Lindsey Mastis is a General Assignment Reporter at WUSA 9 NEWS NOW in Washington, DC. She shoots, writes, and edits reports for broadcast, web, and mobile.
2012 is a year of unknowns. I don’t have a crystal ball (I hear those things are really expensive). But I do have goals. I’d like to share a few. Why? Because writing it here is how I hold myself accountable.
Instagram is my new best friend in the field. It’s a basic iPhone app that shares photos and captions on a variety of social sites, including Twitter and Facebook (not to mention my fav, Foursquare). It allows me to share information and encourage viewers to tune in, with a few taps on my phone. And now I’m combining other editing apps to make my photos look even better.
Today was a perfect example of how I use Instagram in the field. My goal is to spark interest and start discussions well before the story airs. My updates mention my station, and if I know what time the story will air, I’ll mention that as well.
I drove up to Urbana, Maryland (in Frederick County) today to do a story about two garage fires that happened at the same time and within two blocks of each other. Fire damage is often a very visual scene. I snapped a picture with my iPhone camera, uploaded the photo to Camera+ and added some enhancements (brightening the photo and blurring the edges so people’s eyes would go straight to the burned out cars). Then I added the photo to Instagram and shared it on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Foursquare…
This article by the Associated Press caught my eye this morning: “Teddy Roosevelt’s NY home set for $6.2M rehab.”
Before I had the chance to start pondering the question (Why do we need to spend $6.2 Million to rehab an old home) I caught the first sentence of the article: “Theodore Roosevelt had a lot of stuff.”
Then I remembered that amazing picture of Teddy standing next to an elephant he had just killed. Pardon my language but I have to say: So badass!
I bought some books Teddy had written, one about the outdoors. I never read them, but they are on my bucket list. Funny how a simple article can remind me of things I planned to do one day. Not to mention, I’d…
As Black Friday draws to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the ways social networking played a part.
PETITIONING BLACK FRIDAY
Leading up to Black Friday, a Target employee started an online petition asking that Thanksgiving be saved. The reason, according to the petition: “A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day.” In other words, employees would have to end the festivities early so they could get a full night’s rest before arriving at work that evening. Employee Anthony Hardwick from Omaha, Nebraska, got more than 200,000 people to “sign” the petition on Change.org. The move got a lot of press, but…
