You’re working on an exclusive story for tonight and the Web and social media team wants a piece of it, hours before air. Should you share? If you thought that question had been laid to rest years ago, think again. In some newsrooms, the answer still is, “It depends.” Brandon Mercer, news director at KTXL [...]
For years, critics have complained that the nightly national TV newscasts are all basically the same, leading with the same stories, covering the same developments, often in exactly the same order. And the networks have been criticized for ignoring international news unless the U.S. was directly involved. There used to be some truth to all [...]
Hold the obituary. Finally, there’s some good news for network TV news. Ratings are up this year, both evening and morning, and not just a little. But hold the celebration, too, because it could just be a blip. At first glance, the numbers are nothing to sneeze at. The three evening newscasts added almost 2 [...]
ABC’s This Week featured an unusual graphic during one of the program’s round-table discussions last Sunday. When host Christiane Amanpour described Ben Franklin as “perspicacious,” up popped the definition, pronunciation guide helpfully included. Entertainment Tonight writer Ken Tucker found that insulting and appalling. “It’s also a depressing, dismaying precedent to set,” he wrote, for the network [...]
Wearing dark sunglasses and a baseball cap, Bubba the Love Sponge brings it on. “Oil prices are a scam,” he roars. “A select few people are getting ultra-rich on the backs of the American family!” It’s classic Bubba, the same shock jock shtick he’s been doing for years on the radio. What’s different now is [...]
Forgive me for tooting my own horn, but I’m pleased to announce the publication of the second edition of my book, Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World, co-authored with Deb Wenger. It’s available now from CQ Press or Amazon, and we hope you’ll check it out. What’s different this time around? The new [...]
There’s a new battleground in local TV news, and it’s dark out there. In more than a dozen cities, anchors are on the set well before dawn, chatting live with reporters and meteorologists. And they’re not just talking to each other. Hard as it is to believe, people are actually watching local news at 4:30 [...]
For all the talk about the need for innovation, most local television newscasts still look almost the same as they did decades ago. Even some of the makeovers attempted in the past year or so haven’t amounted to much more than tweaking. Some stations have integrated social media and more graphics into their newscasts or [...]
A story based on paper documents or computer records can pose a challenge for television journalists. There’s nothing visual for them to work with so the first resort is often to call for graphics. No matter how attractive your base art is, using full-screen bullet points can bring a story to a halt. And that’s not the only problem with text-heavy graphics.
Stories on local TV news just seem to keep getting shorter. From all indications, the average big market package runs about 1:15 these days. So it’s unusual, to say the least, for a station to not only buck the trend but to create a new program to showcase longer stories.But that’s exactly what’s happened at [...]
Back in the day, you didn’t have to wonder what to do with breaking news. You put it on the air, of course. If it was big enough, you interrupted regular programming. If not, you waited until news time. Simple. But now, with most news outlets feeding multiple platforms, the question arises: If your staff [...]
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. [...]
How do you make a complex issue like health care or the financial meltdown comprehensible? Graphics can help, and they don’t have to be elaborate. ABC News Reporter John Hendren used cartoon drawings to explain how “toxic assets” at banks are like rotten apples at a fruit stand. The analogy helped to clarify the problem [...]
Producers are the original multi-taskers in the newsroom. There’s so much going on in a typical producer’s day, so many tasks and demands, that it takes a special kind of person to get it all done correctly and on time. Even the most organized producers sometimes find themselves scrambling to keep things on track. To [...]
By Holly Edgell, Executive Producer, KOMU-TV and Assistant Professor, The Missouri School of Journalism While producers don’t have the official title of manager, they must develop leadership strategies to manage resources and empower their peers to do their best work. I have found that the best way to develop a great working environment — and [...]
Have you watched a network evening news program lately? Americans who would answer “no” to that question far outnumber those who’d say “yes.” According to conventional wisdom, the nightly national newscasts are either boring and predictable or soft and sensational. But have you actually watched a network evening news program lately? In his new book, [...]