By Heidi Glaus
St. Louis, MO (KSDK) - It is on most days controlled chaos, but hopefully what you see is a smooth delivery of what has been tossed out at an editorial meeting.
"Cupples building could cost $60 million to renovate," says Grant Bissell, a multimedia journalist.
"Peanut butter is causing big problems at food pantries," adds producer Sarah Gahagan.
"This guy has all these offenses dating back to the 80s," Ed Rich, the assignment manager points out.
Ideas are then debated and eventually determined by producers, reporters, anchors, photographers and news managers to be the news of the day.
"I think it's a matter of trying to decide among all the things that we know are going on that day, which of the things are viewers need to know, which are the things they want to know and which are the things that would be fun for them to know," explains News Director Mike Shipley.
Of course, that changes throughout the day, so there are three editorial meetings.
"That's where we tweak all of our ideas or we change ideas for our particular shift because we work in three shifts the morning show, day side and the evening," adds Gahagan.
And don't forget at any time breaking news could and often does throw all of that planning out the window.
"She's forwarding me texts from kids in school this one says dude, cops just stormed a room," Kay Quinn says reading a text.
But let's say it's a rather calm day for a producer.
"So the first thing I do is go into our daily planner so I can see who we have working today and what's already been assigned," Gahagan explains.
By the way, calm is never really the case at the news desk where scanners provide constant background noise and hopefully a tip or two, which may or may not end up being our lead story.
"Lead story we usually decide by what's most important, what affects the most people, what's happening now," Gahagan says.
And since we do so many hours of news people are constantly working behind the scenes.
"I think they would be surprised at knowing how hard we work behind the scenes to make sure they get a good, balanced, well-rounded product," Shipley adds.
In the meantime, you can probably see Pat and Jennifer. What you don't see while Jennifer is reading is Pat running to another position or Chris adjusting the lights.
Bottom line nothing goes on our air without a lot of thought about you.
"It has to be compelling information and it has to be stuff that makes me smarter. It has to be emotional, it has to make me feel something," Shipley says.
KSDK