March 2010 Archives

Hello there,

It's Allison with you here today. And today has kind of been an easy day, so not much to tell you about today. Except that it's Dean Richards' birthday today! Happy birthday Dean : ) Morgan is here with me too, and if you watched the show in the 7 o'clock hour you can see us HERE singing to Dean in Greek (I'm in the blue dress, Tania in the white blouse and Morgan is in the gray sweater).

I'm actually going to tell you about the Evan Lysacek Day that I got to go to. So on Thursday Terry, one of the awesome morning show producers, asked me if I wanted to go out with Ana to Naperville for the Evan Lysacek day and of course I said yes! So I got there in the morning (7 a.m.) and basically I got real practise experience of being a producer for her "Around Town" segment. I had to make sure the high school kids were organized so Ana would be ready to go if they happened to need her early. That turned out to be surprisingly easy lol I thought the kids were going to be trying to do something funny on-air but they were well-behaved. Someone told me that when Evan walked in, it was probably going to be chaotic. But when he did finally walk in, everything was calm and cool. We had him to interview after ABC. He was so nice, very humble and VERY tan. He brought with him his dance partner from Dancing With the Stars and she was nice too. Evan had his medal around his neck and it was so cool to see an actual Olympic gold medal in person. That was a pretty awesome day, and if you saw the segment you know it went off without a hitch! I think I kind of like this producing thing.

Well that's it for today. We have many more really cool guests coming on the show so I'm looking forward to that. And for the Sox and Cubs opening game day, we'll be out there too and hopefully we can get a video up of that. And don't forget to leave comments or questions if there is anything you want to know.

 

 

Hey everyone!

I'm Michelle, and I'm another one of the interns here on the morning show.  I'm the general morning intern on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  That means I do routine stuff like finding video and loading it into our server, but it also means that I help with just about anything on the morning show that needs to be done.  Remember that Does it Work? segment with the pillows?  Someone had to stuff the pillows.  You know the game show segments we do?  I'm often the person who finds the trivia...and a person clapping when the guests get the answers right!

So far, the most memorable days have been the day where both Anika Noni Rose and Apolo Anton Ohno came in, and a day back in January when we had penguins in from Sea World.  I got to pet the penguins-how many people can say they've done that?

Today I might be making my WGN on-camera debut.  I believe they're having me dress up in a bunny costume-look for me in the 8:00 hour...here it is! click here  We'll see if it happens or not, but let's just say to be an intern here you definitely need to have a good sense of humor!

-Michelle

Hey guys it's Morgan. 

Last Wednesday (3/24) I had my first experience with interviewing a celebrity, and while it didn't go as smoothly as I would have hoped, it was still very exciting! 

Both of the interviews were via satellite, and you'd think that being on the phone with a celebrity would be less intimidating than in person, or at least that's what I thought.  So I typed up all of my questions and went over and over them so I wouldn't sound like...well like an intern interviewing her first celebrity.

Let me explain a little about how a satellite interview works.  Usually the person interviewing can see and hear the interviewee on a monitor. The interviewee, however, can only hear the person that is asking them the questions.  If you don't need to see the interviewer asking the questions though, you can just do the interview over the phone and the two can only hear each other.

Since no one really cares about seeing my faceJ, I did the interview in the producer's office over the phone.  You don't realize how much you rely on facial expression and gestures when you're talking to someone until you can't use them!

I interviewed Lori Loughlin (90210, or as everyone really knows her, Aunt Becky from Full House!), and chef, Jamie Oliver.  Both were talking about healthy eating and projects they're working on to help fight obesity in America.

Now when celebrities do these satellite interviews it's usually all at once.  Each news organization gets a certain window of time to ask their questions in, and the celebrities spend that entire time answering what I can imagine are the same questions over and over. 

Both of my interviews started out fine, I ask the general questions Lori Loughlin: What can we expect on 90210?  Jamie Oliver: Do you have any advice for CPS as they're changing their school lunches?  Then we wanted to ask some questions for another segment that were totally unrelated to what they had been talking about, and explaining that was not the easiest thing for me to do!  First off I was SUPER nervous because I had never interviewed a celebrity before and second off it was via satellite, so I couldn't see their faces to see how they were responding.  Not to mention I've only got a few minutes to ask the questions and get their responses!

Needless to say, there was some confusion, and I'm actually glad they couldn't see my face because I'm sure it was 20 shades of red!  I'm so glad I got the opportunity to do it though! I mean were else do interns get to actually interview celebrities?!?

So for those of you who think it's easy to be an entertainment reporter, or any type of reporter for that matter, think again because it's a LOT harder than it looks!

