For WTVA meteorologist Matt Laubhan doing his live weathercast from his house for the first time wasn't easy. "Last night was my first live shot I ran all by myself. If it could break it broke. I couldn’t get in on the VPN, I couldn’t get …
Since publishing this story and posting it to the Stortytellers page on Facebook on March 19, at least 25 stations have indicated they have also begun having producers work from home and more are in the planning stages. We'll soon be posting a "how-to" for …
Local TV news stations have long been distributing video on their own websites, and those sites have become a significant source of revenue for them, as well as an important part of many stations’ overall digital strategies. In their “Future of Local TV News” study, researchers …
As a visual medium, television always intended to present beauty to attract the audience. There is a general understanding among television stations that women are expected to look younger and sexier and the white people are standard of beauty. So race and gender disparities have been …
We all saw the stories last year. More journalism job layoffs, not just in newspapers but web platforms like Huffington Post and Buzzfeed; even CNN reduced staff. Then, at the end of the year, a major merger, as well as some smaller acquisitions brought job …
As 2019 winds down we thought we would share with you the most-read stories of the year. Let's start with No. 9 and work our way backward. #9 Editorial cartoons relevant across digital media Turns out that editorial cartoons have not gone the way of the dodo. …
Rick McLaughlin is the news director at WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi. He has been part of Hearst Television since 2010 , having worked in Cincinnati and Orlando before his recent move to Jackson. He says he learned to look at social media differently in the aftermath …
People get weather warnings from sirens, see the text at the bottom of the screen and watch reports on television; they hear alerts over the radio, and receive notifications on their smartphones. Still, there are deaths each year not just from tornadoes, but also hurricanes, …
Audience research consistently shows weather is a primary driver of news audience in every TV newsroom. And in many markets, members of the weather team are some of the most popular people on air. At WTVA in Tupelo, Matthew Laubhan is a fan …
There is a lot of discussion in the industry right now about improving the quality of local TV news. (Full disclosure: RTDNA researcher Bob Papper and I produced a report on the state and future of local TV news with funding from the Knight …
Photo by Abbie McIntosh. Bill Anderson is a veteran in the world of broadcast news. Anderson started out about 33 years ago when he accepted his first job as a photojournalist in Savannah, Georgia. A graduate of Missouri’s Journalism School, Anderson has worked in multiple markets, …
Believe it or not, stations have been doing sweeps pieces for more than 40 years. The concept first became popular during the late 1970s, a time when stations had a virtually captive audience. The first efforts were big deals, designed to make viewers watch multiple nights. They …
