Archive for the ‘Leading & Managing’ Category
TV’s role in balloon boy story
TV’s role in balloon boy story (0)
10/20/09 •
REPOST FROM NEWSLAB.ORG
The runaway balloon that didn’t have a six-year-old inside was one of those made for television stories, all right. TV newsrooms didn’t know just how manufactured the story apparently was until it was all over. Were they snookered? Sure, along with everyone else.
It’s easy to say now that the cable news networks went overboard with [...]
How to simplify routine stories
From NewsLab.org: Every newsroom is stressed to the max these days, with too few people producing news on more platforms than ever. How can you free up time for enterprise reporting or multimedia projects? By saving time on the routine stories. Here’s how to do it.
Media Usage Study: Online & Radio Up; TV Still Most Credible
From MarketingCharts.com
Americans are increasingly turning to online and radio sources for news and information, and are spending less time with daily newspapers and TV, according to (pdf) a media use and credibility survey commissioned by ARAnet and conducted by Opinion Research Corporation.
Daily newspaper usage dropped 4.1% and TV usage dropped 3.6%, while radio usage increased 2.9% and online usage increased 1.9%, the study found.
Credibility ratings for nearly all types of media except TV rose slightly from a year ago. TV is, however, still deemed to be most credible.
The national study of US adults, now in its second year, measured the percentage of news and information Americans receive from various media sources each month. Consumers reported getting 31% of their news and information from TV, and 19.4% from both radio and daily newspapers.
The media-use rankings from the survey, compared with last year’s results:
- Television: 31.1% (down from 34.7% a year ago)
- Daily newspaper: 19.4% (down from 23.5%)
- Radio: 19.4% (up from 16.5%)
- Online: 14.6% (up from 12.7%)
- Weekly community papers: 4.4% (down from 5.1 %)
- Free shopper newspapers: 2.9% (up from 2.2%)
- Magazines: 2.1% (up from 1.6%)
Educated, Affluent & Hispanic Demos Flock Online
The survey also measured media use among specific demographic groups and, according to ARAnet, revealed a trend toward increased use of online sources for news and information among the college educated, Hispanics and those making more than $100K per year, compared with the general population.
Not surprisingly, the research also found that the younger the respondent, the more reliant that person was on online sources.
Key demographic differences:
- Respondents with household incomes of $100K or more receive considerably more news and information from online sources (23.1% vs. 14.6% for the general population).
- College grads report using online sources more frequently (20.0%).
- Adults ages 18-34 report the highest reliance on online sources (22.2%).
- Hispanics are more likely to prefer online sources (21.0%).
“The data showing an increase in online use and drop in daily newspaper consumption echoes what we’re hearing from consumers and media partners,” said Scott Severson, president of ARAnet. “Consumers want more of their information online.”
TV Drops Slightly, Still Most Credible
The was designed to gauge which media sources Americans view as the most credible sources of news and information. With the exception of TV, which dropped a tenth of a rating point, all media types stayed steady or increased slightly in credibility from a year ago.
The survey asked respondents to assign credibility scores to seven types of media, ranging from one for “not at all credible” to 10 for “extremely credible. Credibility scores:
- Television: 6.5 on a scale of one-to-10 (down .1 from a year ago)
- Daily newspaper: 6.3 (same as last year)
- Radio: 6.3 (up .3 from a year ago)
- Online: 5.7 (up .1)
- Weekly community papers: 5.4 (up .2)
- Magazines: 4.9 (up .3)
- Free shopper newspapers: 4.3 (up .8)
Other survey findings:
- College grads are more likely to trust online news (giving online a 6.3 rating vs. the 5.7 rating by the general population), and are less likely to trust TV news (giving TV a 6.1 rating vs. the 6.5 rating by the general population).
- Respondents with annual household incomes of $100K and above trust online sources considerably more than the general population (giving online a 6.5 rating, compared with the 5.7 rating by the general population).
- Higher-income respondents also view daily newspapers as more credible (6.8 vs. the 6.3 overall rating).
About the survey: The survey was conducted with 1,000 US adults, ages 18+. It was conducted by phone September 10-13, 2009.
