- December 8th, 2006, 2:19 am
#46323
Interview with Johanna Calfeehttp://www.planetblacksburg.com/news/pa ... erview.php
Reporter, WSLS NBC-10 Roanoke
by Courtney Paquette
December 7, 2006
Johanna Calfee, current reporter for WSLS-TV in Roanoke, graduated from Liberty University with a degree in Broadcast Journalism. She knew she wanted to be a journalist even in her early childhood. Progressing from intern, to producer, to reporter, she has done a lot to make her dream come true.
Through high school and onto college, Calfee worked in newspaper.
She then moved on to TV when she hit her senior year in college and interned at WSET in Lynchburg. At WSET, she became a production assistant and then news producer, learning the ropes as she went along. From there, she landed a job at WSLS, where she produced for two years before getting a shot at her current job of reporting. She is now a daytime reporter, balancing her time between Lynchburg, Bedford, Danville, Appomattox, Amherst and everywhere in between.
While producing was a natural fit for her, Johanna Calfee is amazing at reporting and connecting to the people. She is definitely one reporter who does not just get the news and report it, but cares for the people and the issues. She has a strong dedication to her job and continues to set goals for herself and her career.
Johanna Calfee agreed to sit down for an interview with Planet Blacksburg. The following are a selection of questions and answers from the interview that took place on October 6.
Q: I read on your online bio that you have always wanted to be a journalist since you were younger and that caught my eye. What helped you stick to your goal of getting where you are today? What made you want to be a journalist in the first place?
Calfee: In the first place, I watched Channel 1. I always watched Sesame Street and those kind of shows. I wanted to tell stories. I practiced telling reports in front of my mirror. I zoned in on what I was good at, which was writing and communicating; connecting to people. Once I get my mind set, that’s it for me. I had to give it a shot.
Q: You went to Liberty University, correct? What did you major in while attending there? Is this the major you recommend for people following your career path?
Calfee: I majored in Broadcast Journalism. I was a Comm major. It was a great experience for me. I got out in three years because I wanted to work…I already knew when I graduated how to work a camera; I knew how to edit, and I really did just have great teachers that prepared me as well as they could for what I was going to do.
Q: So is that the major you recommend for people wanting to do what you do?
Calfee: Absolutely. They should find anything as close to that as possible. Although, I have friends that are producers that majored in English, Marketing…It’s definitely helpful but it’s not the only means.
Q: How did you go about getting your internship at WSET?
Calfee: When I was a senior, it wasn’t mandatory to have an internship. I was already an editor on the paper, and I was running a Comms Lab as a low-paid student. One of the last courses I had to take was either the newspaper or this Comms Lab, and I was like, I’m doing both of those already! I knew I wanted to go into TV and I went to my senior professor and was like, ‘I want an internship, could I still get credit for this?’ He said we could work it out… I went and interviewed at SET and they accepted a couple interns a semester, kinda just who went to them. So I went and knocked on the news producer’s door. Bruce, who ended up being my boss later, said he’d love to have me. I had a split internship with production and news. It was obviously the best decision I made in college.
Q: What important skills did you learn from your internship at WSET?
Calfee: I think really it just got me in the door. That’s the biggest thing…It’s a really hard place to walk into a news station and not know anybody and internships let them know your personality, your work ethic, just your basic skills of what you can do. They are so much more likely to hire you then somebody on the street, because they have gotten to know you.
Q: It seemed like everything worked out perfectly for you, moving straight from an internship to producing to reporting. What advice would you give to other young adults such as myself, who are interested and working hard to obtain these internship opportunities?
Calfee: Getting yourself in the business is everything, and then working your way up. I actually felt like I took this long twisty road to actually become a reporter because I started running cameras on the floor in the studio and running audio. I was actually a production assistant which is part-time, minimum wage. It’s actually not even in the news department, but you learn all the technical things behind the scenes. I just harassed my news director. I would come in on my own time and write scripts for anchors and just people who needed an extra hand. Eventually, he saw that I wasn’t going to give up until he gave me a job in news. So he gave me a part-time weekend producer position and that was great. It helped me learn the ropes. I produced there for a year and a half. I got to report a little bit on the side and then I came to WSLS and produced for 2 years before they gave me a shot as a reporter.
Q: Do you like producing or reporting better?
Calfee: I like both. Obviously, reporting’s what I always wanted to do so I love being able to get out of the news room, and I’m hardly at my desk. Whereas, with producing, you’re at your desk all day. So I love getting out and meeting people. But producing, on days where it’s raining out or 100 degrees and you just don’t feel good, it’s great because you get to sit there and you get to write and focus. You don’t have to run all over kingdom-come and try to make 18 different deadlines. So I really like both. Producing was a natural fit for me.
Q: You said you were a day reporter. What’s your daily schedule like?
Calfee: I usually come in around 8, which is an hour before we have to but there’s a lot of a lot of pressure because we have to have our story idea in-tact by the 9:30 meeting. I come in and if I don’t have anything set up (which I usually try to), it gives me a chance. I just come in and make calls, usually about 15-20 a morning, just calling local police and investigators, just people that have been good contacts in the past. I’ve really been fortunate because I’ve never not had a story.
Q: So you always get one by the time you have to?
