When it comes to online video, YouTube is top dog, with more users and vastly more content than any other site. But as a source of local news it’s just a pup, and many television stations aren’t quite sure if it’s as tail-waggingly friendly as it seems. YouTube launched a local news feature last year, [...]
By now, it’s not news to anyone that the network news divisions are fighting for survival. Ratings are stagnant or declining, advertising is down, the effects of the recession linger. So last month, CBS let go or reassigned dozens of veteran journalists. This month, ABC announced a massive restructuring; plans call for cutting the news [...]
Anyone who’s ever worked in television news knows it can be predictable and trite. A friend in the business used to say there’s a formula for everything. Soundbites plus b-roll plus stand up equals package. Or live shot plus banter plus tease equals A-block. You get the idea. If you thought that was our little [...]
The decade I’m choosing to call the “ohs” has finally ended and I’m happy to say good riddance. Looking back at ten years’ worth of columns for American Journalism Review, I’m struck by how little has changed for the better when it comes to broadcast news. One of my first columns was about a revolutionary [...]
What would you tell a group of freshly-minted journalism and mass comm graduates about the future that awaits them? I asked that question on several social networks to prepare for a commencement speech last weekend at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Your real education begins today,” wrote Kim Green of WNCN-TV in [...]
NBC’s decision to move Jay Leno’s talk show to prime time this fall was a calculated risk for the network. Would his loyal late night audience follow him to the earlier time slot? There’s no longer much doubt that the answer is no.
by Gregg Palermo The message was clear: In this age of technological change and 24-hour news cycles, journalists have a relevant role to play in our society. We’ve heard that message a lot lately, especially in the face of tough economic times that have impacted every newsroom in the country in some shape or form. [...]
Everybody’s looking for the magic formula. What, pray tell, is the business model that will keep independent journalism alive? A new report to be unveiled tomorrow at a Yale University conference has some suggestions, along with a fair amount of scary data about the current state of the news business. “The News Landscape in 2014: [...]
Tired of aggregators “stealing our content,” News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch is threatening to make his sites invisible to Google and other search engines. “They shouldn’t have had [our content] free all the time and I think we’ve been asleep,” Murdoch told Sky News, in a conversation focused on his plans to put his sites behind [...]
Paywalls are back but will they backfire? That’s one of the biggest questions surrounding the move by some big media companies toward paid content online. Last week, Cablevision-owned Newsday made its full content accessible only to subscribers. Bloomberg News is considering charging up to $1,000 a year for some of its online content. And Rupert [...]
If hyperlocal is the future of news, as we keep hearing almost daily, what can we learn from sites that have gone belly up? Mark Potts, who founded one of the original hyperlocal sites, BackFence, shared his top lessons for keeping a site afloat at a workshop for international journalists in Washington, DC, last week. For [...]
Imagine a national TV news program focused almost entirely on politics and economic news, with an anchor who reads from a paper script not a prompter. No one would watch it, right? Unless, of course, you’re in Germany, where the 15-minute Tagesschau (Daily Show) at 8 pm is the number one nightly newscast. The program [...]
The recession may be bottoming out, but local TV stations aren’t seeing much evidence of an economic recovery. The latest reports from several ownership groups are downright depressing. Operating income for the Fox owned-and-operated TV stations dropped 67 percent in the quarter ending June 30, compared to the previous year, according to TVB. LIN television [...]
The decision didn’t come as a total shock, but the timing was ironic. One day after accepting a prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in January for a series of investigative stories, WJLA-TV reporter Roberta Baskin learned she was out of a job. The I-Team at the Washington, D.C., station had lost its only producer [...]
It’s grim out there. So many people have lost their jobs in television newsrooms that it’s a wonder any news gets on the air. Everyone’s working harder and trying to do more with less, but if stations are going to keep cranking out as many newscasts as they do now, something else has to give. [...]
Whiplash or vertigo — call it what you like. It’s the feeling you get from watching cable news try to cover complicated stories. TV has always excelled at speed and emotion, but both at once can be a dangerous mix, as it was during the world financial crisis. As Congress debated a $700 billion rescue [...]
A lot has changed in the 50 years since Edward R. Murrow made his now-famous speech challenging television news to live up to its potential. What’s sad is how much is still the same. Murrow’s keynote address to the Radio-Television News Directors Association in Chicago half a century ago this month was deliberately provocative. When [...]
Anyone who’s been in the television news business for a decade or more has seen it before. A tough economy always means cutbacks, so it wasn’t a surprise when the axe fell at stations across the country this spring. But the buyouts and layoffs this time around signal something more than a predictable reaction to [...]
For most news directors, budget season isn’t much fun. After all, who really likes crunching numbers? But this year, it’s going to be downright painful. “For the last three or four years, we’ve said 2009 is the perfect storm,” says Jerry Gumbert, president and CEO of the broadcast consulting firm AR&D. Why such a gloomy [...]
What if they launched a news channel and nobody here could watch? Would anyone care to know what they’re missing? The latest entries in the global TV news game, Al Jazeera English and France 24, are practically invisible in the United States. That’s a shame, because they really do offer something different from standard cable [...]