect. In fact, both of those things detract from your credibility. Why should someone listen to and/or trust a person who doesn't speak correctly?

Unfortunately, most colleges don't require or even offer a grammar class for journalism students. The closest thing I got was an advanced editing and reporting class I took for my print major. Broadcast students weren't required to take those because they focused mostly on print-related things. However, in this day and age, can we truly separate ourselves that way? Yes, I work in broadcast, but I still have to know how to write, and I post stories to our website in PRINT format. And more and more print journalists are being required to turn broadcast-type stories for their online versions.

Is there a difference in the writing styles? Absolutely. But the same rules of grammar apply to both.

In the four years I've been working in this field, I've seen a lot of grammatical issues -- some over and over again. Here are the three I correct on a daily basis: Which versus That; Then versus Than; and Affect versus Effect. It's also not uncommon for me to correct misused apostrophes and commas; hyphens seem to be either not used at all or in all the wrong places; and, unfortunately, I still see subject-verb disagreement on occasion.

Probably the biggest concept for aspiring journalists to learn, whether they want to work for a newspaper or in television, is to write in active voice over passive voice. Using passive voice is not grammatically wrong, but it lends a slower pace to the story. Things are acted upon instead of your characters, if you will, performing some type of action. To put it bluntly, passive voice is boring and doesn't invite your readers or viewers to finish the story.

There is no easy way to overcome the grammar learning curve. I've actually considered putting together a pocket guide for grammar or launching a series on here. Honestly, though, who has the time? It would be a never-ending, miles-long project that would surely drive me insane.

So I guess the best advice I can offer you is to get an AP Stylebook if you don't already have one. It covers most of the common grammatical issues as well as some not-so-common ones. If you want to go the extra mile, pick up a copy of Working With Words.

In this business, words are your business. To make it, you've got to be well-equipped.

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Have you ever just needed to get away? I'm not talking about 'wanderlust'. No. I'm talking about leaving everything behind for a few days so you can just breathe. Last week accomplished that for me.

To say I've been off my game lately would be an understatement. I was mentally exhausted, frustrated with work and feeling detached. My creativity was stifled. My stress level was so high my blood pressure was running 20 points higher than normal.

My responsibilities at the station have increased, but obviously the days aren't getting any longer. Not that it would have mattered anyway; I was too tired and disinterested to do anything extra, including updating this blog.

In the past couple of years, I've become the go-to person in the newsroom. When I say that I am called for everything, I mean everything. Being relied on for any and every crisis is great ... in the newsroom. In my personal life, not so much. What with my phone constantly going off and having to stop what I'm doing to help someone every few minutes, my job was starting to feel like a babysitting service. The worst part? I was feeling under-appreciated.

My vacation last week had been on the books for quite awhile. Little did I know when I requested the entire week how much I would need it. Things started off a little rocky, with several phone calls and text messages from work. That's when I decided to disconnect from everything - no phone, no facebook, no email. It was just me, my husband and a camera.

It was everything I needed.

A full week of not keeping tabs on 20 other people. Going to bed without worrying about everything I didn't accomplish because I ran out of time. Actually getting a good night's sleep. Being able to focus on something other than work.

Now I feel more in control of things. My creativity has been restored, which is good news for my shows and for this blog. I may not be fully back in the swing of things yet, but I feel like I'm on the right path to reclaiming -- and enjoying -- my free time.

The Liebster Blog Award Rules:

1. Share 11 things about yourself

2. Answer the 11 questions given to you

3. Choose 11 fellow blogs to nominate {or how ever many you'd like}. The nominees must have under 200 GFC (google friend connect) followers and tell them in a comment on their blog

4. Think of eleven questions to ask the bloggers you have decided to nominate

5. Thank the person that nominated you and link back to their blog

Things About Myself
1.Sadly, I'm very easily addicted to reality t.v. It's not that I like reality t.v. It just sucks me in. For instance, TBS just aired a reality series about nerds. I was hooked, even though it was really bad.

2. I get road rage. But what do you expect when I live in the land of bad drivers?

3. Yo hablo espanol un poquito. Era mi concentracion secundaria en la universidad.

4. My name is Ashton and I'm a shopaholic.

5. I'm a t.v. news producer. As such I'm a magnet for stupid questions. I bet you thought there was no such thing...

6. Giraffes are my favorite animal, even though they're gay.

7. If I could be in any other profession, I think I'd like to be a professional ballroom dancer. Too bad I was cursed with clumsiness.

8. I believe in soul mates. I'm married to mine.

9. I am not a morning person. I'm also not good at taking naps. They just make me grumpy.

10. I suffer from debilitating migraines. We're talking no light, no sound, no movement.

11. I learn something new every day. It comes with the territory when you work in news. I think that was one of the biggest draws for me.

Questions I Was Given

1. Chunky of creamy peanut butter?
Oh man. Either. Except for Publix Chunky PB. It's too chunky.

2. Name one food you just can't stand.

I keep thinking of foods I dislike, but there really isn't anything I just won't eat. I'm like a disposal.

3. If you could have three wishes, what would you wish for?
That I could say goodbye to my Papa.
Automated news studios never happened.
World Peace. I'm serious. I get tired of all the negativity in my shows.

4. What is your usual order at Starbucks (Or similar coffee shop)?
I'm not much of a coffee fan. However, whenever the mood strikes it's going to be something with a lot of caramel.

5. What as the last movie you saw in theaters?
Warm Bodies. I highly recommend it. Zombie love story? Oh yeah.

6. Would you rather be an Olympic athlete or win American Idol?
Athlete.

7. What book do you think everyone should read, but no way in hell would you share your own copy?
So many options... I can't decide!

8 Have you ever gone vegetarian or vegan? If so, how long did it or has it lasted?
hahahahahahaha

9. Skiing or Boarding?
I assume you mean with snow... I live in south Alabama. We don't have that.

10. Who taught you to drive?

My mom.

11. Do you have a favorite item of clothing for any reason?
I have lots of favorite pieces. I'm addicted to shopping.

Nominees - About that... I'm so far behind on my blogging, I really can't.

Thanks to McGriddle Pants over at Serenity Now Insanity Later for the award!