My name is Gemma Najar and I go to University Hills Elementary in Rochester Hills, Michigan. 

I thought it would be fun to find out what it is like to be a Newscaster.  I went to Fox 2 Detroit News Station to find out.  I met Kam Carman who is one of their main announcers, and I asked her some questions.  This is what I learned about her job.

She has to get up at 2 am in the morning to prepare and practice her speech for the first newscast.  It is sometimes hard to have a smile on TV in the morning when she is feeling tired or grumpy, or something has gone wrong at home - but she manages to find a way.  

The cameras are robotic with controls that people can operate.  The first time she was on TV her legs were shaking and she didn’t really want to party after. 

Sometimes she has to do “homework”, like if she has to do an interview, she likes to know lots of facts about that person. She does not need to memorize her speech because there is a projector in the table that she is sitting at reminding her what to say.

Sometimes she has to travel if something big is happening in other parts of the world.  If she has something really good to talk about, they sometimes let her put it on the news herself.  However, usually, the Producer writes all the items for Kam to read.

She thinks that reporting is important to the world because people need to know things so they can be alert to what is happening, and which may affect them in some way.

To get an interview with someone very famous, you have to have connections.  I asked Kam whether it is fun being famous and she said it was, because people recognize her and are usually commenting on how she did on the news, or they say, “Hey, you did a good job”.

I think that Kam is a really nice person.  I enjoyed meeting her & learning about her life on TV.

When I had finished interviewing Cam, the Producer, Katie Fehr gave me a tour of the studios.  The most interesting part was watching the live broadcast from inside the studio, instead on the TV screen at home.

The Producer is the  most important person involved in the news casting.  She sets everything up and organizes peoples’ speeches.  There are lots of Reporters working for the news station collecting information from around the world and locally.  The Producer chooses the best stories.  Sometimes she lets the Reporter read his/her own story if it is a particularly good one.  From time to time an important piece of news comes in while the newscast is being read, and they have to quickly change a little bit of the article.

I asked Katie about the background of the newsroom, and whether they had to make special sets.  She said usually it is a green screen, but occasionally they may have to build a whole set, such as a kitchen.  Another time, she asked them to build a tree that they could water and it grew money instead of leaves which was fun.  But they need time to do something special like that.

Katie said she has to be very organized, and a good writer to be a producer.  Also she said it was important to make sure everyone works as a team, and that everything is fair.  This was a special part of her job. 

I asked Katie whether she liked her job.  She said sometimes she doesn’t want to get up early in the morning to go to work, but mostly she loves her exciting job, especially when major things are happening around the world which she has to report. She also has fun meeting lots of well-known and famous people.

I thought these jobs seemed very exciting.  The best part of their jobs seemed to me that they get to be shown everywhere on TV.  The worst part is getting up at 2 am in the morning.