How news sites can cover an election night – examples from Norway
Need some inspiration to take your multi-platform coverage to new heights during the next election cycle? How will you cover more with fewer people? Start planning now.
John Einar Sandvand has a fascinating overview, and some great links, from the recent Norway national elections on his site BetaTales.
John writes:
Several of the sites had prepared interactive graphics which where automatically updated as the results came in Services like Coveritlive and Twitter were used to report live from the different party headquarters News sites increasingly provide a platform for users to discuss the election resuts with each other. This was done by integrating Twitter hashtags into the news content as well as through use of Facebook Connect.
You will also be amazed at Norwegian newspapers in general. Much grittier and in-your face that American papers.
Five Social Media Sites for Journos
Here are some websites from SPJ’s Techno-J blog – that are worth checking out:
1. Wired Journalists
http://www.wiredjournalists.com/
Social network with over 3,300 members and counting.
2. Muck Rack
http://muckrack.com/
Journalists on Twitter, listed by beat and media outlet. Add yourself to the list!
3. Visual Editors
http://visualeditors.ning.com/
Social network for graphically-inclined journos (designers, photographers, videographers, et al.)
4. Testy Copy Editors
http://www.testycopyeditors.org
Message board for folks on the copy desk.
5. Sree’s Twitter Guide for Skeptics and Newbies
http://bit.ly/twitterideas
Extensive list of Twitter tools and resources for journos, compiled by Columbia J-School tech superstar Sree Sreenivasan. You can listen to his “Twitter for Journalists” podcast here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ColumbiaJournalism/2009/01/09/Twitter-for-Journalists
Until next time…
I’m Emily Sweeney, staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow me (@emilysweeney) on Twitter at http://twitter.com/emilysweeney.
Reviews find ‘dangerous pattern’ in morning shows’ health coverage
Coffee is good for your heart, coffee causes dementia, Orange Juice is good, Orange Juice is bad. For years, I have coached writers and producers to view medical claims with skepticism. Few things in life scare me more than a tease offering “new hope for women with breast cancer”, or “Could this odd looking device end your back pain forever?”
Morning Show Health Coverage needs Rx
Now, monitoring the health claims on television has become a vocation. HealthNewsReview is put together by University of Minnesota journalism professor Gary Schwitzer and his team of two dozen health-news reviewers. Every producer in the country should be looking at this.
More from Susan Perry at the MinnPost:
I seldom watch the morning network news shows. For one thing, I’m usually at my computer in the early morning hours, writing this blog. But I also like to keep my blood pressure at a low, calm level. I find much of the news reporting on the morning news shows frustratingly shallow.
Wanting to throw a cup of coffee at the TV set is not good, I believe, for one’s blood pressure.
University of Minnesota journalism professor Gary Schwitzer and his team of two dozen health-news reviewers do watch the morning news shows — or, at least, the health segments on them. They then publish their reviews of those segments on Schwitzer’s indispensable (for health consumers as well as health journalists) online site HealthNewsReview.
What they’ve found lately is disturbing, if not all that surprising. As Schwitzer wrote Monday in a “publisher’s note”:
By reviewing health news coverage every day, we are able to see big pictures of clear patterns unfolding that the casual day-to-day news consumer may miss.
One picture is quite clear. The morning health news segments on ABC, CBS and NBC do the following regularly:
• Unquestioningly promote new drugs and new technologies
• Feed the “worried well” by raising unrealistic expectations of unproven technologies that may produce more harm than good
• Fail to ask tough questions
• Make any discussion of health care reform that much more difficult
He then lists some of the network news segments that back up those perceptions. Here are a few recent examples with Schwitzer’s comments: Read the rest of this entry »
Tips for Covering the economy
Covering the economy? Who isn’t, these days? But it’s not always easy figuring out which business and financial stories to pursue, much less how to make sense of them. RTNDA is offering assistance. Here is a notice I got today from them. 
Money Matters can help. This online resource from the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation and sponsored by NEFE, the National Endowment for Financial Education, offers story ideas, tipsheets and examples of what other news organizations are doing. We update it several times a week with fresh content that you can put to use immediately. We also provide links to background, online tools, and training opportunities for journalists in all media. We hope you’ll check in often to see what’s new. Please contribute your own suggestions and story examples by adding a comment to any page or by sending us an email.
