reporting – Page 8 – Survive Your Job In Television News

Do Journalists Need To Be Entrepreneurs Or Just Really Good At Building Sources?

This year and last, the Knight Foundation has brought up the idea of using the “teaching hospital” model in j-schools to properly prepare journalists. Last year, an“Open Letter to American University Presidents” called for a “teaching hospital” style curriculum. This year, a study is out questioning whether this teaching style really is the right move for j-schools.

In the past I asked journalists what’s lacking in training for TV news, then summarized those ideas. Now this new study says J-schools need to encourage newbie journalists to take an “entrepreneurial approach” even while earning a degree. In other words, they want part of the curriculum to center on creating new ways to deliver the news in addition to learning how to present the news. Professors would be encouraged to also think up and test out new ideas.

I see the point. I get where the researchers are going. But I want to ask this: If you do not even know how to draw, can you then make something look 2 or 3d? The biggest criticism today, is TV news lacks depth. Journalists skip steps or do not know to take steps to ensure information is accurate. There are few checks and balances. This happens when people are overwhelmed. Lack of training and understanding, or knowledge of the existence of station policies, can cause embarrassing gaffs. Now with increased pressure to get something on TV and break stories on social media, this lack of training and organization is really being exposed. This is a dirty secret most veteran journalists have been painfully aware of for decades.

The medium really is secondary. The core issue hurting TV news and journalism in general is this: Too few entities demand source building and proper fact checking. Many journalists will admit they do not know how to source build. No clue where to even start. This is one of the most requested article topics I receive. How do you source build? I cannot take people to lunch, so will I ever be able to develop sources? Is it bad that my sources are all PIO’s?

So I am going to go out on a limb and saying that this whole idea of encouraging creativity and entrepreneurs in J-school is missing the point. The biggest problem with J-schools today, is very few employ journalists who have actually worked in a newsroom in recent times. Most schools demand masters and Ph.D.’s but do not emphasize real world experience.

J-schools may seem irrelevant, or out of touch or needing an overhaul because of this simple issue. Hence the push for a teaching hospital style of program and entrepreneurial approaches.

J-schools can provide opportunities to step out of the box and create new ways to tell stories, utilize social media and even redefine the role of TV news in society. BUT the ideas will not truly be relevant until they can clearly prove that the implementation will increase accuracy in reporting. Let’s stop skirting the issue, and admit to the problem in clear terms. Journalists are entering the work force, with few clues on how to research and make sure they are accurately disseminating information. As a result, they stick to what the news release and PIO say, and do not question. It is the safe route. It allows you to churn and burn 2 or 3 packages a day. Teaching hospital or entrepreneurial push? Neither approach really matters if the basic foundation is not there. Teach how to gather information, source build and fact check. Get extremely detailed about it. Then TV journalists as a whole can move forward. Stations can stop becoming a testing ground. Most importantly, we can stop debating the whole “How do we teach journalism to stay relevant?” debate. Facts are always going to be relevant. Teach how to find them and get them right!

Want respect? Pronounce things correctly.

If you work in a community that you love, and are proud to serve the area, do your station a favor, write a list of pronouncers for the region you cover to hand to every new employee that walks in the door.

Many journalists come in to a new community and are cavalier about making sure they can pronounce the names of communities and public figures. I have even heard some say “well I won’t be here that long.” If you want to be taken seriously as a journalist, you have to speak the language of your community. Mispronunciations should be taken as seriously as any other fact error. Do not assume viewers will say, “he didn’t mean it, he just moved here.”

I don’t care where you are working, most of the people living there and watching the news are glad they live in that community. They want you to respect them and where they live. If you are a journalist lucky enough to live in the town you love, take the time to write this list down. Hand it out to the new members of your team. Maybe it will save embarrassment and keep them from making foolish mistakes.

If you are moving to a new area, take the veteran journalist in the newsroom out for a meal or drink. Tell him/her you want to fully invest in the place where you have chosen to live and work, and you would love all the information on the area that he/she is willing to share. You will earn respect in the newsroom and the community, for the intense desire to get it right the first time.

The Interns Are Uprising! But Is It Their Loss?

The interns are staging an uprising. And many big media executives are sweating. Charlie Rose has already settled a lawsuit against his production company. FOX Searchlight lost a case and is appealing. Now MSNBC and “Saturday Night Live” may have to go to court. Each is accused of working interns to the bone, having them perform menial tasks that regular employees should perform, and not paying them a dime.

Whoa, Millennials! Way to stick it to Old Media!

Except… I think I’m going to have to side with Old Media on this one.

As TheWrap points-out in a nice piece which puts a face on Hollywood interns, the unpaid internship is the way to get your foot in the door in television, film, and journalism. The real threat of these lawsuits isn’t to the big media companies’ bank accounts. The real threat is to next year’s crop of interns and the ones who would be applying the year after that. You see, in this age of “we make billions but we still only buy that stiff, generic toilet paper for the company’s restrooms because it saves us ten-cents a roll,” we may not see paid internships as a result of these lawsuits. We may just see internships go away. And that would be a shame.

I did it. I should say my mother, father, and I did it. I don’t know how we scraped together enough money for me to intern at Dispatch Broadcast Group’s DC bureau the summer before my senior year in college. But we found nearly $1,000 each month — from somewhere — to pay the rent on an apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland. It was within walking distance of the Metro’s Red Line, which I would take downtown to Dispatch’s suite in the National Press Building.

