INTRODUCTION

It is difficult to generalize about radio news operations and news programs because they are constantly changing. One universal statement that can be made is that newscasts on most local radio stations are getting shorter and less frequent. Changes in ownership often mean a change in programming mentality, thus radio newsrooms are under frequent scrutiny. Due to relaxed Federal Communications Commission rules concerning station ownership, more individual stations are being purchased by media conglomerates. The result is the loss of local news operations.

On the plus side, the technology for obtaining and delivering radio news has greatly improved. The career path of many students in collegiate media courses winds through their university radio stations, so new talent for radio is constantly being trained. Also, the death of radio has been greatly overstated, as a number of stations that were written off as unviable have emerged with leaner staffs and smarter business plans.

In this chapter, we will provide a brief overview of radio news, discuss how radio newscasts are created and delivered, and also examine the technology that equips radio producers both in the field and behind the microphone in the studio. Although there are fewer jobs available in radio news, many of the skills learned at radio stations are applicable to those students focusing on television.

Further, while some traditional local stations are feeling the pinch of consolidation, satellite-driven radio stations have reenergized the connection between radio personalities and listeners. Dustin Swedelson, a Producer at SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio, says:

Radio is the most intimate medium out there. There is a connection between listener and host/radio program that cannot be duplicated anywhere else. In what other medium do people refer to what they are consuming as their own? People routinely take ownership and call the show or station they listen to as theirs. You can tweet, email, or call with a direct line of communication to the person you are listening to on the radio. You connect with those people and make them a part of your daily routine. That doesn’t happen on television and there’s nothing in real time in a newspaper. Radio is up to the minute, diverse in its offering between talk, live events, sports and music. It’s mobile and reliable. SiriusXM, the company I work for, has over 30 million subscribers. That number speaks for itself.

THE STATE OF RADIO NEWS

The demise of the significant role that radio had traditionally played in covering the news began with the unfortunate decision by the FCC that radio stations did not have to provide news as a public service. The immediate result was that hundreds of radio stations decided they could save a lot of money by ending their news operations. Most of those stations now either play music or are in the “talk” business. Talk radio is not the same as news radio, as the talk format is skewed much more toward opinion and nationally syndicated programs. Radio newsrooms, particularly those that concentrate on local news, are withering at an alarming rate.

FIGURE 15.1 wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com

Although some have written off radio overall as a dying medium, those who are active in the radio industry argue it is actually in a state of evolution. Rabyn Ratliff, a Radio Personality for Black Crow Media in Georgia, says:

As relatively the first form of live media, the dependency upon radio as the primary source of news, information, and music is definitely shifting. I would say that while there is a decline in that dependence, radio is not dead just yet, but transitioning rather. Much like the change of an old car into a timeless classic, radio is becoming an antique so to speak: The antique older generations hold on to with some sense of nostalgia and overall value. Now, will it mean anything to the latter generations: those purged and raised without need for commentary between songs, artist facts and anecdotes, or a quick rundown of the weekly weather? That would depend on how much interest and value they actually find in antiques. That considered, I worry that in the next 60 years, radio may be obsolete, especially considering that it is only being kept alive now by a dying a generation.

FAST FACT: The world’s first broadcast by a commercially licensed radio station was in 1920 when Pittsburgh’s KDKA covered the Harding–Cox election.

Her comments are supported by a 2015 research survey conducted by the Radio and Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University’s Professor Emeritus Bob Papper, which found three notable highlights concerning the business of radio. They are:

■ Profitability is up.

■ Websites are performing better.

■ Nearly as many newsroom budgets are down as those that are up.

The easing of ownership restrictions over the years played a large role in changing the close relationship that radio stations traditionally had with their listeners because those stations kept the community well informed. People turned to their radio sets to find out about disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes, and routine matters such as school closings and traffic conditions. But the growth of media giants such as iHeart Radio, which owns 850 radio stations nationwide, has reshaped the operating structure of local radio stations and their newsrooms. Quite frequently, there is no journalist working full-time at the radio stations during the day, and this is even more likely to be true at night.

