A 2018 Kickoff From the New York Film Academy Broadcast Journalism School

Here in New York City, the biggest news story of the new year is the weather. At times, accurate weather reporting can be a matter of life and death. Convincing often cynical audiences that a storm is big, bad and deadly can be challenging. That’s when we need to use all of our skills to first gain the attention of, then maintain engagement with, our audience.

NYFA grad George Colli — who is with News8 in New Haven, Connecticut — was a great example last week of both traditional news gathering techniques as well as cutting edge “broadcasting” technology.

George lives at the beach, which most of the year is pretty fabulous. But when the recent mega-snow storm hit the East Coast, George wasn’t going anywhere, including work. So he set up shop right outside his house, and used his iPhone and a fast internet connection to feed his stories to News8.

Besides reporting “on air,” George was also reporting “online.” At all times, but especially during emergencies, people turn to social media to find out what is going on. And there was George, streaming live on Facebook. One of the advantages of social media is that it is interactive. The “audience” is no longer passively consuming information, but can participate and contribute as well.

George’s stories were up on the News8 website too. That’s him, up to his knees in floodwater as a storm surge-boosted high tide spills over the beach and the down the street. If a picture is worth a thousand words, that video is worth a million…

Of course, some of our grads work in places that have been far warmer this month. One of them is Anita Efraim, who is in Brazil. She was just hired to work at a new news radio station being started in Rio de Janeiro. (No icy flood waters there!) The station is part of the dominant Globo media group, a good company to be working with if you want to establish a career path.

Congratulations, Anita!

Finally this week, all of the NYFA graduates who receive this update will know exactly what Elina Mukhersee (now of South Asia TV USA) is doing in the image below. It is a long-time NYFA Broadcast Journalism tradition, where new students “sign in” to the program. For the incoming 1-year, 8-week and 4-week students, this is a preview of what you will be doing in a few weeks. And for our alums, it is a visit to “memory lane.”