Aliyah is an Editor and Photographer with WTOL 11 in Toledo, Ohio. Working the second shift that covers the evening news broadcast, Aliyah is responsible for covering news events as a photographer as well as editing video packages for the nightly broadcast. Her best networking advice is for students to form strong bonds with some of the closest experienced professionals: their teachers.
Transcript
My name is Aliyah Coates. I currently work for WTOL 11, where I am a photojournalist and the evening editor. Working at a news station, a busy day can range for all different kinds of events going on. And being a photojournalist, you basically go out, and you get to be in the community and tell someone's story. So, if there's any, you know, festivals or just something going on for, you know, a family, I'll be able to go out, be able to cover the event, shoot it, kind of get the information of, you know, what's going on, usually I'm able to interview someone, so I can see how they feel, maybe they can tell me a little more about the information, or if it is an event, we can talk about, you know, if this is like an annual thing that they do, and kind of get more information to let other people know about what's going on. Being an evening editor, I put the shows together, basically. I do the 10 P.M. and our 11 P.M. newscasts. And with that, we have producers that write the scripts and kind of decide what videos are gonna be used, and that information turns around and comes to me, I find the videos, edit it, put it together, or if it's, you know, like a caught on camera video, I kind of slice it up and make it great for our newscast, yeah. And you can't control what happens, if it's breaking news in the middle of a show, or right before a show starts, you have to be able to accommodate it and change, you know, right then and there. So, we can go from having an hour worth of time before a newscast, and you're relaxed, like oh, I'm ahead of the game, this show is almost edited for it to, you know, air on TV, and then, a fire can break out, so you have to be really fast. I have to edit this video really fast that somebody else is sending me in, because, we'll have, you know, other people in the field. So, you have to learn how to edit really fast so I can send it in, and then it goes on air, and it makes you, your pace has to pick up really quickly. But with it being a news station, anything can happen. I wanna say the latest I've left was maybe 1:30 in the morning? Just because it was, actually, it was a really bad storm in Sandusky, and I was the photojournalist for that day, and I had to go cover it because a building had collapsed. And that's another thing where it's kind of, you don't expect it because you come in, you know, not thinking it's gonna be a bad storm this day, and I was editing, helping some other people out. I got a call from, you know, one of our producing managers, saying, "hey, we need you to drive out to Sandusky right now." So, that's literally a thing, where you have to drop everything and go.
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