FIGURE 15.2 Tsian/Shutterstock.com

One traditional news broadcaster, National Public Radio, still produces news reports on an ongoing basis. Reporters at these stations have more latitude with their stories. A story that may only receive 30 seconds on another station’s newscast can get several minutes on an NPR station.

YOUR AUDIENCE

One of the continuing debates in both print and broadcast news is whether the news should provide the kind of information that people need to know or the information they want to know. Most journalists agree that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. People must be informed, but it also makes sense to tailor the news for the audience. A station programming easy-listening music probably would not want to provide the same kind of news as a rock station. The rock station would have a relatively young audience and the easy-listening station would have an older audience. If you were the news director at the rock station, you would look for stories that appeal more to young people. The writing style also would be lighter and less formal than it would be, for example, for the audience of that easy-listening station.

The story selection also would be different for news delivered in urban and rural areas. Stories about the weather would be important in farm country, whereas stories about traffic congestion would be important in the city.

Although you need to consider all these factors, your main concern in putting a news report together is the news itself. A story of overwhelming importance, whether it is local, national, or foreign, always takes precedence over the rest of the news.

ORGANIZING MATERIAL

Radio producers place stories in three broad categories when they stack their newscasts: Which story should lead the newscast, which stories should follow, and which stories may be eliminated. Of course, before the stories are shuffled among those three possibilities, you must know what news is available.

A good way to start is to call the police and fire departments to see if anything is going on—these are the beat checks that were detailed in Chapter 2. Next, check your news wire service along with the local newspaper. If you’ve compiled a quick list of Internet shortcuts to websites such as the mayor’s office or the school board, you should scan those for announcements or meetings. Also, serious newsrooms keep a file marked futures that alerts the staff to special events scheduled in the listening area; check this file next. In a small community, there may not be much going on, and if that community is served by an equally small station, any material in the futures file was probably put there by the newsperson who will cover the event. Although the futures file is filled with stories that haven’t happened yet, you can always have a newscast tease an upcoming event, such as “The City Council meets tonight . . .”

After you read the wire copy, the newspaper, and any other sources available, you decide which stories you want to use and their order. Some producers list all the available stories on a pad, then figure out a tentative order in which the stories will appear in the script. Others print out the stories from their computer and arrange the stories in the order they wish to use them, so that the most important stories are at the top and the less important ones at the bottom. Still others scribble out their rundowns on a dry erase board (much like the television assignment board) to develop their newscasts. There is no right or wrong way to organize copy, so look for the method that is the most comfortable for you.

Writers using computers organize their copy in a variety of ways. Some move the stories they wish to consider for their newscast into a separate computer file. Later, when they are ready to rewrite the stories, they split the screen so that they can look at the wire copy on one side and use the other half, the blank side, to rewrite the copy.

The first story is saved after it is written, then the writer moves on to the next one, and so forth. When all the stories are finished, the writer prints them out and puts them in the order in which they will be read on the air. Of course, many writers today don’t bother to print anything. Instead, they read the copy directly from the computer screen. This obviously saves time and money, as printing stories takes minutes and sheets of paper. The downside is a computer can always crash precisely when it is needed to display the news copy.

FUNDAMENTALS OF WRITING FOR RADIO NEWS

Several of the previous chapters in this text dealt with broadcast writing. The principles of good reporting, a commitment to accuracy, a solid lead sentence, and other fundamentals are consistent regardless of whether the format delivery is a five-minute radio update or a 30-minute television newscast.

The obvious difference is the lack of video when constructing a radio story. While television can rely on strong visuals to carry a weak story, radio journalists don’t have that luxury. Instead, they must be more descriptive in their wording, using the power of their narrative to convey a news report without benefit of pictures.

