| CHAPTER 2 | |
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News |
Although this book focuses on writing, it takes as a given the reader’s acceptance of the basic tenets of broadcast journalism: to be accurate, fair, clear and interesting. Accurate because no manner of clever word weaving compensates for wrongful injury to the people we cover or the self-inflicted damage of a correction that could have been avoided. Fair if we are to be trusted. Clear because without clarity what we do has no meaning. Interesting because it really doesn’t matter what we do if no one’s out there listening and watching.
WHAT IS NEWS?
There are common characteristics or values that make up the typical news story:
1. Importance or significance. Some stories are news because they involve events that have a meaningful impact on people. War, famine, an outbreak of a dangerous disease are all significant on a global basis. A zoning decision or a school board election could be an important event in a small town. Generally, for an event to be significant or important, it should have a meaningful impact on a meaningful percentage of the audience. A fatal car accident on a lonely stretch of road may be a disastrous event for the people involved and the family, but it’s not a news story based on significance or importance. On the other hand, the story may well be considered news based on human interest.
2. Prominence. Some people—by virtue of who they are by birth or deed—make news no matter what they do. The president, a major Hollywood or sports star and British royalty all make news by doing almost anything at all. Or nothing. Some people acquire temporary prominence—their 15 minutes of fame—by some extraordinary action, good or bad. The person who rescues a family from a burning home and the newly accused serial killer both achieve a measure of prominence. Every area has its local prominent figures and characters, but few people rise to the level of prominence such that we recognize who they are by name alone.
3. Conflict. War is obvious, but conflict can just as easily be over ideas like abortion, charter schools, separation of church and state, any election and most crimes. If there were no “other side” or “opposing view,” then many of the stories we cover could simply be calendar listings rather than news stories.
4. Human interest. Some stories are just interesting. Yes, that includes the newscast filler of the waterskiing squirrels, but it also includes the wide range of stories that describe what we do with and to each other—like a daring water rescue in a faraway city or a child’s battle with a ravaging disease or that fatal accident noted above. CBS’s Steve Hartman and NBC’s Bob Dotson provide us with extraordinary stories that report on the human condition.
A story only needs to be strong enough in one of those four characteristics in order to be newsworthy, but many stories include more than one. The remaining two characteristics are relevant to every story—either positively or negatively.
5. Time. Time factors into all stories. A story is most newsworthy when it happens, but news ages quickly. Absent a new development, news generally has a life cycle of no more than 24 hours. A major event that breaks on the 6 p.m. news is likely to be on the 11 p.m. news and probably again on the next morning’s newscasts. The story might get on the noon news but would not likely air on the next day’s 5 p.m. newscast, and it certainly wouldn’t be repeated on the next day’s 6 p.m. news. But that’s only the case if there are no new developments. New developments restart the news cycle. Along with that overall life cycle, absent new developments, a news story typically becomes less newsworthy with each succeeding newscast. So time figures into every story or potential story as either an ally—if it just happened—or an enemy—as it ages. What about an old story that a journalist just learned about? Those are trickier. If the story isn’t too old, and if it has other strong values, the standard 24-hour life of the story will exist. But because the story is old (even if new to the reporter), the story must be stronger in other categories to get on the air at all.
6. Proximity. Again, all stories involve proximity since all stories are based somewhere geographically. As with time, proximity is either a help or a hindrance. Geographically, the closer the story is to the audience, the easier it is for the story to be considered newsworthy by other standards. Conversely, the farther away a story is from the audience, the higher the story must score in other categories to be considered newsworthy. The arrest of a small-town mayor for drunk driving will be a huge story in that small town. It might well be a small story in the nearest large city. A state or two away, the story will likely get no attention at all.
For a story to make it on the air, it must have one or more of the first four values in sufficient quantity to be worth telling, and it must pass separate tests for time and proximity.
BALANCING NEWS VALUES
There’s no absolute scale. There’s no way to assign numbers for every case and call something news if it exceeds some total score. Worse, reasonable people will always disagree on how important or interesting a story is. Part of the discrepancy is just human judgment. Part of it involves the background and interests of different people. Older people may find any story on Social Security to be extremely important, while younger people may be largely indifferent. Because the general audience is a diverse group, the people deciding what news is should have a similar diversity or the news organization may miss stories that a significant segment of the audience really cares about.
We put those definitions of what is news into practice in the day-to-day decisions of exactly what news to cover and how. That takes us to another list: the types of news stories that we broadcast.
TYPES OF STORIES
From a newsroom coverage and story assignment standpoint, stories break down into six categories.
