Erin Colton and Sue Caron, partners for News 12, came into the Communications and Broadcasting class this week. They discussed their jobs; the schedule, the layout, and the challenge of being a journalist on the move.

Erin Colton graduated from Syracuse University and has been working for News 12 for 14 years. She has a passion for what she does; field reporting. She starts her day at 3:30 in the morning, gathers her coverage, and prepares to go live at 5 AM.

“You have 10 minutes to become an expert.” Sue Caron noted this meaning from the time they receive the story, until the time they shoot is when they have to gather as much information on the story as possible.

Sue and Erin travel for 8 hours per day in a car covering whatever story is put into their hands. They cover tragic, exciting and breaking news events. Erin spoke on the style of her reporting; she does not aggressively shove a microphone in someone’s face who recently lost a loved one, she approaches them with sympathy and respect and acquires the information she needs in a gentle, yet professional manner.

They also spoke about the hardships of reporting. Finding a person who is willing to be interviewed can be difficult. It depends on the place and the kind of people around. They don’t have much time to have auditions for best dressed or clarity of voice so most of the time it will be random.

“You have to know what you need and go after it,” says Erin Colton.

The partners also remarked on the future in terms of journalists. Multi-Media Journalists (MMJ) are the future of journalism. Instead of having a person filming, a reporter and an editor, journalists will do it all, alone. This, however, can display worse quality than before because they will have to film themselves.

Sue Caron said “No one’s going home and watching the 5 O’clock news anymore.”

Their morning job is more popular because of the quick coverage and interesting events. With all of the social media arising, the night time news is not as popular anymore because within minutes of something happening, people know from an alert off of Twitter.

Having that said, Erin and Sue love their job and they cover their stories with ease and excitement. They wake up at the crack of dawn and head straight to the desk to start their day and inform Long Island what is happening around them.