Writing – Page 27 – Survive Your Job In Television News

See it rather than say it: How to clue in anchors during live TV.

It was early on a Saturday morning. But weekday anchors up and down the East Coast were in their respective newsrooms waiting on a big story to arrive named Hurricane Irene.

As I waited for my on-air shift to begin, I was multitasking as usual: reading over the scripts the producers had written, watching a stream of storm updates cascade down Tweetdeck, and listening to a friend’s broadcast over the internet as he prepared the viewers in his market for what was to come.

Then it happened — that cringe-worthy moment all of us anchors dread. The voice on the phone stopped talking. But my friend was caught off-guard and had no idea what the man had been saying. Producers were talking in his IFB at the time and he was caught with his proverbial pants down on live TV.

What’s worse is that all that chatter over the IFB prevented him from doing his #1 job in a time of crisis: being a reporter. Yes, he was chained to the desk. But that phone was his — and his viewers’ — lifeline to late breaking information about a story that was changing minute-by-minute.

If an anchor isn’t able to hear a phoner or a reporter on a satellite shot in a breaking news situation, he quickly falls behind. In subsequent ad-libs, he can sound disconnected, out-of-touch, and out-of-date.

Unfortunately, it’s not a rare occurrence even on network television. And it’s just as likely to happen during a satellite interview any day of the week.

There are no easy answers for how to make sure the magic happening behind-the-scenes doesn’t intrude on the viewer who’s just trying to find out what’s going on and whether her family is threatened.

But let me throw-out some ideas:

Bring in the interns! It’s the excitement they’ve been waiting for anyway. All those mornings of filling-up the printers and opening the lobby doors for studio guests should at least have this payoff. For goodness sakes, let’s ask them the day before if they’d be willing to help us with our breaking news coverage. I bet they’d love it. (And if they don’t show much enthusiasm they should find another career.)

Use them as runners. To reduce the amount of chatter producers engage in over IFB, I say go old school. Station at least one intern right next to the producer in the control room. Arm them with a stack of paper or a small dry erase board. Have them run routine messages (like the names and titles of guests coming up or the latest statistics on the story you’re covering) to the anchor desk. As an anchor, I want my mic to be hot so I can interrupt or question the person on the phone or the reporter out in the field at any time. So I can’t talk. And I really need to hear what’s being said over-the-air. But I’ve still got my eyes and my hands. When I see I’m off-camera, I can look at what the intern is presenting me, write down any questions or concerns I have for the producer, and send the intern back into the control room.

If your station doesn’t usually have interns, consider an associate producer or the news junkie on the sales staff for this role. If the breaking news comes out of nowhere and you had no time to plan for it, consider the options below.

Text messaging over teleprompter. It’s breaking news. Your anchors aren’t using the teleprompter all that much anyway. Write a message at the top of the story that’s currently cued-up. “***GM has canceled ALL breaks. Stretch. Ad-lib at will! ***” It’s especially useful when you need to quickly convey street closures. “City closing these streets: Broadway from 3^rd Ave to 9^th Ave & Water Tower Road from Main to Robinson.” Most of us in television are visual people. We digest information easier if we see it rather than if you’re trying to tell us the details over IFB — especially if we’re in the middle of an interview.

And anchors, don’t be afraid to write down this information on-camera as you’re delivering it. The viewers know it’s an extraordinary time and you’re trying to make sure the information is accurate. So write it down. Set it aside. You’ll need to come back to it throughout your coverage. (And your producers have a lot more important things to do than regurgitate information they’ve already given you once.)

Instant messaging/“Top lining.” We have ENPS at my station and my producers are great at doing this. If my co-anchor and I are busy talking and interviewing people on-air, they’ll send us information in an instant message, which appears as the top line in ENPS.

Anchors, the judges will not deduct any points for reading detailed information off of ENPS on the computer screen on your desk. Again, it’s breaking news. They’ll understand.

Any more tips for creating smoother communication during breaking news coverage? Be sure to let us know by commenting below.

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Matthew Nordin is a morning anchor and investigative reporter at WMBF News, Raycom Media’s NBC affiliate in Myrtle Beach. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewNordin.

Producing Alliances: Assign and direct.

Line producers are often in a very uncomfortable spot in newsrooms. You are in charge of a newscast, yet you are not a manager with any teeth. Competition between producers generally is pretty intense so you cannot really confide in another producer at your station. Your job is confusing for other people in the newsroom to really grasp. You don’t want to spill your guts to your EP, so it can appear in your review a few months later.

So who do you align yourself with? I always had the best luck with directors and assignment editors.

In the article “Right Hand Meet Your Left” I describe why having a good relationship with your director is important. Now I want to talk more about the benefits of this smart alliance.

