KGUN9 NEWS
Tucson, Arizona | Full-Time Producer
As a producer, my job before the show is to find the stories and arrange them, then find video and write the scripts for anchors. I also build various graphical elements. Then, while the show is on air, I am in the control room managing talent and production, timing each story—and the entire show—to make sure we do not go over or under and run out of time. Typically, a producer works on one show per day, but sometimes I work on 2 with the same time I would have for a single show, without sacrificing quality or accuracy.
April 9th, 2024
Arizona Supreme Court clears way for territorial-era ban to become law | KGUN9
This was perhaps one of my most chaotic days. Despite expecting a ruling at 10 a.m., and receiving said ruling minutes later, I was making changes to abortion-related scripts up until showtime, 7 hours later.
What makes this show special:
Light on content — had to source more than usual myself but still keep it local and relevant
Reading multiple legal rulings & wrote scripts — read two legal rulings for abortion and one more for the Arizona Families Tax Rebate
Broke down gas prices later in show — Sourced numbers and historical numbers and made multiple graphics myself to present them (Not in this video clip)
Last minute live shot — live shot added about an hour before my show. I got a script one minute before air.
Last minute script from lead story — my lead was a reporter story on the abortion ruling. It came in about five minutes before air and was lacking in what actually happened in the ruling or what it meant for abortion law. I wrote that in just before show started from the booth.
My process:
Reading the ruling — Before I could write about the ruling, I had to understand it, and there’s really only one way to do that — read it.
Understanding the ruling — Abortion is a complicated issue, and legal documents certainly don’t simplify much. Even having read many legal documents myself, I always like to discuss my findings with my fellows to make sure I’m understanding what I read correctly.
Reaching out to Attorney General’s Office — In one script from our sister station, Planned Parenthood said it had 45 days before the new law became enforceable, but that’s different from the 14 days I read in the actual brief. I tracked down the court case Planned Parenthood was referencing — a 2022 ruling from the Superior Court of Arizona — but still was unclear whether the state supreme court super ceded this ruling in a separate case or not. So I found time to ask the Attorney General’s Office, which clarified they both apply and the law is not enforceable until around 2 months later.
Pushing forward - Arizona for Abortion Access — What’s next? More lawsuits for sure, but also a chance for voters to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution this November, if a group gets enough signatures.
Detailed explanation of abortion law in Arizona (4/9/24).
Abortion in Arizona had been legal up until 15 weeks of pregnancy for months until this landmark decision. It sent Arizona healthcare back over 100 years, to a law prohibiting all abortions — with singular exception for when it’s necessary to save a mother’s life — by ruling a 2022 moot.
The court ruling the 15-week ban passed in 2022 did not establish a right to an abortion, instead it restricted the right to abortion established in Roe V. Wade. But when Roe was overturned in Jackson V. Dobbs, that right disappeared, rendering its restrictions moot. Therefore, the court ruled it could not conflict with the 1864 ban.
Some time goes by and I see a story from our Phoenix sister station. In their script, Planned Parenthood told them they have 45 days before the territorial-era law is enforceable. That caught my attention, because the state supreme court said it was only 14 days. I found the court case Planned Parenthood was referencing — 2022 ruling from the Superior Court of Arizona. The lower court said the 1864 law could not be enforced for at least 45 days after the Arizona Supreme Court makes its ruling (and here we are two years later).
Usually, the Supreme Court would override any lower court, but since these were two separate cases, there’s an argument to be made that the lower court’s ruling is safe until challenged. But I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not going to air speculation, so I asked the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. They clarified, that both the 14 days and 45 days apply, so it may be up to two months before the ban can be enforced.
Of course even when those two months are up, Governor Katie Hobbs still issued an executive order last July, blocking state agencies and officials from investigating or prosecuting abortion-related cases.
March 4th, 2024
Father-son Go Kart Team | KGUN9
This story was one of several highlights from this particular newscast. My reporter landed a unique story with excellent visuals, and I thought of a way to make the intro even more special.