Breaking News
More and more loosely defined, this is hard news that the station and the audience are just learning about that day. Breaking news has become the bread and butter of TV newscasts. Usually handled by live reporting, there’s no way to plan for the specific event; it’s simply what a station reacts to, preferably with a plan for responding to breaking news. Real breaking news will inevitably alter newscasts and coverage plans a station made earlier in the day.
Examples:
• A surprise political resignation
• A seven-car pile-up on the interstate
• A triple murder
• A flash flood or tornado or earthquake
• An unexpected major business development
Note that with rare exception, all the competing stations are likely to learn about the breaking news at just about the same time. They may react differently, but breaking news is seldom a secret or exclusive.
Planned Event Reporting
While some stations will label almost everything breaking news, much of what stations cover they knew about in advance. Calling it breaking news may work from a promotion standpoint, but it’s certainly not an accurate portrayal. This category includes coverage that comes out of a city council or school board meeting, a court case, a scheduled news conference. Anything that you knew in advance was going to happen.
Advancing an event would also be included in this category. That’s when a station does a news story before (in advance of) a school board meeting or any planned event. Ongoing coverage of an event also goes here—even if the original event was breaking news. For instance, hurricane coverage is breaking news, but the inevitable series of follow-up stories are really planned events because you know in advance that you’re going to continue coverage.
Examples:
• A story on the top agenda item on the evening school board meeting
• A story on the scheduled report issued by the city council or the state legislature
• A story on the scheduled local appearance of a prominent politician, actor, sports figure
A news organization reacts to breaking news, but planned event reporting—as the name makes clear—is planned. As with breaking news, all competing stations will normally know about the same planned events.
Enterprise Reporting
Breaking news may be a station’s bread and butter, but enterprise reporting, day in, day out, is commonly what separates the top stations from the also-rans. Enterprise reporting combines the hard news values you’d find in a breaking news story or a planned event, along with station exclusivity. It’s a story a newsperson comes up with by virtue of being observant, creative or maybe just lucky. The key is that other media don’t have the story. A hallmark of enterprise stories involves learning or discovering something that people didn’t know, realize or expect.
Examples:
• The discovery that a major local business is in serious financial trouble and about to lay off workers
• The discovery that a major public works project is way over budget and well behind schedule
• The discovery that a new principal at a local high school has established some really unorthodox approaches to education that really seem to be turning students around (or failing miserably)
Because these stories are exclusive to the station that came up with them, they’re more promotable, and they make a difference in where the audience turns for news.
Investigative Reporting
Real investigative reporting is enterprise reporting on steroids. Typically, this is where you learn something that others didn’t know—and that at least some people would rather you not know. Most often seen during sweeps or ratings period, this is the most time-consuming and therefore most expensive reporting there is. Anyone can make accusations. The key to good investigative reporting isn’t making accusations or raising questions, it’s about “proving” something.
Examples:
• Proving that a local politician has been accepting bribes
• Proving that a local nursing home has been abusing patients
• Proving that a company is knowingly selling an unsafe product
Special Segment Reporting
For the most part, these are usually either planned event reports or enterprise stories about a specific topic. They can be either harder news topics or softer features, but their existence is scheduled and built into various newscasts. Health and consumer reporting are probably the two most common. Stations also run what are sometimes called “franchises”—special segment reports that commonly air weekly.
Examples:
• Daily health report—especially done by a doctor employed by the station or an outside company
• “Mr. Food” or other cooking segment
• Pet or child adoption segment
• “On Your Side” or other consumer reporting segment
Features
Features have largely fallen out of favor these days. They’re typically nontimely stories about who we are and what we do to and with each other. Commonly, these stories have strong human interest aspects and frequently involve the secondary aspects of earlier breaking news or planned events.
• A follow-up on how a family is coping now that the primary breadwinner is out of work due to a plant shutdown
• A profile of someone who has overcome an obstacle
• A story about search and reuniting
• The story of someone with a bizarre hobby or collection
Stories can also cross lines to incorporate aspects of more than one category. The recovery and rehabilitation of a veteran returning from fighting in Afghanistan is a feature, although it obviously has a timely aspect to it. In fact, many if not most stories cross boundaries at least to some degree.
WHERE STORY IDEAS COME FROM
Stations get story ideas from a variety of places:
• Wire services like the Associated Press
• News releases from government, businesses and organizations
• Agendas from governmental or quasi-governmental organizations
• Scheduled news conferences
• Follow-up notes from previous stories
• Other media, including newspapers, books, magazines, radio, cable, blogs, tweets, other television stations and so on
• Story idea services and consultants
• Reporters and other newspeople who have seen something, talked to someone or just had an idea
• People who call the station with information, tips or stories
The wires supply a steady stream of news and information all day. Most of that news is national or international, but some involves state and local news. And stations are always looking for state, regional, national or international news that has local implications. A U.S. military plane that crashed on the other side of the world could have been made in your community. Or it might be that the same kind of plane is flown at a military base in your area. Or the crew flying that plane could have been stationed in your community some time ago.