Directors tend to be extremely detail oriented. That means they can pick up on things you might do that you aren’t even aware of. When starting out as a producer, I had problems with my weekend newscasts timing out correctly. During the morning and weekday noon shows, I had no timing problems. I tried different techniques for several weeks with no luck. I was ready to pull my hair out! Then I decided to ask the director for advice. But, he was much more experienced and I was concerned he would think less of me. When I finally asked if he noticed anything about my timing he said: “Yes. I’ve been waiting for you to ask. I didn’t want to seem pushy.” Turns out, the final commercial break varied wildly from the rundown format. I had never known to check the traffic log for my breaks. That was never taught to me. He showed me where to get the log and what to look for. I never mistimed a show again.

Directors also tend to be dismissed by managers and other newsroom employees during a shift. Because of this, they hear everything and if you have developed a strong relationship based on trust, your director may give you a heads up when something big is about to happen that involves you. Several times I found out management was considering moving me to another newscast, from my director. I had several days to prepare before news management got around to telling me. I never betrayed the director’s trust and was able to arm myself if I didn’t like the shift change to try and fight for “my show.”

In some shops directors are considered managers. They are consulted before changes take place especially when it comes to formatting newscasts. You want a heads up when possible and you want to be able to weigh in. Several times directors came to me with proposed format or policy changes and asked my opinion before weighing in themselves. We wanted to be on the same page to protect our shift.

The other smart alliance is with assignment editors. (We will dedicate an entire article to assignment editors soon. They are unsung heroes in many newsrooms.) I went out of my way to develop a relationship with my assignment editors because often they are the next closest thing to producers in terms of constant grind. Again, assignment editors are a type of manager, yet don’t really have teeth, just like producers. And, just like producers, they sit down to work and don’t get downtime until they are in the car on the way home. Assignment editors are also consulted on things that impact your shift, but involve the crews more. They are a great resource for understanding what the crews in the field are going through during an actual shift. Usually the crews are too swamped to fill you in themselves. Crews know management will check in with the assignment desk and therefore usually tell the desk any elements first. If you are not respectful to your assignment editor, you will not get as many updates about the crews and will not get to weigh in on how you want those updates. This can have a dramatic impact on your day-to-day job duties. Also, if you are curt toward your assignment editor, you will end up having to constantly check the assignment file and scroll through hoping to figure out what the newest information is on local vo’s etc. If you are respectful, you might get a top line or quick phone call so you know when to write local elements and when to wait for crucial information.

So how do you set up a solid relationship with the assignment desk? If you have even a moment help make some calls when the desk is overwhelmed. I used to ask my associate producer to check with the assignment editor to see if he/she needed a quick break once or twice a shift. My AP could listen to the scanners and answer the phone and my assignment editor could at least walk the building or grab a snack and relax a little. If breaking news hit, I had the AP get on the desk with the assignment editor and help make calls or, if the assignment editor preferred, be in charge of sending me top lines about the information like a crews’ ETA to the breaking news scene.

Bottom line, producers cannot do their job properly without information, and without a way to cleanly place that information on a television screen. Treat the people who allow you to perform these key tasks with respect and you will get the help you need to put on the best newscast possible each day.

It’s GM’s agenda and you are stuck covering it “as news.”

We promise this situation will happen to you. It happened to us at several stations, in small to large markets. General Manager walks into an editorial meeting and says “So what are we doing to cover such and such, ( fill-in the blank, new road widening project, special session by legislature, tax incentive package for a new industry in town etc.) since our viewers the tax payers are getting screwed.” The news director gives a blank look followed by the lifted eyebrow smirk, then stares at you, “So how will you cover that story today?”

If this happens, say you are going to make some calls and get out of the room pronto. Better yet, grab your photog and get out of the building while you make those calls! Why? You do not want the GM to start going off on specific players and agendas for the story. You do not want specifics on how this story should be told, and exactly what the tease will say. That way, if it is the GM skimming headlines and misinterpreting reality, you won’t end up having to tell him/her. Without specifics chances are you can find some small nugget to package.

Next, call the newsroom mega brain. You know, the walking, talking, human factoid! This person can save you hours of stress and research. Do the necessary ego stroke and get the person to give you background information on this subject. You need time to work sources for a backup in case the story falls apart. The “human factoid” usually can at least provide the name and number for a player in town who will give you insight on whether the GM’s “news” really is “news.”

Do your thing, work it and try to find an interesting character or bit of video to showcase so you can get by. If there’s just nothing to the story give the basics, then try and include a little subtle perspective in your anchor intro or tag. Managers tend to play in that copy more anyway. This way, if the story is taken out of context and the GM gets a call, it will more likely become management’s problem instead of the reporter’s failing.

If you cannot find a nugget to package, and there’s simply nothing to the story, offer to write a vo or vo/sot and let your manager know early. That gives management time to derail the GM situation well before the newscast airs. It helps if you can offer an interesting alternative story the manager can have you churn out instead. Sometimes management will then take the GM “news” burden off of you and have an anchor front it somewhere cool on set. You are off the hook, and the GM still feels heard without the station blowing a weak story out of proportion.

