Alumna Teran Rankin Enjoying Her Career at NBC 17

Rankin clicked with the network and they offered her a full time position which she started even before she graduated in May 2007. Last spring, Rankin came back to the college to talk about her experiences with members of the college’s student American Marketing Association chapter. She brought along her boss, Maryann Balbo, director of new media sales and community.

Rankin, who majored in Business Management with a concentration in marketing, is part of the station’s new approach to presenting regional news, using reporters who are ‘embedded’ in its viewership communities and inviting community-generated content.

“The Triangle is made up of a group of hyper-local communities, each with its own identity, and they are concerned about their local news,” Balbo told the student marketing club.The station’s new format “enables the community to distribute its information” through its MyNC.com site where users can submit stories, photos and videos for its community pages. It also sends Rankin out into the communities to “listen to their needs and struggles” at Community Focus Forums, Balbo said. The site currently hosts local news for four of the 23 North Carolina counties that the station serves, Rankin said.

“When I was hired, I did one of the Community Focus Forums a month, meeting 20 to 30 people at a time. Then I started doing them once a week, and then twice a week,” Rankin said. Soon, seven people were holding community forums for the station, each in their own areas. “The people are telling us what they want,” she said.

While on one of her ‘listening tours’ in Chatham County, Rankin got a call from the station asking her to her hand at reporting. A storm had blown in and toppled a tree in the area. She was sent to get some video footage for the station’s weatherman back in Raleigh. Armed with her cell phone camera and her video camera, she provided the visuals to complement the station’s weather report. You can read about it in ‘Inside the Core@ NBC 17,’ a blog that gives viewers an inside look at how news is generated at the station.

Rankin’s role at the station has continued to expand, to include arranging speaking engagements for the on-air team, and to manage the internship program. “It was kind of weird for me, because just a year prior, I was an intern, and then I was hiring them,” she said.

She also has a video blog of her own, This is my backyard? covering her favorite topics, ‘food and fun in and around the Triangle.’ She carries her camera with her where she goes, particularly to local restaurants.