by Owen Rung

Have you ever wondered what goes on at the heart of a news station? In this article we follow Lanora Ziobrowski, who works at Channel 7 WKBW, on a tour of the building and what goes on there. We first go to a large room filled with multi-media journalists, journalists who film, edit and write all of their own work. We talk to one of those journalists, Ed Drantch, who also anchors the morning news

“I get up at 2:15[AM], and I get here at 3:30[AM],” says Drantch. “You got to love it to do it”. 

But they don’t just leave after they go on television. In fact, they have a regular workday where they research for stories. 

After, we explored a technical area with many screens and buttons. Here they have lists of when the commercials play, and what the commercials are. They also make sure everything is running okay on their channel.

 Lanora then guided us to the studios where they have a living room scene, an outdoor scene, and a fully functioning kitchen for shows with specific needs. Then, at the news studio we witness Madison Carter, the noontime news host, go live to talk about the upcoming heat. 

“We’re going to give you some tips on how to stay cool in dangerous temps,” says Carter.

We also saw meteorologist Aaron Mentkowski in front of a green screen to talk about the hot weather. He has a small screen off camera he references to see where he should point to, since all he can see, is green.

Outside, we see a gazebo, for outside videos, which Lanora claims that they are one of the few news stations where they can still choose to broadcast outside. A weather van is also outside, with an intricate satellite device on its roof. Lanora said that they can get the general weather from anywhere in this van. A lot can happen inside this building that many people don’t think twice, or even once, when watching the news.