Intern Blog

Theo Keith

FNCU intern

Trial and error. That's the best way to describe what I did today.

Every Thursday, “Your World” has a segment devoted to personal finance, and it involves a question from someone on the street. Questions can be about savings accounts, loans, your 401k, anything.

So a cameraman and I went outside, onto the 6th Avenue sidewalk. I was armed with a FNC microphone, which was pretty cool, I've gotta say. Unfortunately, we tried to ask questions of New Yorkers during lunch time, so people were hustling by instead of stopping to ponder their finances. Others looked scared of the microphone and tried to walk as far away as possible, which I've seen when doing stories at school, too. We only got a handful of questions, so I'm probably headed back out sometime soon to try again.

It was a good learning experience. I've learned in school that the first rule of broadcast journalism is “Never let the interview subject hold the microphone.” A close second is “Don't let them look directly into the microphone.” Well, those rules get thrown out for this segment because the people are supposed to ask the questions directly to Neil and Dave, so they're supposed to handle the mic and look into the camera.  It was a good learning experience, and I'll apply this knowledge when I go back for more questions.