I’m retired after 47 years in the broadcast news business, 24 of them on the air as Senior Reporter, Editor, and News Director of the late, great, WNEW Radio News in New York. I’ve had to oversee young reporters, at WNEW, as news editor for Fox’s “Good Day New York”, and for WWOR-TV, whose news director, Will Wright, had been an intern of mine more than two decades previously.
When they asked about good reporting on TV I told them first that, in the beginning, there was the “word,” second that a good TV news story has a beginning, a middle and an end (sounds rather basic, doesn’t it?). But, after so many years at WNEW, I also told them that a good TV story really should start out as a good radio story. And, if they needed an example, I told them to watch “60 Minutes”—in [Deborah Potter’s] words “A program that features stories made up largely of talking heads.” [Read the AJR column.]
I may be a Luddite, but the flips, dissolves, overpowering music tracks and other “advances” of our profession—on over-the-air TV, cable and the Internet—have contributed to what I call an electronic Tower of Babel. And they are conditioning a younger generation into shorter and shorter attention spans.
But, whether we like it or not, as Will says, “That’s the reality.” He’s a consultant for NBC News now and, after we had lunch last week, he took me through the new setup at 30 Rock. Frankly—it’s overwhelming—a high-speed world I never knew and can hardly comprehend.
But the reality extends further than 30 Rock. A few weeks ago I was out in Elkhart, Indiana to visit a TV station where I had been news director and anchorman—44 years ago. The station is a Fox affiliate—still out on a country road, but in a modern building—and that local newsroom is all digital—with reporters shooting, editing and doing everything else to get their stories on the air. Just like we used to do in radio at WNEW—once they took our engineers away.
I guess what went around—comes around—but I’m not sure that it enhances the quality of broadcast journalism.
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I wasn’t one of Mike’s legendary interns, but one of the many Desk Assistants who — by the grace of God — managed to land at the best radio newsroom in New York in — what Bernice Judice referred to as — “the classiest radio station in the country.”
Needless to say, there still is a lot of style over substance — sizzle vs. steak — running rampant out there; sadly, always has been. As another WNEW alumnus, Charles Osgood, once said, “There is no substitute for good writing.”
I’m thankful to Mike and all the others whose voices still resonate in my head: Bruce Charles, Charles Scott King, Edward Brown, Andy Fisher (a writer’s writer if there ever was one), and some of the best news directors I ever worked for: Jim Gordon (voice of the New York Football Giants and the man who hired me — not because he went to Syracuse, but because I went to Syracuse), Sam Hall and Mike Prelee.
I think of them every day (make that night) I’m putting together the 6 o’clock hour (and now, a good chunk of the 7 o’clock hour) of the morning news in Minneapolis. I endeavor to tell a good story with an economy of words, stuff as much “news” into the news as I possibly can, and occasionally shoehorn in a civics lesson, something about the rest of the world (the world that some call “foreign” but I call “international”) and the occasional revelation that makes us exclaim “wow.”
Then there are the times I feel like Sisyphus, but those are stories for another day.