Calfee: Of course you have to get people to agree to talk to you, go out do your interviews, come back, write your story. I usually like to have my story written by 2:30. Obviously, that doesn’t always happen. Of course, you have to factor in driving. That’s the hugest thing for me. I’m in Danville as many as five days a week. It just depends…I’d say about 75% of my day is in the car. I usually come busting into the bureau at around 1:30, 2 o’clock. Then I call and get my story approved and start editing. It usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour to edit. If I’m approved by 2:30, I track, and start editing at 3. By 4:15 I’m done. I feed in my story to Roanoke and if it’s for 5 o’clock it goes on at 5 o’clock. It’s a race all day long. There’s not much down time, especially when you are by yourself.
Q: So, you said you have certain sources you call. Do people usually have a problem giving you details on events?
Calfee: Police especially sometimes can’t tell you, but there’s a couple I try. I try to have at least one contact in each department that I know I can go to and be like, ‘hey what can you tell me?’ They are good at telling me what they can. Some jurisdictions it’s more than one person. And then I try to have people that live in each area that I can call and be like, ‘hey did you hear about so and so?’ A lot of times it’s those people that connect the dots, not the police. Rarely, but sometimes, you’ll just be driving to another story and you’ll run across one. That’s the hardest part of our job, just coming up with a story each day... It’s definitely a challenge. You can’t just not have a story. It’s not optional.
Q: I’m fortunate enough to be in some very educational communication writing classes, such as media writing, at Tech. Did you have the opportunity to take classes such as these to help you learn the basics, optional ones or required?
Calfee: I don’t think we had as many as you guys do. The good thing was that when we were a Comm major, they split the department into three umbrellas: graphic design, marketing and PR, and broadcast journalism and print news. Until I got my internship with SET, I thought maybe I want to go into newspaper because I love to write. But I think the classes that they had did a good job at focusing in on what you would need to know.
Q: Since you’re always having to be accurate in the news business, have you ever been in a situation where information and facts have contradicted themselves or where there was an accuracy problem after being reported? Maybe a source has told you something and you find out something else?
Calfee: Yes, you always have to double check your sources. I can actually think of a specific example where the police gave us wrong information. It was during a manhunt where they arrested this guy in the woods and they gave us his name and it turned out that wasn’t his name. We found out after it aired and all three of us got it wrong. There’s not everything that you can find out yourself. At some point you have to trust the professionals and the accuracy of other people. You know, people make mistakes. We do too, definitely.
Q: I read News Channel 10’s mission statement. Do you think of your news team as a leader in the ratings? What do some of Channel 10’s ethical standards include?
Calfee: Our goal, I think it says, is to be a leader in the rankings. Are we a leader in the rankings right now? No. But we are strong number 2. Some good things we are doing right now will eventually make our competition uneasy… We are trying to find a new creative approach to news, and I think we are entertaining to watch. I think we are not just entertaining, but that we do a good job at investigating and looking into things and not just letting stories go on the surface… It’s just a different approach to how we cover news. Where they are interviewing the policeman, we are interviewing the person that was in the fire.
As far as our ethical standards, obviously this year was rough when it came to that… When you are forced to cover a news about yourself, it makes you kinda step back and really think about what’s important going forward and it gels you as a news team to make sure you don’t ever have to do that again. Then again, the mistakes of one or two people cannot represent a whole news station. Unfortunately, they are just public mistakes. But we sit in a morning meeting everyday and verbally hammer out ethical decisions we are going to make and how we are going to approach the news. It’s not like we go out without a plan.
Q: Could you tell me about some of the recent stories you have reported? What’s a typical story?
Calfee: There’s not really a typical story. I do crime probably about once a week. We cover a lot of animals. A lot of animals. Abuse cases just seem to happen a lot around here. The one that sticks out to me from this week is a crime story. We have a great surveillance video of a guy using a blow torch to get into a drink vending machine inside a business. They are really scared he’s going to set something on fire. The story I’m looking forward to now, tomorrow, is I’m actually going to be interviewing Patrick Dempsey from Grey’s Anatomy. He’s going to be in the area at VIR Raceway… I got to be the lucky draw of the hat this time I guess.
Q: Tragedies and hard situations come up frequently in the media. What has been your hardest story to report?
Calfee: It’s always death. It’s always when you have to go interview the parents of a child that’s died. The one that immediately came to memory, so I guess that’s the one that it is, was when there was a car full of teenagers and it wrecked. This 16-year-old girl was killed... The girl’s caretaker knew I was coming. It always amazes me when people can talk about that so immediately afterwards. I just don’t know if I could do that, but she just opened up the door and started to cry and I just stood there and hugged her because that’s just what she needed, you know? Sometimes I really think certain stories come to me because people just need to talk about it. If you can meet them where they are and not be about getting the story, but about just talking and letting them get it out, it makes a difference for them. But there’s definitely times where it’s very hard to turn off your emotions.
Q: What are some additional things you are looking to accomplish in your career?
Calfee: I’m looking forward to going back to Roanoke. I’m looking forward to just being able to cover the good stories. I’m looking forward to more opportunities to anchor. My ultimate goal is to be able to be behind the desk, but I also love the opportunity to go out and report, so we’ll see.
Q: Is there a news event or situation you’d like to cover in the future that you haven’t gotten to yet? I mean, “Mcdreamy” is pretty up there.
Calfee: “McDreamy” is unexpectedly up there. It’s probably the stuff that you would never imagine, you know, that big story that is going to happen in our area and I want it. I would also like to cover some elections, not just local, but be able to go to Richmond and cover some.
- By olldflame