It's always edifying to me to look back at the year gone by and see what posts have been most popular at NewsLab. It reminds me of what NewsLab readers are most interested in, which helps me plan for the year to come. This year-in-review post …
It started with a tip from a source to KNTV. It sounded crazy but it turned out to be true. The world's biggest food distributor, Sysco, was storing raw meat, milk and other food in unrefrigerated storage units before delivering it to restaurants. NBC Bay Area …
Whatever you call them, "man on the street" interviews are a staple of TV news. Done well, they can reflect public opinion on important issues in your community. Done badly, they're just a waste of air time. So how do you shoot them well? Start by …
The video is black-and-white and grainy, but it makes the case. A manager at a company selling what it claims is health insurance instructs employees on what to tell prospects on the phone: "Tell them any f---ing thing," he says. Reporter Jeremy Finley's story for WSMV-TV in Nashville about United …
One of my last beats as a network TV reporter was the environment, and I covered everything from air quality to endangered species to climate change. I found it fascinating and complicated--drowning in jargon and tinged with politics--and often hard to visualize. What to do? When dealing with …
WOWK reporter Jessie Shafer is no stranger to live tweeting but even she was surprised when her Twitter stream blew up as she live tweeted a city council meeting. We've "Storified" the story so you can see how it all played out, including reaction from Shafer's Twitter …
Ask viewers what they want to see on local TV news and politics never pops to the top of the list. But ask people if they care about where their tax dollars go or about the services governments provide and the answer is obviously yes. …
by Stephen Stock, Investigative Reporter, NBC Bay Area (KNTV) San Jose, California Whether we like it or not, collaboration between various media partners is fast becoming the way many big journalism projects get done. In fact, a vast majority of the Peabody, IRE, DuPont and other …
If there's one complaint I hear in every newsroom I visit, it's that everyone wishes they had more time. Time to dig for stories. Time to write. Time to edit. The perception is that nobody has enough time to do everything they need to do. …
What's a bigger threat to journalists' ability to hold government accountable--the Obama administration's crackdown on leaks or the roadblocks thrown up by public information officers? I suspect most reporters outside Washington, DC, would point to PIOs, some of whom seem to think their No. 1 …
Everybody has a story, it's often said. CBS's Steve Hartman turned the adage into a franchise. NBC's Bob Dotson does something similar in his American Story features for the Today Show. They make it look easy, but often times it's not. Just because people have a …
Talk about a harsh assessment: "2013 marks the year when ABC World News finally rejected the mission of presenting a serious newscast." That's the conclusion analyst Andrew Tyndall reached after reviewing what the networks covered on their evening newscasts last year. Sadly, the numbers bear him out. ABC …
