Live Stream

I walked into the newsroom last Monday dreading what assignment I was going to have, because I knew I wouldn't have a reporter. My attitude quickly changed. Upon hearing that we would be live streaming the town hall meeting, I got pretty razzed up. It's not every day you get an opportunity like that, after all.

The problem was, none of use really knew what we were doing. We did a little research, a little asking around, told the editors and everyone else we would make it work, found the video camera, and headed to test everything and figure out how to work the program with about 20 minutes between leaving the Missourian and having to leave for the town hall meeting.

Those were some tense 20 minutes. At first we couldn't figure out how to make things work, and then we couldn't get the camera to work. Then more things went wrong with the audio. Finally, with everything appearing to work and not a moment too soon, we headed for the Black Culture Center.

They didn't let us set up where they told us we could. We were off tot he side. Then there were more difficulties getting the thing working again. Turns out, the DV input for the camera is way loose from people jamming the cable into too hard, so I had to hold the wire in, because the weight of the hanging cable was enough to pull it out so that we lost the feed. At times, when I was panning with one hand, and zooming with the other, I was holding the firewire cable with my teeth. I was manually adjusting audio constantly, because although we were plugged into the audio system at the Center, many people weren't using the microphones.

But eventually, it was over. We had lost the feed a couple times, we had problems with audio, and there were a few complaints. But really, I've rarely felt better and more uplifted after an assignment. It's nights like that that make me stay in this major. My heart was literally singing with the thrill of what Andrew and I accomplished. Yes, it wasn't perfect, there were a lot of things that could have been improved, not least of which was getting a better camera. But I felt like I did some good that night, and the numbers said that a massive amount of people logged on to watch our feed.

We made a tangible difference, and it was a wonderful, wonderful feeling.