Photographers, broadcasters, journalist join forces

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Juanika Glover
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MACDILL AFB, Fla. --  The deadline for news is now. Long gone are the days when people waited on the neighborhood paperboy to find out what was happening around town. 

With twenty-four hour media outlets like CNN and Fox getting news to the world by the minute, many other news services have jumped on the band wagon to get news out the public in as close to real time as possible. 

The Air Force has made no exceptions to the new media technology rules, and many changes have taken place throughout the force to ensure Airmen get their news in real time. The biggest part of that change was a careerfield merger between Public Affairs and Visual Information that ensures each base has a versatile communication
capability. 

In 2005, the career field managers for Public Affairs and multimedia began studying a merger of the two career fields. The leaders for both careerfields held meetings and gathered inputs from functional managers and developed training plans accordingly. After months of discussion, a decision was made to merge the two careerfields based on the fact that they already had similar functions. 

Although the two have always worked together to cover stories in the past, it was more like one was doing a service for the other. But as of November 1, the two careerfields are fully integrated and working as one; Public Affairs. 

"Officially the merger took place two weeks ago however, (here at MacDill) we've been working on the merger since the beginning of this year," said Senior Master Sgt. Miguel Espinoza, 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs superintendent. 

"We had already started the process by teaching our photographers to write and also teaching the journalist how to capture more effective imagery, he said. "

Although Public Affairs will still cover news and provide documentation support for the base, there have been many other changes that will be noticed by Team MacDill members. 

"The biggest change (people) are going notice is the mission that we have now in Public Affairs," said Sergeant Espinoza. 

"Before Public Affairs just spotlighted a lot of on base news, where as now we're going to focus our attention toward the community and get stories out about what we're doing here and tell the Air Force story." 

To help tell those stories more effectively, Sergeant Espinoza said Public Affairs is now going to cover stories in a team setting, three different ways. 

"We're putting the photographers, broadcasters and journalist together now to capture the story, whether it be operational or medical," he said. 

"They will go as a team and capture the story at all angles. We developed the three man team concept so we could capture the Air Force Story in different mediums." 

For instance, he said, Public Affairs will now be able to capture the story still wise, in a print story and in a movie story. Those stories will be published in the base newspaper and on the public Web site as well as on the commander's access channel. 

He also added that a lot of those images, articles and videos will make it to the World Wide Web, to be published on sites such as Air Force link, The Pentagon Channel and quite possibly on national news mediums. 

"So (we now) have three different people seeing a story in three different ways. You can get more than just one story when you have three people who have more than one point of view," Sergeant Espinoza said. 

As of now, both the Public Affairs and Visual Information shops have remained in their same locations and their phone numbers have remained the same as well.
However, some of the functions the two careerfields once covered in the past won't be covered anymore.

"The graphics careerfield has gone away and we no longer create awards, do slides or presentations at the unit level," he said. 

Although those jobs are not done by Multimedia any longer, no one was left out to dry. Training sessions were held to teach Team MacDill member how to do those functions that Multimedia no longer does. People can also check out cameras to use to cover retirement ceremonies and small events that no longer fall under the Public Affairs priority. 

Instead of covering things that may not have had significant news value in the past, Public Affairs can now use their expertise to capture the stories visually, in written form and on video and publish them in a much quicker time frame than ever before.
Photographers, journalist and broadcasters now have more time to sharpen their skills and learn how to do others as well. 

"Working together gives me a great opportunity to learn each aspect of our new job, said Senior Airman Melissa Stonecipher, 6th AMW Public Affairs photographer. 

"Now as a photographer, I not only know how to take the photo but I can think about how the photo will work with a story and how it tells a story on its own. We have to think about that now." 

Although she hasn't had an article published yet, Airman Stonecipher has been practicing on writing articles and has had the opportunity already to work as a team with the broadcasters and journalist in her shop. 

"I think the merger is going very well," she said. "Of course there is always ups and downs when you put new people in the same situation and tell them to work together, but we're working hand in hand now and that's what being a team is about. 

"Instead of the two functions being separated we can now work as one and that makes covering a story much easier," added Airman Stonecipher. 

"This merger was a perfect idea because the careerfields were always so closely related. It just made sense. Now we know exactly what's expected of us." 

With the realignment of these two careers set in stone, the major changes associated with the realignment are complete. Now, the two careerfields have the opportunity to take advantage of the similarities between them so they can go forward in the future and build toward a common goal; telling the Air Force story.