>> I'm Lauren DiSpirito, I'm a
reporter and video journalist
for WBBH NBC2 and ABC7 in Ft Myers, Florida.
So I start off everyday at the Lee County
Sherriff's office, that's the crime beat,
which I'm assigned to and we go through
all the police, the deputy's incidents
from the night before, so all the crime
that took place county wide and look at,
what is something that is newsworthy
and we would want to report.
I think that we think the public
need to know, have a right to know,
stories that would be interesting.
So we take, we request those incident reports
and then I talk, I talk with my managers
and basically figure out what are the
stories that we're going to chase today.
That takes up most of the morning and then, as
you saw today, I went out and looked for a woman
who was the victim of a burglary and it
turned out that deputies were able to track
down the person who had stolen from her,
who they accuse of stealing from her,
by looking at a pawn shop's records.
So, yeah, it's, you know, a lot of my job is
making sure that a lot of times I feel it's,
you know, putting people at ease
and explaining to them, you know,
why others would want to hear their story.
We look for surveillance video of crimes,
anything from murders to shoplifting.
If there's something that the viewers can
learn from it, we try to put it out there.
So then I look at everything that I've
shot and I log it, is what it's called,
it's basically write down the time
codes of everything that's said,
so that I know all the material that I'm
working with and what the story is and then I go
and write it and then I go and crack the story.
We only have about a minute and 30
seconds to tell the story and you want
to keep it interesting and moving quickly
and get all the details in there for people,
so I will spend anywhere from 20
minutes to 45 minutes writing the story
and then I will go back to the edit
bay and I'll edit all of that together.
Here I've had relatively normal hours,
I'm at that meeting by 8:45 in the morning
so I leave my house probably at 8:20, 8:15 and
I'm usually wrapped up by 6:00 unless I'm live
on a story in the 6:00 show, then
maybe I'm finished by 7:00 at night.
And it could change, I mean the one thing
there aren't really normal hours in this.
I'm a daytime, weekday reporter so that's
why I have that shift, but I have, you know,
colleagues of mine work on the
weekends, they work midnight
to 8:00 a.m. they work 3:00
to 11:30 in the evening
>> Did they offend someone or something?
[ laughter ]
>> And I've done all those shifts, too, so
in different jobs, so it is, it's something,
the news is always on and there's
always a newscast to prepare for,
so you're not likely going to
have a nine to five in this job.
I like getting to write and tell stories.
I've always enjoyed writing and that even from
you know, high school, grade school and then
onto my classes at Villanova and for me, I
like that each day, I craft and tell a story,
you know, based on, you know,
with the help of the people who,
who the story is about and
I like getting to do that.
I like that every day is different and that
I'm not sitting at a desk most of the day.
I think that's important for me and I
feel like I'm learning every single day.
And for me, you know, it's as much about
personal growth as it is about you know,
trying to further your career but also I think
a lot of it just falls into you as a person.
So for me it's something that I think
challenges me every day and I like that.
>> How about some of those challenges.
What are some of the tougher parts?
You're working in, you know, with,
in crime, you know, situations
and stories has anything every come up
that was a little bit dangerous or scary?
>> We're definitely, you know, we go where the
stories happen and where the crime happens,
so in a way yeah, I think we're
putting ourselves out there.
You're taught and you kind of, it's like,
really what comes out is you go with your gut
and when you feel like you're in a
bad situation or a dangerous situation
that you need to leave, then you do.
I can't say I've ever been too scared to finish
something, to do a story, to get an interview,
but it is, you know, we're walking up to victims
of a crime or people who's just lost a loved one
and asking them if they want to talk
on camera and that's never easy, it's,
that's probably the most challenging
thing and the thing that all
of us will say we like the least about the job.
I have been on the scene, I
covered a murder case in Macon
where the woman that was killed was dismembered.
That was probably the most challenging.
She was a young woman, not much older
than myself and to cover that for weeks,
definitely took a toll in terms of, you know,
the details that we learn and the things
that we're writing about each
day aren't very positive.
But I think there's a reason that, you know,
the reason for covering it
makes it worthwhile in the end.
I would suggest some of the classes I think
had the most impact on me took a class
about genocide and rhetoric and propaganda,
that history courses are a good idea.
Political sciences courses probably
wouldn't hurt, I didn't take many of them
but writing courses and any of
the English courses that we offer,
I think all of them help you become
somebody that can write clearly,
concisely and to take information,
unpack it and figure out how
to make it relatable for the viewer.
Well, Villanova is unique in that, in
a good way, I think, in that we don't,
and actually it could have changed, but at
the time we didn't have a journalism major.
We had a communication major and
you could concentrate in journalism.
I found there's a lot of people that come in
and they go to a broadcast school and they major
in broadcast journalism or they major in
print journalism and they get a lot of hands
on experience, they have a college TV station
that teaches them exactly just like it is here.
We don't get that at Villanova
but I think it's a plus.
I think that you need to be a critical
thinker and you need to be a good writer
and those two things stand out the most.
You can learn how to track a story.
You can learn how to shoot video.
You can learn how to write for
copy for air, but you know,
employers are willing to train you in that.
But what they want to know is that
you can think critically about things.
That you understand the difference between
information that is confirmed and isn't.
About libel, things like that and when
you're a smart person and you're responsible,
then you can learn all those other things.
So I graduated in 2008 with a major
in Communication and I did take some
of the Journalism classes offered
at Villanova but not all of them.
I interned during the Spring
of my Senior year at NBC 10,
which is the NBC owned T.V.
station in Philadelphia.
From there, I was hired as a Production
Assistant and worked as an Assignment Editor
for about a year and then I got my
first job on-air as a Reporter in Macon,
Georgia in September 2009 and it's a job
that requires you to move, you, you know,
you can't really pick where you go, you go
where the job is and I spent two years there
and then three months ago started here in Ft.
Myers, so I'm on my second job
as a on-air television reporter.
I will say this job is pretty
intense when it comes
to the stress level and your commitment to it.
You know, you always have to,
you want to answer your phone,
you never know when a source
is calling with information.
There's rarely a time that I feel that I'm
totally away from work and what I'm doing,
I'm always checking other news outlets and the
competition and just what's going on worldwide,
what's going on nationally, so
I think that's another challenge
of this job is you make a really serious
commitment to it when you go into it
and it's not going to be something that
you can sort of forget about easily.
Sometimes you can't forget about
the stressful stories that you do.