If you are told to package a story and say certain things in a tease you don’t like, try and do a subtle rewrite. Also, know this happens to everyone from time to time. Chances are your credibility is not ruined. Those in the know in town realize you got stuck “being the good soldier.”

Meet my conscience: The importance of setting up gut checks.

Recently in Chicago, there was a drive by shooting. A freelance photographer got an interview with a 4 year old who mentioned when he grew up he was going to have a gun. The sound bite aired. Trouble is, after that bite the child added that he wanted to become a police officer. The police officer part did not air during a morning show at a local station. The breakdowns in ethics in this case are numerous. Did the photog get the parent’s permission? Did the person who wrote the vo/sot watch all of the interview before writing? Why were the boy’s words taken out of context? Why air sound from a 4 year old at all, especially in a vosot? This wasn’t a perspective piece. It was a quick pacer story. This is not an isolated case of something that is clearly dicey, ethically, ending up on the air. Recently a station in Bristol, RI admitted it aired video from a golf tournament without explaining the video was a staged reenactment.

Ethical issues like this do happen and some would argue they are getting more common as stations grind more news out. A recent RTNDA/Hofstra University study shows nearly 35 percent of stations added newscasts in 2010. With more news churning out and smaller staffs to accomplish it, more ethical mistakes will happen unless there are systems of checks and balances as well as continued training on how to effectively write under intense deadline pressure. Sometimes even the news managers are so tied up just trying to churn out the news, they cannot truly serve in a supervisory role. University newsrooms cannot replicate this type of environment. It is simply too dangerous to do while also teaching the basics of being a broadcast journalist. But once you get your first job you are often thrown in, and there may not be set checks and balances to review your work. For example, in several shops where I worked there was not an EP overseeing shows. In fact there wasn’t a news manager at all during several shifts. There was no one with clear editorial control. You would write, the anchor would rewrite then, maybe, an associate producer would rewrite the copy again. In other shops there was a manager (usually an assistant ND) who was ostensibly overseeing the daily mix. But that manager was so swamped you could go all day without seeing the person. Even if there is not a set system of checks and balances at your station, you need a personal one. That means setting one up yourself, and leaning on fellow staffers.

So let’s talk gut checks. In each shop I set up a relationship with several co-workers where we could give quick calls and exchange thoughts on issues that would come up. This usually was not someone with the same job as I had in the newsroom. I wanted someone with a different perspective and different crunch times. Remember it is easy to armchair quarterback, but when you are standing in the pocket with a nasty linebacker bearing down, you just want to get rid of the ball! As I mentioned, often there was no EP on staff to help oversee and check my work. Other producers would think more like me or possibly have bad habits like watching raw video only until they heard a “good” sound bite, then starting to write without watching the rest of the video. As a producer I leaned on my anchors for help. If a story just didn’t feel right, or children were mentioned, I asked for a gut check read from an anchor that I trusted. If the anchor was an attacking type personality, then I went to veteran reporters in the shop instead. I even had my associate producers and editors watch raw tape and tell me what stood out as possible ethical issues on sensitive stories. Notice some of the people had more experience, some less. All of us had enough ethics training that someone’s gut check would go off.

Reporters, your photogs are a great resource you probably have already considered. Here’s another great resource, anchors. They tend to have a little more free time to brainstorm with you. If you are lucky enough to have an EP on staff, lean on him/her. That person is paid to help you gut check. Don’t let him/her off easy. Call in. If you do not trust your EP, or there isn’t one on your shift, lean on the anchors more. Depending on the time of day, your producer is also an asset.

It is also critical that you set up a person with final say on rewrites. If there’s no EP, then a producer or veteran anchor should have final say. This should be clear to everyone who copy edits for the newscast on your shift. That includes reporters. That way if a fact error or ethical dilemma comes up there is a clear cut person who either makes the call or is in charge of contacting management so the bosses can make the call.

What if you do have an EP or assistant ND on staff monitoring things during your shift? Set up a gut check system with other staffers anyway. No one is perfect and managers are often pulled away or distracted by other duties. It is good to have other staffers to lean on in case you feel like the manager is too distracted to help. In the end, if you wrote the story you will be held accountable. If you end up making an ethical mistake, and we all do at one time or another, you need to protect yourself by being able to say you took steps to check your work. This should not get the other staffer you consulted with in trouble. At least that never happened with me. If I wrote the story, I was held accountable. Showing you made efforts can make the difference between a stern scolding or suspension or being fired. These gut checks will also help you grow as a journalist by seeing other perspectives and staying on your toes. So ask someone to be your other conscience and return the favor. As you can see from the examples at the beginning of this article, our industry needs more gut checks.