TALK TO THE BOX
TV uses video kiosks to gather a different kind of news
by Deborah Potter

Local news, critics say, is always the same stuff: Live shots, crime stories, accidents and kickers. "Outside the box" thinking sometimes seems to consist of only minor tweaking, like going to a solo anchor or chopping the sports segment down to a minute. But there's at least one new idea out there that isn't the least bit outside the box. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

Whether it's called Speaker's Corner, MeTV, or simply The Box, local stations are using video kiosks to reach out to viewers and put their voices on the air. The result is nothing like the same old stuff.

In Seattle, an apple-cheeked nurse tells KCTS-TV's box that the doctors she works with are "intelligent and distant." A cancer patient, clutching a hydrangea plant, says she's not ready to die because "I haven't made a difference yet."

In north Minneapolis, a homeless young woman in a backwards baseball cap tells WCCO-TV's box that she no longer takes things for granted. "I probably used to a couple of years ago," she says, "but now I know how to appreciate it more, I'll say that. I'm more thankful for it, well, when I will get it."

In Houston, a middle-aged man tells KPRC-TV's box that his generation needs to "become more conscientious of what we have done in this world, what damages we have created and try to make amends."

The comments are honest, unguarded, and authentic-entirely different from soundbites snagged on the run in man-on-the-street interviews. While the remarks can sometimes be silly or self-serving, often meriting only a short montage, they've also been the basis for five-minute "slice of life" stories and even half-hour documentaries.

"It gives you another platform for hearing what viewers think," says Mark Effron, vice president for news at Post Newsweek, whose station group uses video kiosks licensed from the Canadian firm YOUtv. Meredith-owned stations use the same technology-unmanned boxes that are installed in public places like malls and coffee shops. Each kiosk has a video monitor that displays a "question of the day." People just push a button, stand in front of the box, and begin recording.

"We do get a cross section of what's on people's minds," says news director Jim Boyle of KSAT-TV in San Antonio, whose station's "KSAT Chat" is billed as a video soapbox. The comments also can be newsworthy. The station has pursued stories on issues like traffic safety that it learned about from KSAT Chat. Boyle says it takes work to make the box productive. Somebody has to develop the questions and screen the tapes, sifting through the obscenities and clown acts to find something meaningful.

Yet the effort can be worth it. Speaker's Corner in Kansas City generated questions for candidates that the local CBS and PBS affiliates used in last year's election coverage. "We even got foreign policy questions, stuff nobody ever asks about," says Nick Haines of KCPT public television. He says the booth is a great vehicle for tapping opinions that television often misses-especially those of young people and minorities. "If you bring people in for a town hall, they dress up and act like journalists," he says. "This is far more spontaneous. And it's not intimidating, like a reporter with a camera." [NOTE: During a round of budget cuts in late 2001, the CBS affiliate, KCTV, dropped Speaker's Corner .]

In Saginaw, MI, WNEM-TV news director Jennifer Hogan says the key to using kiosks for news gathering is to keep them under the newsroom's control. "A person who is in charge of these needs to be somebody who's a bit of a risk taker and a non traditionalist," she says, "and you have to have an open mind in the news department for this to work."

WCCO has taken a different approach. The station has one homemade box that it takes to various locations for a few hours at a time. This box also has a transmitter so reporter David Schechter can talk to people by remote control from a nearby van, while a second camera shoots cutaways from a discreet distance. "It takes you deeper than just showing up and getting B-roll and three soundbites," Schechter says.

Perhaps the most ambitious project involving a video kiosk is by KCTS public television in Seattle, which has produced two half-hour documentaries for PBS on education and health care by trucking its box to a Milwaukee high school and medical centers in Seattle. Its box is modeled after a 1950s photo booth, curtain and all. Speakers sit inside and respond in privacy to question prompts. Their comments are then inter-cut with b-roll from outside the box. The result is both visually interesting and insightful- and offers a whole new way of helping people understand important issues. "People begin to feel numb and overwhelmed by what's on the news," says producer Peggy Case.

Is it news? Not by the old top-down definition, which held that news is something journalists tell to everybody else. Maybe that's what is so refreshing about these boxes. They're redefining what news can be, and producing content that's surprisingly intimate and compelling. Gimmicky? Perhaps. But a laudable effort for a business that's usually more imitative than innovative.

(A version of this article was originally published in the American Journalism Review, March 2001)