Old School TV News Rules Vs the New School

When I first posted my column Thursday lamenting the habit of local TV health reporters to retrack nearly word-for-word stories prepared by other affiliates and news services such as Ivanhoe Broadcast News, I got an interesting email from an out-of-town TV professional who suggested the rules of TV news have changed significantly in the last 15 years.

This person tagged the blame on the preponderance of sales managers becoming TV station general managers, the pressure to squeeze more money out of understaffed stations and the flood of veterans leaving the industry -- leaving younger executives with less grounding in ethics.

My email pal, who shall remain nameless, also provided a funny list of rules -- old school TV news vs new school -- to illustrate how much things have changed. To preserve this person's job, I pass the list along without attribution as a little bit of funny you can take with you to enjoy the weekend... 

Old rule: news is news.  New rule: news is marketing.

Old rule:  news is never old  New rule:  news has an expiration date

Old rule:  live shots compliment the story  New rule:  live IS the story

Old rule:  weather gets the attention it deserves   New rule:  rain is a lead story

Old rule:  Cover the issues    New rule:  cover the emotions

Old rule:  Staff experience is valuable  New rule:  1 year is experience

Old rule:  Cover breaking news  New rule:  make up breaking news

Old rule:  Build credibility and you'll gain a bigger audience   New rule:  Reach more people through the Internet

Old rule:  Be good storytellers    New rule:  more stories, less telling 

Old rule:  Report the facts    New rule:  report what people say

Old rule:  Follow the news director's lead   New rule:   Who's the news director?

Old rule:  Consultants suggest   New rule:  Consultants control

Old rule:  Ratings rule   New rule:  Demos dominate

Old rule:  Know your community   New rule:  know your research

Old rule:  Bad staff behavior is not tolerated   New rule:  address your questions to our attorneys

Comments

[former tampanian]

It's so true. I'll be sure to attribute your blog when I email this around country.

[cib258]

Got here from Romenesko's column. Great stuff.

[Eric Deggans]

I've got some really smart readers, it seems....

[Jay Dub]

How long have the new rules been 'new'? I think I've seen these 'new' rules in play on TV newscasts around the U.S. for at least 20 years.

[dcjourno]

Funny in tone, yes. But tragic in content, because it's all true. Remember when journalists exploded in outrage whenever a marketing or sales suit even so much as walked past a newsroom? Now we're using MBA-speak like 'content' and 'product' when we talk about news. We need to retake our newsrooms and declare them no-suit zones.

[Eric62]

Old rules: Stand out in a crowd
New rules: Make local tv news indistiguishable from one end of the country to the other.

[idiotwind]

Old rule: "Network" foretold the future.
New rule: What a pale foreshadowing.

[GlennS.]

Eric62, that is so true. I remember when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s there were some real personalities on the local stations -- folks who would never make it past a station's front desk in the current cookie cutter envinronment.

Maybe this is one of the reasons stations started putting those damn logos in the corner of the screen -- the "product" is so much the same, how would we otherwise know what we were watching?

[Andy]

To "dcjourno" Yes, it would feel good to "retake our newsrooms." Unfortunately, the managers probably wouldn't be sad to see you leave because the audience no longer has any understanding of what a journalist is.

In polls and website comments about who people think is the best "journalist" around, you continue seeing the same names over and over. Bill O'Reilly. Helen Thomas. Keith Olbermann. Jack Cafferty. In other words, individuals who have committed little if any actual journalism in years. They're now bloviators, and audiences no longer seem to know the difference.

Is that because local TV newscasts have lowered their standards? I doubt it. It's just the way things are in an environment where people can get "news" from whatever source dovetails with what they already think.

By the way, I once worked for a news director who at one time was a serious producer... award-winning. He was one of the smartest people I've ever known in terms of his ability to pull facts out of his head immediately as needed, and our station felt fortunate to get him.

However, at some point he decided he wanted to be the General Manager some day, and began a campaign of sucking up that threw the newsroom under the bus. So it's not just former Sales Managers. Just like CBS' Frank Stanton was once a corporate lawyer, it is possible for a good news division head to come from somewhere else... they just have to be devoted to news.

By the way, my old boss is now a GM, just as he wanted to be.

[Meredith]

So sad, but so true.

[Jim]

In other news...

WTVT's General Manager was arrested this morning...

Details at 11...

[kc]

One of the best live-report local reporters I've ever seen weighed about 350 pounds. He's not on my TV anymore.

Instead, we get pretty young things of both genders who know nothing about any local issue, and seem way more interested in being on TV than doing this tiresome "journalism."

This is nothing new. But it seems to be getting worse, not better. (Sigh)

[Ted Baxter]

Newspapers' plight isn't much different from TV, consultants, corporate ownership and all. No wonder they've been in decline since the 1980s. It's sad.

[Chuck]

True, so true. Those are all the reasons why I got out of the bizarre business. If corporate America ran itself like a newsroom, the economy would collapse.

[Chilly in AZ]

One thing you now have to realize if you are pursuing a career in broadcast journalism: You will never work a day in your life for anyone who cares about covering issues and defending the First Amendment. Yeah, the News Director is that person, but he works for the GM and so do you. And the GM got there because he or she married one of the owner's kids, or was Sales Account Executive of the Quarter for two years straight. He's not the GM because he defended the newsroom's right to run an investigative piece on the station's biggest advertiser. He's the GM because he worked day and night for six months to get that advertiser back after they dumped their advertising on the station.

[no longer in Tampa]

One year = experience. Wow, that's actually better than what I've seen in several newsrooms. I laughed when I read these 'new rules' because they ring so true. And I agree wholeheartedly with dcjourno (and most of the other sentiments expressed here), we have definitely witnessed a tragic transgression in the quality of journalism. In regards to the medical reports, let's be fair and point out that the canned material shows up in business/consumer reports and other feature segments as well. The journalist who wrote to you hit the nail on the head by describing the newsroom conditions that lead to heavy dependence on this material. I know I'd much rather have a crew go out and shoot/produce a local health story but there were plenty of days when no photogs were available. And even at the stations that were fortunate enough to have a medical team w/an assigned photographer, assignment editors were frequently forced to pull that photog for other stories. So staff shortages are a huge contributing factor. One thing that bothers me now (I no longer work in news) is the lack of attribution in many reports. You can tell when it's the canned stuff and I know some of the studies that are being cited and regurgitated on-air are sponsored by drug manufacturers-- but we're not hearing that important disclosure. I have to say though, I now live in a smaller market and the news is even more painful to watch here. It's OTJ training here!

[Kevin Johnson]

I just saw this posted on my site http://b-roll.net. It is frightening how true this is... thanks for sharing.

[Bill Saylor]

This is so true, it's frightening. I put in 34 years in Television news, and saw much of the patterns change. We joked about the station motto, "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

News shows became over-produced over the years when electronic toys became more important than content.

In my final years,I worked under an Executive Producer whose previous experience was on a radio traffic service. He changed all the rules of journalistic integrity and frequently told reporters to make up facts to make stories more interesting.

In the end it was a nightmare. Reporters became tools of a system with the expressed purpose of making news programs more saleable.