The brevity of most radio newscasts compounds this problem further. Typical newscasts at a radio station may last for only three to five minutes. The result is twofold: The radio journalist is, first, more selective in the stories that make it on air, and, second, the surviving stories must be crafted carefully. While every second counts in a television newscast, that constraint is more pronounced in a brief radio newscast.

Fortunately, there are techniques for both writing tight stories and structuring radio newscasts so the final product is concise, informative, and entertaining for the listener. We’ll begin by first deciding which stories are the first to be written for a typical radio news update.

WRITING FROM THE BACK

One thing that just about all newswriters agree on is that the first stories they write are those that will not change. Working in this way is called writing from the back because the stories that are not likely to change are usually those that are read in a later part of the newscast.

“Breaking” stories, as their name suggests, will probably change considerably before air time, so they should be written last. Conversely, a non-breaking story of an upcoming event (for example, a food drive) will not require any rewrites, as the information about the location, time, and date won’t change in the next few minutes.

THE LEAD STORY

The method for selecting the first story in the newscast—the lead story—may sound simple: Just pick the most important story. But how do you decide which story is most important? Should a local, national, or international story be the lead? Does the time of day affect the decision? Will any of the stories affect the local audience in some way? The answers to these questions can help you determine which story should lead the newscast.

Most of a station’s listeners will be more interested in what is happening in their community than in the rest of the world. There are exceptions, of course, such as during the terrorist attacks on the Trade Center in New York on 9/11 or the presidential election of 2016 when most Americans turned on their radio and TV sets to get the latest news. But now, let’s examine how we decide what’s news to a local audience on a relatively normal news day. News in a town of 5,000 is not necessarily news in a city of 50,000. And what is considered news in that medium sized city may not be too important in a city of a million or more. Here are some story choices on a typical day at a radio station in the town of Wheatland, population 400:

■ The president says he is encouraged by the progress being made in the baseball strike negotiations.

■ The Labor Department says unemployment rose another one-half of one percent.

■ The governor says he will make major cuts in services and state workers’ jobs rather than raise taxes.

■ The wife of Wheatland’s mayor gives birth to triplets.

The story of most interest in Wheatland, and the story that most listeners would be talking about that day, is the birth of triplets to the mayor’s wife. But 100 miles east, in the state capital of Jefferson City, Missouri, the birth would be less important, and the governor’s comments on cuts in jobs and services would be the top story. The network newscast would lead with the jump in unemployment because that story holds the most interest for a national audience.

Suppose we add another story to the list: A three-car accident on the freeway near the state capital. While the story may not sound too important, suppose the accident was at 8am and those three wrecked cars created a gigantic traffic jam. It most certainly would be the lead story on the 8am news for stations in the capital because that is “drive time,” the highest rated listening period for radio. The people listening to their radios on the way to work are more con cerned about when they will get to the office than they are about the governor’s comments on taxes and jobs. How about the audience in Wheatland? Because the accident took place over 100 miles away, the Wheatland listeners would have no interest in it. The network radio audience would not even know about the accident because it would not be important enough to make the AP wire.

Keep in mind that when you start to prepare your newscast, you should not be overly concerned about which story will lead it. The chances are that what appeared to be the most important story an hour earlier may be overshadowed by a new story that broke before air time. That is the nature of the news business. On some very busy news days—unlikely in Wheatland—a story that was considered the lead at one point may not even get into the newscast. That’s why each story should be on a separate sheet of paper to allow for a quick reshuffling of the script.

FIGURE 15.3 Microgen/Shutterstock.com

THE REST OF THE NEWSCAST

You can use the formula you established for choosing the lead story to pick the rest of the stories in the newscast. Once you have selected the lead, determine which of the remaining stories would hold the most interest for your audience, then the next most interest, and so on. The stories would then be broadcast in that order.