Using the Dem Wide shot - In my early days at KGUN, I thought up a new camera shot to use in the studio, that quickly became adopted by the station, where an anchor stands between two angled monitors to add some depth to the shot. It excels for stories with great visuals, or politics showing two people going head to head. The idea is a viewer sees two graphics, one on either side, but no matter which they look at, they’re still drawn back in to the anchor using leading lines.
Creating the graphics - In this case, I worked with my reporter and graphics team to create two graphics to go in the monitors, to catch a viewers attention but not be overly distracting. I took extra care to ensure the text was justified in opposite directions as well, to add to the converging effect. Note, both videos pause at the same time after only a few seconds. The idea is not to overstimulate a viewer with two vastly different videos, plus an anchor talking, but catch their attention off the top, pause so they can catch up, then let them move their attention to the anchor in their own time.
March 4th, 2024
UA President takes pay cut | KGUN9
During an financial crisis where the University of Arizona overspent over $140 million for FY2022-23, forecasting another overture of $160 million this next year, UA President Robert Robbins announced he’s taking a pay cut.
My reporter did most of the legwork here, but it took him longer than anticipated and he couldn’t wait for graphics to make what he needed because it was delaying the rest of his work. So I jumped in and was able to create make-shift graphics using our ENPS system. They’re not as pretty, but in a tight situation they work all the same.
Because I use ENPS graphics so often, I was able to add some extra detail like President Robbins in the background of the full screen graphic. I had to take the image of him and resize it in Photoshop to make sure his face wasn’t completely covered by the title.
I also created the graphic in the monitor at the start, making a rough mockup in Photoshop, then sending it to graphics for refinement and animation.
Photoshop mockup sent to graphics for refinement and animation.
November 28th, 2023
Special ‘Navigator’ Map | KGUN9
Using a special map-making tool, I can create a map and put it in our studio’s touch screen so the anchor can bring the audience closer to a particular town or city in a story. In this case, it was Nogales.
Why this show was special:
Created ‘Navigator’ Map - Made a cool visual element to add to show using 3rd party program
Wrote script specifically to incorporate ‘Navigator’ Map - This isn’t always the easiest thing to do. How do I add more information to something already taking up 6 minutes in our show, without being redundant? This time, I tried adding context to the subject of the story — Nogales.
Multiple lives & Field Anchor - One anchor was in the studio, another in the field for our big story at the border. The field anchor would read most stories related to the big story, but to balance the show I found creative ways to get our studio anchor involved too
April 14th, 2023
Gas Prices in Arizona | KGUN9
A digital article — and broadcast piece — I wrote for gas prices for the second week of April 2023.
Why this story is special:
Producing a full show with more writing than usual - Some days I don’t have to write as much for my shows because I’ll have more reporters writing their own stories for my show, or more national content that I just need to shorten or rewrite. But this show had a lot of new, local content that takes longer to research and write, plus find a visual to accompany the script.
Turning raw data into appealing, clear graphic - Gas prices cannot be expressed without numbers, and you don’t want to complicate numbers or people won’t understand or retain what you’re telling them. I had to figure out how to communicate a series of numbers and price changes clearly and over a short time. Look below the video to see how I did it.
Communicating with my team - I am a capable graphic designer, but I neither have the time nor the equipment to create graphics at work. That’s where my graphic design team comes in to help, but I had to communicate my vision to them, which presented its own challenge. I also had to do so in a time crunch while working on other stories.
Also writing a digital story - I had to write a digital article for a different story while working on this story and my 5 O’clock show.
I also rewrote my script for web and clipped the part story from my newscast to put in my digital story. You can read part of that below — the full story is linked here.
———
How much have gas prices increased recently?
From 3 days ago, to a month, to last year...
TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Gas prices continue to rise with no sign of slowing down, according to AAA. In fact, Arizona has seen the largest increase in our average dollar per gallon in the entire country — about an 18 cent increase.
How much have prices changed in 3 days, 1 month, 1 year?
On Friday April 14th, AAA showed Arizona with the third highest cost of fuel in the nation, averaging $4.54 a gallon — up 13 cents since Tuesday of that week.
