News
Second reporting shift
emmalee reed
Jan 31, 2020
It was a pretty slow day in the newsroom. I worked mostly on getting ideas organized and planning my story—the one I started on Tuesday. I had a lot of ideas about where I wanted the story to go, but I know now that I need to focus and keep my ideas specific.
Toward the end of the shift, I worked with Fred to write a brief about Lucky's Market: https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/founders-of-lucky-s-market-agree-to-manage-remaining-stores/article_668d0be6-42e1-11ea-9b2c-3b0dd8d8844c.html. Working on this story was my first time writing on a real time crunch. Lucky’s is important to the Columbia community and has been making a lot of news in the past weeks, so we wanted to get the story out as fast as possible. Fred was really helpful in getting this story out quickly, and I found court documents and outside reporting that we included in the story and made it more than just writing off a press release.
This story ended up being my first story on the front page—I've had photos there before—which was a little bit exciting. Because it was a brief with important information for our readers, I understand why it was on the front page. I think I'll be more excited if a big story I find and write makes it there. I know getting stories on A1 doesn't matter in the scheme of things, but it is cool to see work in print and know it is being seen by many people.