One night at WHOtv leads to more

I helped WHOtv with the 2010 elections by updating their ticker with the latest information on each race. It was a great experience. There, I met weekday night news anchors Erin Kiernan, and John Bachman. While stationed at my computer I sat next to Alisa Link, who is a multimedia producer. She populates their website and also oversees their social media sites.

I'm not too shy when meeting people, luckily neither was she so breaking the ice was not a concern. It had already melt at 'hello'. She told me that I had made a good decision to volunteer to help because in the media business it's good to get your name out there as soon as possible.

She interned for WHO in 2007 writing scripts for the sports anchors, researching possible story lines for them, along with administrative work and data collecting. She received the job she has now by staying in contact with Sports Director Keith Murphy at WHO. When the position opened up he asked if she would be interested right away.

Before I left to go back to Simpson she gave me her email address and told me to keep in touch. That we did. The night of the Indianola standoff during last semester I emailed her telling her that I was following her updates online. She messaged back that she actually had the day off, but will give the assignment director my information in case anything happened. It all depended on where he would like to go with the story so I wasn't really expecting a call back. Less than half an hour later I received a phone call from WHO reporter Jannay Towne. I didn't give her much information. What I knew, she did too.  That was the last time I talked to Alisa, until last Saturday.

Now for my story. Last Saturday I received an email from Alisa asking if I would be interested in writing stories for WHO's Community Pages. These new Community Pages is basically an extension of WHO's website but has more specific news about the city in which you live. What I will be doing is posting stories about what is happening specifically in Indianola and Simpson College community.

I'll be starting sometime this week hopefully. As soon as their web guy gets me registered into the system and I go in to get trained. My job for now: think of some good story ideas and start looking at leads.

I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Alisa.

That my friends, is how connections work.

Working out with Loretta

Last night while working out I met a woman named Loretta who works for Simpson College with the Evening, Weekend and Graduate program as the Assistant to the Director.  I also met her friend Shirley.

Nearing my cool down on the treadmill Loretta asked if she could have "some of my miles." After catching my breath I said, "I've been here way too long to to give them away."  Starting off our conversation on good terms with laughter.

We kept this conversation rolling by discussing Tuesday night's two hour Biggest Loser episode. Later I found out that she has had a bit of a weight problem herself. Telling me that she used to have a trainer that used to have to lift her legs for her to stretch and perform other exercises. Her trainer also made her run stairs but fell backwards a few times. Falling backwards on a flight of stairs would discourage anyone to exercise on them again, but her trainer told her to trust herself and that he'd be behind her to catch her.

Her trainer was an athletic training major who graduated two or more years ago. She's interested in finding another but says, "Who would want to workout an old woman like me?" I ensured her that someone would more than likely be interested on campus.

Once the timer on my treadmill reached zero and the belt stopped I shook her hand, exchanged names once again and told her it was nice to meet her. She is a very interesting person and I look forward to meeting her again.