Just for Laugh tickets are on sale today, who are you most excited to see?

Hello all!!! I'm excited to write for the intern diaries, even though this is my first post. My name is Brittany Rodgers and I am the web producer intern. I barely get free time to do some blogging, but today I have about 10 mins lol.

I came in today at 7:30 and immediately I start clipping videos to get the website "pretty", as me and my producer Marissa would say.

But...not too much to say today, have to continue getting videos clipped to the stories.

Chao : )

 Hello everyone,

It's Allison today. I'm actually the only intern here today, so as you can imagine I've been running around like crazy! But it was fun and made the day go by fast. Don't you just love it when the work day flies by? Before you know it, it's time to go : ) But before I do, I wanted to let you know what I was upto today. So when I got here (around 5:00 a.m.!) I had lots of video to get for the stories today. And wouldn't you know it, the computer and host website I was working with was down! I spent forever running around trying to figure out how I was going to put video up that wasn't terrible quality. The news works on deadlines all-day long, and Dean's hit was coming up fast in the 6 o'clock hour. I was panicking! I was (literally) running through the newsroom trying to make deadline....and I did. So then I got to sit for like a second before I had to go and make sure comedian Jake Johannsen was on set at the right time. So picture me, now running to get him, meanwhile I'm passing up models for the fashion show and a penguin in the middle of the hallway. I got him to set and he was hilarious! You might even hear me laughing in the background. After that I had to make sure the models were ready for the 8 o'clock spanx fashion show which was...enlightening. I was totally excited when the fashion show was over so I could go and see the penguin. I even took a pic of the little guy. But I left as soon as I smelled his stage-fright doodoo : ( not a good smell. And after an awesome show and our meeting, the day is done! Tomorrow I get to meet Evan Lysacek in Naperville! How exciting, I can't wait to tell you how that goes. Well that's all today, hopefully you will get to meet a new intern tomorrow. Have a great day!

 

Allison Rodriguez

Hello everyone!

My name is Tania Kostova and I am the general Morning News Intern. By general, I mean the one that supposedly helps everyone. My main responsibility is to assist the guests who come to the show, but if there are not that many, I walk around the news room and ask people if they need anything. Here is a script of my daily conversations here at WGN:

"Good morning! How are you today?"
"Good. Thanks!"
"Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Um... (5 sec. pause). Not at this moment. Thank you though!"
"No problem" :(

There are days, however, in which I don't have time to sit down. One of these days was right after the primary elections. A lot of the people who work for the Morning News were absent on that day because they had to work the night before. And again, since my main duties are GUESTS, here I was, having to take care of Alexi Giannoulias. That went well. But during his interview with Larry and Robin, I had to go meet Bill Brady. So here I am, waiting for him. Time is starting to run short though and he is still not showing up. I'm starting to freak out. I decide to go and check on Giannoulias, and... he is missing too. What follows is a running around the newsroom, the studio, the whole WGN building... and there is still no trace of either of them. A couple of minutes later, it turned out that Brady was already in the newsroom. Somehow he sneaked in and no one noticed. In the meantime, Giannoulias, who is not new to WGN, found his way to wherever he had to go. It was such a relief!

That's how some of my days here at WGN are. On other days, it is just a constant repetition of that script I transcirbed above... say like 100 times.

So if you are curious and want to know how our days are going, don't forget to check out our blog. We will be happy to read your comments and answer any questions. And since I have a lot of time on my side, I will be checking your comments regularly :)

Hey everyone!  I'm Morgan Moore, another one of the interns here at the WGN Morning Show.  Like Allison said on Thursday, she and I work with Dean Richards on all of the entertainment news for the show.  I'm really excited for the blog and hope it helps gives everyone a closer look at what being an intern is like as well as a behind the scenes look at the Morning Show.

I haven't gotten to interview any celebrities (yet) like Allison, but my favorite day so far this semester was 2 weeks ago when Anika Noni Rose and Apolo Ohno were both on the show!  Talk about being star struck!  Anika Noni Rose was on the show to talk about The Princess & The Frog being released on DVD.  I'm a huge Dreamgirls fan, so it was probably a good thing the producers greeted her because I'm pretty sure I would have made a fool of myself! 

She was so nice, and looked amazing!  It's great to see that she had such and good attitude, even at 6:45 in the morning.  My only regret is not asking her if I could sing Eddy Murphy's part in the song Patience, and we could've done a little duet...oh well maybe next time!

Apolo Ohno was super nice as well.  He asked me for 3 shots of espresso, which I would have tried to get if he hadn't started laughing afterwards!  He talked about his work with middle school students and how he's trying to help them stay active and away from alcohol and drugs.  Everyone should check out the organization he's working with at www.asklistenlearn.com.