Even Pima County saw an increase of 20 cents over those three days, with the average price at the pump sitting at $4.46 a gallon.
Gas prices nationwide are significantly higher than 2019, 2020, and 2021. But they remain lower than last year — though that story changes for Tucson and Phoenix.
Tucson gas is already eight cents more expensive than last year — and 84 cents more than a month ago…
Read the full story here.
How these graphics came to be
When communicating with my graphics team, I start by sending them rough written instructions — sometimes in a roughly visual format through stacked text — and they build a draft from there. Occasionally, I’ll have time to build a quick rough draft myself and send it as a visual aid. For this story, I needed 3 different graphics. They all needed a few drafts, but this one, being the most complicated, needed the most work. You can see part of the process in building the graphics for this show in the video below.
Draft 1
This was the raw information in a very rough format I sent to my graphics team to roughly explain what I wanted the graphic to look like. They ended up changing the format slightly, stacking the text, but that wasn’t why the graphic didn’t work. At first, I thought it was because the +8 cents and the since last month line below it weren’t distinguishable. No problem, a simple color change will fix that.
Draft 2
Nope! That wasn’t the problem — in fact, I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was, but I wanted to make sure. So I had 2 co-workers read the graphic without my influence. Neither knew what the first numbers in each line were referring to, because they didn’t read the subtitle. That’s a fatal design flaw, and a failure on my part to clearly communicate to my viewers.
Draft 3
Back to the drawing board then. This time, I needed a visual aid myself to see if my new plan would work. I quickly fired up Photopea — basically Photoshop for free and online — and got to work. About 3 minutes later I finished (rough) draft 3, and showed it to my co-workers again. This time it was much more clear — especially thanks to increase in price being red, and decrease being green. But it definitely wasn’t done yet.
Draft 4
Cue draft 4. This one looked way better — it clearly communicated the price changes and was properly stylized — but it wasn’t perfect. For starters, in Draft 3, the ‘cents’ being red or green looked fine because it was against a white background. But against a blue background, too much red or green didn’t contrast well and was hard to read. The cents were also a bit distracting being capitalized, so I had graphics change them back to lowercase.
Final Draft
There was one more draft identical to the final, but it had a typo. Another thing I have to be aware of when having someone else build my graphics.
But finally, the end product was done. Clear time comparisons, an optional subtitle, and numbers aided by both color and symbols to quickly capture the viewers’ eyes without over stimulating them.
February 16th, 2023
A-block Newscast | KGUN9
This is the A-block segment of the 5 p.m. newscast I produced for KGUN9.
Why this show was special:
Producing 2 shows - I had to build and write two shows in the same time I would normally have to build one
Breaking news - I had to write and coordinate breaking news of a school bomb threat 20 minutes before first show (4 p.m.). Then, at the top of this show, my reporter was improvising based on what she knew and I had to use judgement when to take video full and come back to her so the show stayed fluid—while timing her report & the show.
3 live shots - I had to manage six people in the field, plus three people in studio. Two live shots aired once in show, the third aired three times.
Major Weather - The whole week had crazy weather (for Tucson) meaning I could not cut time from weather to make up for live shots.
There were 3 big stories for this show, including (Breaking) a bomb threat at a local high school; House Speaker McCarthy’s visit to the border; and a follow up one day after a chemical spill closed down I-10, with authorities ordering a shelter-in-place for nearby residents for around 24 hours after.
February 8th, 2023
A-block Newscast | KGUN9
This is the A-block segment of the 5 p.m. newscast I produced for KGUN9. As a producer, my job is to find the stories and arrange them, then find video and write the scripts for anchors. I also build various graphical elements.
The top story was a blood drive honoring Kay Read—a woman from Tucson who donated toys, food, and over 9 gallons of blood—before she was murdered. Her remains were never found.
Other notable stories from the A-block include a Northwest Hospital closing its OBGYN wing after only a few months of being open, and a new federal grant to help mitigate homelessness, and jury selection for the second high-profile murder trial of Christopher Clements.