There are important exceptions to this formula. Sometimes it makes sense to place stories back to back because they have something in common. During the war in Iraq, for example, it was not unusual for newscasts to carry a report of the fighting and then follow it up with a story from the White House or Congress concerning some political aspect of the military action. Those two stories were often followed by a third that might have been a reaction-type report to the invasion of Iraq from Congress or even a poll of American opinion on the invasion.

Another example would be the linking of weather-related stories. If part of the nation is suffering a drought and another section is in the middle of serious flooding, it is logical to report those two stories together in the newscast. Without such logical connections, the rule is to report the news in its order of importance.

LOCALIZING THE NEWS

When writing for a local station, always look for some local angle in national and international stories. If a British airliner crashes in Europe, the first thing to check is whether any Americans were on board and, if so, whether any were from the local listening area. If there is overseas military action involving American troops, an interview with service personnel from the region is a solid addition to the newscast. The same rule of thumb holds true for a nationwide drought (find a local farmer), a slump in the housing market (track down a nearby realtor), or a national story on tax cheats (look for an accountant or tax preparer).

Remember, if someone wins a multimillion-dollar lottery, it’s a good story. But if the person happens to be from the listening area, it’s a great story.

STORY LENGTH

The length of a story is determined by the length of the newscast, the importance of the story, and the availability of news at that particular hour. If there is not much news to report, the stories may have to be longer than they would be normally. If there is a lot of news, most stories should be short to allow sufficient time for the major stories.

Name—Dustin Swedelson

Job Title—Producer

Employer and Website—Sirius XM Mad Dog Sports Radio, Los Angeles, CA; http://www.siriusxm.com/maddogsportsradio

Social Media Outlets I Use—Facebook, Twitter

Typical Daily Duties—Guest booking, audio editing, social media, show organizing.

The start of each day actually begins a few days prior. I never head into a day without having some sort of plan of action set up earlier in the week. Of course, you always have to be flexible in this business for breaking news but as John Wooden said: “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

I am basically thinking about my show most of the time that I am awake each day. I begin by monitoring social media that I missed while asleep on the West Coast. I turn on my TV and flip through news and sports channels while reading up on the latest sports stories online. I do listen to other sports–talk radio outlets but I try not to take in too much because I want all of my ideas to be original and truly my own.

At this point, if I don’t already have guests booked for that day, I begin tracking people down who can help offer perspective to major stories. On most days, my host and I will communicate if there is anything we need to discuss prior to the show.

I head to the office between 2:00 and 3:30pm each day. It’s there that I begin laying out what I have and what I need for the show. I track down any funny or newsworthy audio that I think we can use that day. I usually wind up having more audio ready to play than we actually use. The thought behind this is that I will use the absolute best sound first, work my way down and only use the lesser sound if we are in a bind.

Once I have organized the audio I want to use, I create a sound sheet list that corresponds to how I have organized the audio in our system. This way my host knows what we have, where it is, and what is said in each piece. I put this into my rundown, which is how I organize the show.

My rundown features the basics of the show: Show name, host and producer names, our call in phone number, our Twitter handle, and Facebook page information. Below all of that I put a chart that represents each segment of our program. Within those boxes I put what we plan to do that segment. This can be an interview with a guest, a planned benchmark segment or a live/promotional read.

After all of this is done I begin working on those benchmark segments I mentioned before. There are some segments we do nightly that involve off–beat news stories, playing and reacting to sound and unveiling our poll question of the day. Other segments we do only on certain days. Once all of that day’s segments are completed I can sit back and monitor any breaking news or live games as I await the start of the show.

When we go live on the air at 8:00pm I transition from planner mode to reacting mode. I listen to show closely not only so that I can interact with my host when he needs me but to mark audio that I might want to use later. This audio is used for creating production, posting onto social media to promote the show, making promos that air on our platform, and more. I also control the show and channel’s social media handles. This involves posting information about what we are talking about, informing followers when certain guests join us and trying to interact with listeners who don’t like calling in. While doing all of this, I also screen calls from people who want to join our show to discuss whatever it is we might be talking about that day.

