Photographers: Fight for your rights
by Bert P. Krages II, Attorney at Law About this Guide Confrontations that impair the constitutional right to make images are becoming more common. To fight the abuse of your right …
Backtiming the day: A guide for producers
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 …
How newsrooms deal with trauma
Some news stories have lasting psychological effects on journalists. Just ask anyone who covered the 9/11 attacks or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But traumatic effects like stress disorders aren't confined to major national disasters, as the staff of WGAL-TV learned in October 2006 when …
Live via Skype, deconstructed
Going live on TV used to require a truck and a signal--microwave or satellite--to get the story back to the station for broadcast. Obviously, that's no longer the case. Now all you need is a Webcam and the Internet to go live via Skype, and …
Video editors endangered
Technology has made lots of jobs obsolete over the years. Remember telephone operators? Back in the day, TV photojournalists routinely went out on stories with a sound person and even a lighting tech. The days of the three-person crew are long over. Now, some …
A visual storytelling critique
One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from the journalist Gene Fowler: Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. Producing a TV news story is easy, too. You just choose the …
Broadcast narration for new platforms
By Dave Cupp & Ann Utterback Much has been written about the new and varied media platforms journalists are now asked to master, but one area that has not been explored is what delivery style works best on these new devices... ...We are no longer captives in …
How to avoid being sued
"When the media goes to trial, you're more likely to lose than to win." That caution from attorney John Ronayne III should get everyone's attention in newsrooms around the country. Ronayne warned that landing in court can be hideously expensive. "The average cost just to …
Four ways of thinking about online video
By Peg Achterman, University of Washington (former KING-TV photojournalist) As a visual person turned professor, I am constantly looking for ways to hook my students on a concept and make it stick. I come from the television side of the journalism business and the definitions there …
New approach to sharing feedback
Ask a roomful of journalists if they get enough feedback on their work and you'll rarely see any hands go up. Managers typically say they want to offer more but there's never enough time. And in a short-staffed, overworked newsroom, pulling people together for a …
Is YouTube a threat to local TV news?
As a video news aggregator, YouTube is just getting started. And local television news managers aren't quite sure what to think about its "News Near You" feature, launched earlier this year. Unlike Google News, YouTube isn't trolling for stories already posted on news sites. It's asking …
Background for reporting on health care reform
Complicated, controversial and confusing. The health care debate is a tough story to cover in any medium. As one TV news director wrote me, "It's hard to find information from anyone who doesn't have a dog in the fight." Where can you look for suggestions, tools …