Tech Reporter

This may be the wrong forum so staff feel free to move where this needs to go.

 

I work at a local tv station and I was recently approached by one of my producers. He asked me if I would be interested in doing a technology segment for air. At first my mindset was no because I have never really written anything nor have I ever been on air. But now I feel it could be an interesting thing to expand my skillsets. Unfortunately this is a rather small market station so I really can't go full nerd on the air as it would simply go directly over most of the audience's heads. My plan was to review and talk about consumer electronic devices, phones and generally small electronics.

 

Generally the assistance that I am seeking is ideas of where to obtain information. I have access to the AP wire however we do not have the technology wire so the best stuff I get is threads that get mixed in with the business wire.

 

Also if this segment takes off I would be very interested in getting any of the tek guys on air for an interview about net neutrality and general cable isp shenanigans.

Dive deep into the rabbit hole, and maybe find something that normal people would be interested in. I feel like if reporting is going to move into a good direction it needs to be original content, sure you can report on all the big stuff like CES or PAX but that wont distinguish you from the masses. Anyone who's moderately interested in technology most likely wont use their local broadcast as a main source of information. Find stuff that no one knows about, if it's a local station that only reports on local news talk around and network until you find the really esoteric stuff and translate it. My city of ___ (pop about 30,000) actually has some pretty cool stuff if you look in the right places, start-ups, software developing firms, hacker spaces. If your town is really desperate then you might have to resort to less original content to build up a following. Honestly Wendel, Logan or someone on the team might have much better advice because it's what they do.

I hadn't even thought to look for local groups. That is an amazing idea. Unfortunately most people in my industry have an extremely lose grasp of technology so I feel I should shy away from hacker space type things.

 

Thank you for your suggestions

I'm not sure if you're associating the post 1995 hacker, I apologize if you're not. Some hacker spaces are actually geared towards beginners, whether it's building cool robots to perform specific tasks or 3d printing, hacker spaces are probably one of the coolest ways to get involved with technology in the community. If you think otherwise that's ok too, you're the one that's considering this.

Sorry for the late reply. I would be all for checking out hacker spaces. However the people above me dont understand that all hackers aren't malicious. And as such I would have to tread very carefully.

Try to find what "hacker" meant before 1995 and you will see what I'm trying to explain, it doesn't mean "criminal". I know linus torvalds has had a speech about it, that may be a good place to start.