After the show ends at 11:00pm I still have plenty to do. I begin by posting our show and individual interviews from that day On Demand, which is SiriusXM’s version of podcasting. After doing that I put any audio from the show that I think showcases what we are doing in a unique way onto social media. Next, I go back through all of the audio I marked throughout the live show, isolate it and save it for later use. I wrap up my day my taking anything I heard that is worthy of becoming a 30–second promo and work on that. This usually happens close to midnight. It’s at this point I look what we have planned for tomorrow and make a list to remind myself of anything I might have to do when I wake up the next day.

I then do all of this again.

Before you start to write, you must determine how much time you actually have for news in a newscast. Most newscasters read approximately 15 or 16 lines of copy per minute. So, for a three-minute newscast, you would need approximately 45 to 48 lines of copy. Again, this can vary greatly due to the speed of the individual.

But is the newscast really three minutes long? Probably not. Let’s say there are two commercials, each running 30 seconds, in the newscast, which leaves two minutes of news. If there is a 20-second weather report, and maybe ten seconds for stocks, and another five seconds to sign off, the two minutes have been reduced another 35 seconds. What is left is one minute and 25 seconds. If that time is converted to lines, you have about 23 lines in which to cover all the news. That is why you must learn to condense your news copy. You may have as little as three lines to tell some of those stories.

ACTUALITIES AND FIELD TECHNOLOGY

The voices of the newsmakers on a radio newscast are called actualities or sound bites. They are the heart of radio news. A good writer can tell the story without the actual voice, but he or she faces a greater chal lenge. Even the best newswriters would tell you that if given a choice, they would rather have the actual sound bite provide the color instead of their paraphrase of what was in the sound bite. Regardless of the writer’s and newscaster’s talents, it’s not possible to capture all of the nuances in a sound bite with a paraphrase and the newscaster’s voice. How can anyone better express the remarks of New York City cab drivers than they themselves? And how would the newscaster make up for the missing sounds of the city in the background—the natural sound—without that digital recording?

Fortunately, recording technology has caught up with the speed required for radio news. Previous generations of radio producers lugged reel-to-reel audio recorders into the field, conducted interviews, then returned to the studio for editing. This postproduction was accomplished by physically cutting the tape with a razor blade and splicing it back together with tiny strips of tape. It was a laborious, time-consuming process that required accuracy, patience, and a very steady hand; once the tape was sliced, the producer was committed to using that segment for a sound bite.

Today, field recording is digital. The equipment is much lighter, more durable, and tapeless. The typical equipment set up consists of a microphone, a small digital recorder, and a cable connecting the two. The fact that built-in microphones have improved dramatically in recent years often leads to reporters leaving the microphone and cable at home, as the interviews can be neatly conducted with just the digital recorder.

Once the actualities are recorded, the interview can be uploaded into the computer’s audio editing program, such as Adobe Audition, in a matter of seconds. The audio tracks then appear as individual strips that can be edited or mixed as desired. Unlike the previous editing with razors, unwanted audio edits can be undone with a click of the mouse.

Not all actualities require field recording; again, technology has caught up with the industry. Most radio stations’ phone lines can be recorded into computer inputs as well, thus allowing the interviewer to simply phone the subject. Of course, this requires a clean phone signal. Far too many phone interviews suffer from poor quality because the interviewee is on a cell phone with a marginal signal.

STUDIO TECHNOLOGY

This same computerized technology is available in the studio. It is common for radio news announcers to voice track a number of news breaks in a row. Voice tracking means recording the news break in advance on a computer drive and then uploading it as an audio file to be played when needed. This is especially popular with news-talk stations, in which a nationally syndicated program, such as Rush Limbaugh, airs for three hours every weekday. At the top of the hour, a five-minute break is left for local stations to add in advertisements, national news feeds, or local news inserts. With dedicated computer software and minimal training, the news announcer records a news break and inserts it into the master playback log. The advantages are that the announcer can do all of the recording in advance and need not wait in the studio for the next news break. Additionally, the timing of the news breaks can be exact, as the audio recording technology allows for editing, compressing, and ex panding the words to fit the exact time required. With this tech nology, pad copy and back timing (as explained below) are used less often.

