By KRISTI SMIT
Keeping her cool in the midst of crises helped a BYU graduate in broadcast journalism capture the $5,000 first prize in the William Randolph Hearst Foundation national Television Broadcast News Competition.
Amy Westerby, more familiar to LDS audiences as one of the main actors in “On the Way Home,” was flown to San Francisco along with two others for the final competition in mid-May, where they had to complete an edited news feature on the controversy surrounding the Presidio, a former military base that is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation area.
Supporters of the national park have had trouble finding funding, and because of commercial interests that want to buy part of the site, the government has told the park to find funding or face being sold, Westerby said.
Westerby started out the morning of the competition with her assignment and her cameraman but no car. An oversight in planning left her as the only competitor who had to cover the huge area looking for a story on foot.
“I was cursing those shoes that day,” Westerby said. But what started out to be a big disadvantage turned out to be her greatest strength, since she ran into a park ranger who told her about a group of people on the beach picking weeds that turned out to be the focal point for her story.
“I wouldn’t have found them had I had a car, since the beach isn’t accessible by car,” Westerby said.
The group turned out to be a ward from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were picking weeds to preserve the native plants along the beach area. Westerby decided to tell the story of “a group of volunteers giving their time as one example of the many volunteer efforts to keep the Presidio financially afloat for the next 15 years.”
Westerby collected seven hours of camera footage the first day, but when she went back to San Francisco University the next day to write the story, the computer she was assigned to didn’t work.
To make matters worse, the video editing machine wasn’t working either. There was another search, and contest officials finally found her an editor in the bottom room of the building.
Despite the setbacks, Westerby received first place , with judges’ comments on her work citing her “good writing” and the fact that she “wrote to her video” as big strengths.
Westerby is a new reporter and anchor at KPVI in Pocatello, Idaho