Dean also had him sign a bottle of Coke to auction off for charity.  I did get to make an appearance in that video...click here....see the girl in red watching awkwardly in the background!

Today Dean talked about how Rosie O'donnell is coming back to TV.  Would you guys watch her new show?

Hi everyone!

My name is Allison Rodriguez and I'm one of the many awesome interns here at WGN. Welcome to the first blog for "The Intern Diaries"! It is so exciting to be able to share with you guys everything that us interns go through and how we handle the pressure. Let me just start off by saying that being an intern is definitely much harder then I ever thought it could be. But all of us interns have gotten to meet some pretty awesome people, some not so awesome people and have gotten to be a part of some really great programming. Specifically I am the entertainment intern along with Morgan, who you will get to meet through this blog. Since we are starting this in the middle of my internship I just want to share some things that I've gotten to do so far. I actually got to interview Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried for a movie. That was so cool because I had never been sent out to do something like that. But I kept my cool and had to act like a professional even though I thought I would melt! I've gotten to help Dean Richards look like music legend George Clinton on an interview they did. I make a little cameo when I brought out the wigs for them. WGN had a Back To The Future reunion on a few weeks ago and I never imagined I would get to meet some of the stars of one of my all-time favorite movies. "1.21 jigawatts-GREAT SCOTT!" lol classic line : ) Those are just a few people I've gotten to meet so far. You will get to know all us interns and our stories over time by checking out our blog here at wgntv.com. We'll start to post some videos and we'll post a photo of us soon so you can see who we are. If there are specific things you would like to know or just want to say hi, leave us a comment here.You will get to see what it's really like to be at WGN by reading "The Intern Diaries" and hopefully you'll stick with us through our time here and see if we can survive the crazy newsworld.

 

 

(Elgin)  It's a difficult morning here, to say the very least.   Teachers are getting their pink slips today.  Perhaps as many as 700 U-46 District teachers could be let go by the end of the semester. 

The impact of those cuts are devastating for the teachers and their families.  But for many reasons, it's the students who will suffer the biggest loss.   

Many parents we talked to say they're worried about the quality of education.

We'll talk to parents ... teachers ... and kids ...TODAY on WGN News at 11AM and Midday.   www.wgntv.com/news/middaynews/   Is there anything that can be done to avert this terrible scenario?  We'll make an assessment later today.

 

    

 

(Chicago) "Buen provecho" is what Cubans say when they sit down to have a great meal.  Loosely translated to English, "Buen Provecho" means "good enjoyment" or "take good advantage."  

Hope you took good advantage of the FREE all natural cuban food samples we passed out Saturday at Chicago's Navy Pier.  We served up small portions of my famous black beans & rice (along with frijoles negros with chunks of Spanish Chorizo sausage).

It was great to see you enjoying the oxygen and good vibes at this year's Flower & Garden Show.  Enjoyed talking with you about how to prepare great Cuban food.  We expected to see about 100 people or so and we had more than 250 food lovers at Chicago's Navy Pier.  Muchas gracias!      

At one point or another, most people have served in the role of "the intern." Whether that meant getting coffee, fetching scripts, or copying and pasting all day long, most people can relate to being "the intern."

Here at WGN, our interns do a whole lot more than just get coffee...unless that's getting coffee for Molly Ringwald or Apollo Anton Ohno. Find out what these youngin's go through each day on The Intern Diaries.

(Chicago)  The panic hasn't kicked in yet, but I already feel the butterflies.  I'm steeling myself for another LIVE cooking demo at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show, March 13th at 3:30 PM.  Armed with a sharp knife, cutting board and violent surges of adrenaline,  I'll face 150 food lovers, looking to ME? for culinary wisdom.  Don't know whether to laugh or cry.    

There's no Viagara for the performance anxiety I'll be feeling.   The top chefs in Chicago ..  cooking over an 8-day period (chicagoflower.com/gardengourmet.cfm) ... sharing culinary brilliance with the crowd, making dishes with natural and home grown ingredients.  So the question that springs to mind is, "what in the name of Ceasar Salad am I doing here?"

But every once in a while, when the pangs of fear subside, I try to calm the nerves.  "O.K., maybe you DO have something to offer these people," reassuring myself.  Despite the lack of formal training - despite slow-motion chopping skills, I've managed to develop a modest degree of expertise in Cuban cuisine.  And if I don't cut my finger off, the plan is to show you how to cook my famous Old Havana Cuban black beans, or "frijoles negros."  We'll even serve you FREE SAMPLES.  So barring any medical emergencies, see you at Navy Pier!