FIGURE 15.4 wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com

WRAPAROUNDS

The combination of sound and words is known as a wraparound. This technique, as the name suggests, uses the voice of the newscaster or reporter at the beginning and end of a story or report and the voice of the newsmaker in the middle. You might want to think of a wraparound in terms of a sandwich. There can be more than one thing between the two slices of bread. Wraparounds often have more than one sound bite in the middle. The anchor or reporter may wrap several different pieces of sound with script. Here’s an example:

A Conrail freight train today left the tracks near Wheatland, causing some major problems for passenger trains that also use the tracks. Railroad officials say the locomotive and eight of the train’s 14 cars were derailed. They blamed a broken rail. Remarkably, there were only two injuries—to the engineer and his assistant—and they were not serious. Engineer Brian Potter spoke to us at the hospital.

(sound bite) / 15 sec.

Outcue: “. . . I was plenty scared.”

Potter is in good condition at Wheatland General Hospital. The train was on its way to California with a load of steel and lumber when the accident took place shortly before midnight. Freezing temperatures— dipping into the teens—will make the job of cleaning up a very unpleasant one and will hamper efforts to get service back to normal. But Conrail spokesman Mark Florman is optimistic.

(sound bite) / 20 sec.

Outcue: “. . . we will know more in a few hours.”

Florman also said that Conrail passenger trains will be detoured, causing some delays probably for 48 hours. With your local news, I’m Randy Springfield.

LEAD-INS

Every sound bite, wraparound, and report from the scene included in a news script must be introduced by a line or phrase known as a lead-in. Here is one possible lead-in the anchor could have used to introduce the train wreck wraparound if it were done by a reporter at the scene:

Cleanup is ongoing after an afternoon train wreck in Wheatland. Reporter Randy Springfield has the details.

(Take wraparound) TRT 1:10

Outcue “. . . With your local news, I’m Randy Springfield.”

The most important thing to avoid when writing a lead-in is redundancy. One of the worst style errors is a lead-in that says exactly the same thing as the first line of the wraparound or sound bite. The way to avoid this problem is for the anchor and the reporter to discuss in advance what each is going to say.

TEASES

The short sentences used in a script to hold the audience’s attention just before a commercial break are called teases. The idea of a tease is to give the audience some reason to keep listening, rather than turning the dial. This is best accomplished by giving just a hint of what is to come after the commercial. The cleverer the tease, the greater the chance the audience will put up with the commercial. If the train wreck wraparound were to follow a commercial, this is the way it might be teased: “Freezing temperatures add to the problems of a Wheatland train wreck. That story after this [commercial].”

If the news is long enough, or being written for an all-news station, it’s effective to tease two or more stories before going to a commercial. Such a tease gives the writer more opportunities to hook listeners. If they are not interested in the first story that is teased, they might go for the second or third one.

HEADLINES

Headlines are another form of tease. Headlines come at the top of a newscast and should reflect the most interesting and exciting stories to be covered in the upcoming newscast. Often, a headline for an offbeat story is an effective tease. Here is a sample:

■ A tornado rips through a small Missouri town, killing six people.

■ The cost of living climbs for the third straight month.

■ Governor Rollenhagen says he will veto legislation that would restore the death penalty.

■ And a pet cheetah scares a lot of people when he decides to take a walk down Campbell Street.

■ Those stories and more on the 6 o’clock news.

■ Good evening, I’m Tracy Simpson.

