Layoffs and cutbacks have taken their toll in local television newsrooms but quality TV journalism ain't dead yet. Want proof? Six local stations won the prestigious duPont-Columbia silver baton this year--the most in more than 20 years. The winners are doing journalism the old-fashioned way, …
We've all read the stories about the sea change in television news. From the ABC network news division to local stations from coast to coast, VJs are taking over, the stories say. The "one man band" reporter who shoots and edits once was found primarily …
Consider this: at many local television stations, reporters cover two or more stories a day and never turn a package. Former news director Geoff Roth, who now teaches at Hofstra University, says the trend toward covering the news with live shots and v/o's or v/o-sots …
Sometimes the best way to make a point is to mock the point--at least that's Stephen Colbert's philosophy. Take the decision by ABC News to add fact-checking to its Sunday talk show, "This Week." The program announced earlier this month that it's hired the team from …
It's not news that local television newsrooms are doing more with less. But the latest RTDNA/Hofstra survey shows that even as the economy struggled last year and TV newsrooms laid off more staff, stations produced more news on the air and on other platforms and …
What distinguishes a TV news website from a newspaper or magazine site? If you said video, think again. According to Scott Woelfel of Armchair Media, news sites still haven't really embraced video "even though it's a differentiator." At the RTDNA convention in Las Vegas this week …
With new social networks and tools springing up almost daily, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Foursquare or Gowalla? Ning or Newsvine? Every time I turn around it seems there's something new to try, but I'm already having trouble keeping up with the networks I'm committed …
It's a common problem for websites large and small: How to keep user comments from turning into a sewer. Most news organizations use software to automatically filter out comments that include specific words, such as obscenities and ethnic or racial slurs. Some have learned the …
Those words and phrases recently banned by a top executive at Tribune Broadcasting have turned up on television. All 117 of them. In the same piece. I suppose it was a no brainer to poke fun at the list this way, but in a surprise move …
Research on TV storytelling strategies that NewsLab conducted a decade ago just made the rounds on Twitter, for reasons I can't explain. I discovered this thanks to BackTweets, one of the sites on Mark Luckie's latest list of social media tools. It felt great to …
With a newsroom staff of just 23, WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kansas, has a wide reach--and not just over the air. The station is a longtime market leader, drawing more than twice as many viewers for its late newscasts in November as the other two stations …
Who says local TV never tries anything new or different? The CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, WCCO-TV, has just launched a special section on its website that lets users track, comment on and contribute to developing stories. The Wire is a pretty simple idea at heart: a …