Earlier this year, The RTNDA Communicator Magazine featured a couple of my ideas. Here is a link to that: http://potterg2000.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/otnb-featured-on-rtndaorg-best-practices/
OTNB IDEA: Share Web Style Guides
Every news operation should have a style guide, but as anyone whose ever written one can tell you, the writing can be frustrating and unrewarding.
ADVANTAGES OF A STYLE GUIDE
Aside from the obvious benefit of having everyone working off the same page, one of the biggest benefits of a style guide is the Writing Guidelines. 
In her blog, Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World, Deb Halpern Wenger says, “One of the criticisms leveled at TV news sites is the hit-or-miss quality of the writing. Part of the problem, as many in the broadcast industry freely admit, is a discomfort with or lack of knowledge about writing in “print style.”
Luckily, some forward thinking news organizations put their style guides online and they are generally loaded with help for punctuation, titles, capitalization rules, etc.
Reuters: http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/Main_Page
Times of London: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials/style_guide/
BBC (pdf): http://www.bbctraining.com/pdfs/newsstyleguide.pdfAP sells its style book: http://www.apstylebook.com/?do=product&pid=978-0-917360-53-4
Why share this stuff? Dean Wright, Global Editor for Ethics, Innovation and News Standards says transparency, service, and geography are behind Reuters decision to publish their styleguide.
“As we’ve seen over the past decade, the barriers to publishing have dropped so that anyone with an idea and a computer can be a publisher. But it’s also become clear that publishers have a varying standard of truth, fairness and style. Our handbook is a good place for budding journalists to begin. Reuters serves a global audience and the handbook recognises the cultural and political differences that our journalists face in reporting for the world.”
TV news salaries drop « Advancing the Story
TV news salaries drop
Posted on July 6, 2009 by dhwenger
For the first time in 15 years, people working in local TV news have started making less money than they did the year previously. According to the annual RTNDA/Hofstra University survey (pdf), overall salaries fell about 4.4% in 2008 – and if you factor inflation into the mix, the survey says real wages fell by 8.2%.
The positions that took the biggest hits were those of reporter (13.3% drop), news anchor (-11.5%), weathercaster (-9.1%) and sports anchor (-8.9%). Only assignment editor and art director salaries held steady.
The picture varies by market and newsroom staff size, but the overall salary drops are hardly unexpected in the current economic environment.
SalariesWhat the survey does not reveal is the salary picture for entry level positions. According to the University of Georgia’s 2007 Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates, TV news salaries for recent grads had been slowly improving in recent years, though salaries were down slightly for 2007 from 2006.
The 2008 survey should be released in early August and it will be interesting to see if those starter jobs are again losing ground when it comes to pay.
Filed under: 12. Getting Ready for the Real World
A New “Pay”Model for Journalist Entrepeneurs
True/Slant offers a new financial model for journalists
“It was a dark and stormy night — in a place that is home to the world’s worst thunderstorms,” he said. O’Brien noted that the Airbus A330 had a good record and “the crew had ‘Sully-esque’ seasoning.”
But O’Brien wasn’t reporting for CNN, which dumped him in December. He was posting on True/Slant, a Web site that is mapping a new relationship between journalists, readers and advertisers. In fact, O’Brien has already contacted such aerospace companies as Boeing and Lockheed Martin to sponsor his work at another site, and plans to do so for True/Slant.
Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post writes on how True/Slant is breaking down the wall between sponsors and journalism. The site may even feature pages produced by sponsors.
Lewis Dvorkin, founder of the site, which officially launches today after a trial run, makes no apologies for throwing out the old model. “It’s tailored for the entrepreneurial journalist,” he says. “We’re enabling and empowering journalists to develop their own brand.”
While this is unlikely to be the model for entire television station or newspaper sites, it could be turn a popular talent, or feature, into a profit center. You should spend some time familiarizing yourself with the model.
MORE ON TRUE/SLANT
True/Slant launches – a new journalism model? | CyberJournalist.net
Trevor Cook: True/Slant – another online journalism project