Some radio newscasts start with only one headline: “Six people die in a tornado in Missouri. Good evening, I’m Tracy Simpson with the 6 o’clock news. The tornado ripped through Nixa, Missouri . . .” Many stations, particularly those that have shortened their newscasts, have eliminated headlines completely on the grounds that they are redundant and take up too much time. On many other radio stations, the only news is the headlines.

FIGURE 15.5 ESB Professional/Shutterstock.com

PAD COPY

Copy written for protection against mistakes in timing and unexpected changes in the newscast that could affect the timing is called pad copy. Most of the time, such copy will not get on the air, so the stories that are selected as pad copy should be relatively unimportant.

Because most radio newscasts are relatively short, pad copy normally consists of only a few short pieces totaling perhaps between 30 seconds and a minute. More pad copy might be written for longer newscasts.

Note that the chief reason for pad material is to avoid one of the scariest situations in broadcast news: Running out of something to say before the program is scheduled to end. With prerecorded newscasts, the need for pad copy has been greatly reduced.

BACK TIMING

Getting off the air on time for a live newscast takes some planning. If a newscast runs over, or is short, it sometimes can create problems for the programs that follow the news. This is particularly true if network programming comes after the newscast.

One method to guarantee that this situation does not happen is called back timing. The final segments in the newscast are timed and then deducted from the length of the newscast. Let’s look at an example. Suppose the last two items in a newscast are the stocks and weather. Both are timed. It will take ten seconds to read the stocks and another 20 seconds for the weather. The standard close for the newscast takes another five seconds to read. The newscaster will need 35 seconds, then, to read the last three items. So, 35 seconds are deducted from the total time of the newscast. The newscaster now knows that he or she must begin reading those three final items at exactly 2:25 into a three-minute newscast. The three final items should be placed in a separate pile within easy reach on the studio table. The time 2:25 should be written boldly on the top page of this back-timed copy. When the clock reaches the 2:25 mark in the newscast, the reader simply picks up the three pages and begins reading them, regardless of where he or she is in the newscast. Some stories may have to be dropped, and often they are, but that is the only way to guarantee that the newscaster gets off the air on time. In newsrooms that are computerized, the timing and back timing are done by the computer itself.

CONVERGENCE AND RADIO NEWS

With the digital technology now available to create and store newscasts, radio newscasts are prime examples of online convergence that can be easily delivered. Once a radio news break has been recorded onto the hard drive, it is a simple matter to move that file onto the station’s website. From there, listeners can click the newscast and hear the prerecorded stories via popular software like Windows Media Player or iTunes. The only concern is that someone at the radio station must frequently update those audio clips, lest old news is offered on the website.

This delivery solves one of the great difficulties of radio news, which is that a listener cannot go back and “relisten” to a newscast on the air. If a radio station actively posts their radio newscasts, it is another vehicle to attract listeners. In this era of declining local radio news, employees may find that this form of web delivery is required for them to maintain their listening audience.

SUMMARY

Working in a radio operation in a small market has always been a good way to break into broadcast news, although many people seem to find the glamour and the pay of TV more appealing. At a small radio station committed to news, you receive a wonderful opportunity to learn how to do everything; you might end up being the writer, reporter, announcer, and technician. In this era of automation, you might be the only “live” person in the building.

As the sole member of the news staff, you would quickly learn how to organize your time and effort because you would have little or no help. Your news judgment would be tested every day. You would get an excellent opportunity to hone your writing and reporting skills. You would also be preparing yourself for the next job in a bigger market.

Even if your main interest is television, the things that you learned in this chapter are important because radio news provides an important foundation for work in television news. The principles of radio newswriting, reporting, and announcing also apply to television news. You will be required to make some adjustment because of pictures, but if you have absorbed the material in this chapter, you are well prepared to move along.

Finally, while radio does not enjoy the dominance it once enjoyed as a news leader, it still has the ability to offer timely information to listeners. Breaking news, updated traffic reports, and weather updates are vital to an audience that’s both at home and driving on the road. Radio news isn’t dead; it’s evolving in a new direction in this media landscape.