I held the reflector above the correspondent’s head, my arms aching, as she sweated through standup after standup in the stifling heat that just seems to lay on Washington in the summertime as if trying to literally smother it. I grabbed the camera and tripod and began shooting a news conference one morning when our staff photojournalist got stuck on a Metro train because of some delay in Northern Virginia. Thank goodness he showed-up in the middle of it because I was a horrible photog. I wrote packages and VO/SOTs out the wazoo. Some days I didn’t even get a thank you from the correspondent. But, boy, what a thrill that my words were being read by her or the big time anchors at WTHR in Indianapolis and WBNS in Columbus!

I wasn’t getting paid with money. But that news organization was giving me something I would’ve been willing to buy. Their correspondent and photographer were showing me literally how you get around Capitol Hill as a journalist (this was pre-9/11 but security was already tight and the word “labyrinthine” is never so apt as when it’s used to describe the Hill’s hallways, tunnels, special subway system, and liveshot/news conference locations — each with their own quirky nicknames. You’ve got your “Swamp” and “Triangle.” Plus, there’s no telling who you’ll spot in the Ohio Clock Corridor.)

Just to give you a feel for how big a financial struggle this was for my family, there were many days when I’d wander down to an ATM outside the National Press Building and there would be no money. And I was a college kid, super hungry all the time. I’d call my mom pleading for another 20 or 30 bucks. She’d say she couldn’t believe how expensive Washington was because she’d just given me $100 a few days before. And I’d say, “I know. It’s unbelievable.” And she’d say, “Well, I’ll try.” And somehow she’d scrounge-up some money, run it to a teller at Bank of America in our hometown, and within 24-hours it would be in my account. I must have used credit cards, too, to survive. They practically hand them out as welcome gifts at colleges, after all.

But that wasn’t the end of the scrounging. In the fall, I began my training as a student at the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism, which came with a small stipend but more importantly included an internship at CNN’s Washington bureau.

Talk about doing the job of regular staffers! I was quite literally former CNN economics/political correspondent Brooks Jackson’s researcher, field producer, and tape logger — a job I particularly despise to this day and still have to do. But demand payment? Are you kidding? Brooks was like my father-away-from-home offering me advice about the biz and life in general. He is still a wonderful mentor and friend. Plus, it was through him that I met Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, when Brooks interviewed him in a majestic room inside the Treasury Building. On other days, Brooks would introduce me to some of the smartest people in the world studying this issue or that at the Heritage Foundation, Brookings Institution, Cato Institute, or Congressional Budget Office.

Believe me, 90% of it wasn’t glamorous, though. There were hours spent transcribing long interviews and adding asterisks around soundbites that I thought might work for Brooks’ next piece. I would get dizzy searching for b-roll in the bureau’s cavernous video library, where the numbering system never seemed to make sense. Plus, there were lots of long days. When I worked for him, Brooks was reporting for Wolf Blitzer’s show, which at that time didn’t air until 8 p.m.

Keep in mind, Brooks was working even harder than I was. He was logging, researching, and corralling interview subjects before I got to his office in the morning and was staying much later than I was at night. He also always wrote his own package scripts. So maybe some of this passion for a good ol’ fight against The Man comes from interns who worked for network divas who expect producers and interns to do everything for them.

However, to sue Old Media or New Media because you weren’t paid for the time you toiled away preparing interview materials for Charlie Rose or because you were asked to help book guests for MSNBC seems to me to be the height of ungratefulness.

Do you realize what a chance these broadcasters are taking even letting someone as unqualified as a college student, like I was, in the door? Do you realize the damage you could do to a world class news organization with one screw-up that gets on-air? But even without having had any qualifications — and even with all the real world education you got and the contacts you made through that opportunity — you’re going to turn around later and demand that they pay you?

Excuse me, but unless there was some egregious treatment by these media companies that I’m not aware of, the former interns behind these lawsuits will not be receiving any sympathy from me.

And to current and future interns: If you’re not getting anything out of your internship, quit. Otherwise, suck it up and take in all you can take in. At the end of it, if you didn’t have the time of your life, it’s not an attorney you need to consult. You need to go see your college’s career counselor because apparently this one’s not for you.

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For more information on the federal rules governing internships and whether your station/network might be at risk of a lawsuit alleging that interns should’ve been paid, the U.S. Dept. of Labor has created this fact sheet. In addition, you’ll want to consult your company’s attorneys to make sure your current and future internship programs meet the guidelines.

Matthew Nordin is an investigative reporter at WXIX-TV in Cincinnati. Join him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @FOX19Matthew.

How to tighten your own writing.

When producers call and tell me how their work stands out, the number one statement I hear is“ my writing is tight.” Truth be told, when I review a newscast, that is rarely the case. Same is true of reporter scripts. I would get calls from the crews to copy edit and be told “You will love it, my writing is so clean and tight.” That is a tall order. Many were shocked to hear they fell short.

So how do you tighten your own writing? Copy edit yourself. Write your script or cold open or whatever it is, and then go back to it and try and shave time off. Often you will find entire sentences or sections that you can cut.

Another effective technique is to compartmentalize elements. When constructing a live pkg for example, assign facts for each element. Maybe the “what” and “when” are in the anchor intro, the “where” is explained in the live lead, the “who” is the start of your pkg which ends with the “how.” The live tag is the “what’s next.” This helps tighten things up. Often pkg’s repeat information from the anchor intro or live intro. Then the tag repeats information yet again. By compartmentalizing, you help story tell better (see Storytelling on a Dime) and you write more succinctly.

Print out multiple stories, take them home, then write them over again. Sometimes practice makes perfect. A little secret: Many of the best in the business take time out each day or at least each week for self evaluation (see Humble Pie). Your writing will improve. Your speed will improve as well.

Finally, make adverbs and adjectives really count. They must be crucial to the telling of the story, not just something you throw in for extra flare. If you do that, your writing will not only become more clear and concise, but you will also avoid exaggerating facts.

So there you have it, some ways to tighten up your own writing.