BEHIND THE CURVE
Local TV stations aren't posting much real news online
by Deborah Potter

Spend even a little time browsing local television Web sites and it's hard to escape the impression that you've found a new definition for the term "digital divide." The phrase doesn't just describe the split between the have and have-nots when it comes to Internet access. It's just as fitting a description of Internet sites when it comes to news. Most newspapers, it seems, are haves. Most television stations are have-nots.

What most television Web sites don't have is current, locally produced news. According to a recent survey of broadcast media in cyberspace, a scant 15 percent of local television stations with Web sites publish any real news. The Middleberg/Ross study considered "real news" to be information developed by the station from a lead or a press release. By that definition, the researchers were looking for local news-supposedly the strong suit of local television-and they found hardly any.

If you think this shortcoming is just a small market phenomenon, think again. A few weeks ago, I checked the Web site of WWJ-TV, the CBS owned and operated station in Detroit. The station's home page had no local news at all. It was simply a clone of CBSNews.com, an embarrassment in the country's ninth largest market.

To be fair, most local stations' sites have moved beyond the pretty postcard, meet-our-anchors stage that so many were stuck in for so long. But too many haven't moved far enough. What's a viewer to think when a station's home page touts its slogan, "Where the News Comes First," but offers no news? My guess is that any viewers who visit that page (at WLKY-TV in Lexington, Ky.) won't bother to come back. And what's worse, they might leave with a jaundiced view of that station's overall commitment to news.

The stories that do show up on television Web sites are often stale or shallow-sometimes both. What's the point of offering a link to "more" on a story, when all you provide is a paragraph or two that may be a day old? What's the point of posting your scripts online, complete with phonetic spellings, unidentified sound bites, and cryptic cues? None of that helps to boost a station's credibility as a news organization. Quite the opposite, says assistant news director Jennifer Sullivan of WMTW-TV in Portland, Maine. "It can damage your brand."

What is most perplexing is that stations on the Web haven't even figured out how to take advantage of one of television's greatest strengths-the use of sound and pictures in telling stories. Even those sites that do provide news rarely include any video, aside from the occasional weather or traffic shot. According to the Web site TVJobs.com, about 50 local station sites offer streaming video of their entire newscasts. That was once seen as a technological marvel, but Web developer Mark Zagorski now calls it "over-hyped." Turns out most Internet users aren't interested in a site that offers them only what they could get off the air with far better quality. What people want is the ability to pick and choose the information that interests them, but in perusing local station sites I found only a handful that both provide video of stories and make it easy for viewers to search for what they'd like to see.

Scott Atkinson, news director at WWNY-TV in Watertown, NY, believes that local television's failure to use the Web to best advantage is evidence of an inherent weakness in television newsrooms. For years, he says, a key factor in hiring television reporters has been their ability to perform on the air. "The Web values other things more," Atkinson says. "Facts, graceful writing, context. We want the public to believe we do all those things…but the unpleasant truth is, well, a lot slides."

The unpleasant truth is that most television newsrooms have too few people doing too much already. The Web site, in many stations, is an afterthought at best, updated by overworked and under-trained producers. According to a survey by Frank N. Magid Associates commissioned by WorldNow, the average television site is run by just two people, compared to more than 13 for the average newspaper site.

For broadcast journalists, the Internet holds tremendous promise as a place where reporters can provide background, documentation and resources that they just don't have time to mention on the air. But most television sites haven't begun to tap that promise. Zagorski, who develops station sites for the New York-based Internet company WorldNow, says they'd better start, and soon. "If TV stations don't fulfill the need, somebody else will," he says.

Admittedly, Zagorski has a financial interest in seeing stations get serious about their Web sites. Then again, so do they.

(This article was originally published in the American Journalism Review, July/August 2000)

Update: As of February, 2001, some stations have come on strong. According to The Media Audit survey, at least four network affiliate Web sites have attracted a larger audience than the daily newspapers in the communities they serve. But of the 345 station Web sites covered by the survey, more than half are described as "still in the starting gate." Only ten sites have attracted more than ten percent of adults in their market.