News releases tell us what some organization or company or government agency would like us to run a story on. Maybe that’s a worthwhile story like a new program to help feed poor people. Maybe the information ties in with another story a reporter is working on. Maybe within the press release is information on a more interesting story. Maybe the information simply gets you thinking about a story idea.
Agendas tell us what’s slated to come up at various governmental or organization meetings. Some of the topics may clearly be newsworthy. Others we may need to call on to gather additional information. Remember the agenda doesn’t tell you what old or new business might come up that could be the most interesting news of all.
News conferences commonly tell us information that we probably should have found out already by good reporting. But sometimes that’s not possible, and the news conference also tells us when we’ll have access to people that we may want to question.
Every time we work on a story, we’re talking with people who should be giving us information that we can use for other stories. Sometimes those are stories related to the one we’re working on, and sometimes they’re completely different. Or maybe we just want to remember to follow up the original story that we did. If the story was meaningful enough to put on the air the first time, maybe we should keep track of it to provide progress or follow-up reports.
We constantly monitor other media to see what they have and to compare what and how we did with the competition. A good, timely story that we didn’t have might force us to play catch-up. An interesting feature might be worth putting aside to do on our own in a few months or so.
There are a number of private services that supply story ideas—and news consultants do that as well. Also, check out places like Al’s Morning Meeting at Poynter.org.
We’d also find a lot more stories if we just opened our eyes and our minds. What’s going on behind that new construction fence? Why is a school teacher moonlighting as a waitress at a local restaurant? Why does it take so long to register your car or get a new driver’s license? What are the issues your neighbors are concerned about or service people talking about? We all probably walk through a dozen good story ideas every day. Too often, we’re too busy with less important issues to see them.
Sometimes people call in great story ideas, but it’s rare. More than rare. Mostly, it’s people who feel abused and want to get even; it’s people who misunderstand something or how the system works, but they want the station to fix it; it’s people trying to get someone in trouble. Worse, there seems to be a rule requiring all strange people in America to call their favorite television station at least once a day. On the other hand, there was a very strange woman who called a large television station in the Midwest to complain that a U.S. congressman was having sex with her underage daughter. The woman was more than strange, but her underage daughter was actually having sex with a U.S. congressman. The award-winning story that came out of that call is why we listen.
THE ASSIGNMENT DESK
The assignment desk is the nerve center of the newsroom. Commonly overseen by the assignment manager or managing editor, the assignment desk monitors police, fire and emergency frequencies on the scanners; regularly checks the wire services; makes regular calls to police, fire and hospitals (among others) to find out what’s going on; maintains the future file or daybook to keep track of scheduled events for the day, the week, the month and the year; handles the logistics of pairing photographer and reporter (assuming they’re separate); and makes sure events are covered, people are where they should be, even whether crews are getting off for meals.
The assignment desk works with producers, managers and others to make sure that everyone is on top of events of the day and how the newsroom is going to deal with them.
THE MORNING AND AFTERNOON MEETINGS
In order to determine how to deploy newspeople and what stories to run on the day’s newscasts, most stations have a morning meeting, usually starting around 8:30 a.m. or 9:00 a.m., running no more than a half hour or so. The morning meeting sets the agenda for what the station plans to cover that day and determines, in large measure, what will air on the early evening newscasts, assuming that breaking news doesn’t alter the landscape.
Who runs the morning meeting varies from station to station. Commonly, it’s the news director or assistant news director, managing editor or executive producer. In other words, one of the top managers in the newsroom. Sometimes it’s the assignment manager or assignment editor. Some stations rotate the person in charge.
Who attends the meeting varies as well. Some stations require everyone who’s working in news at that hour to attend and participate; others require only a small group of managers, assignment editors and producers, with reporters welcome but not required; others are somewhere in between. In some cases, everyone is required to propose an idea; in other places, reporters simply wait to be handed an assignment.
Who isn’t there? The morning producer is likely done for the day, since the morning show is already over. The noon producer may listen in, but the noon show is already set unless a reporter will cover something in the morning that might offer a live shot possibility for noon. The nightside producer and crew aren’t in yet. The point is, the meeting is primarily about the late afternoon/early evening newscasts.
As stories are discussed and accepted or rejected, producers of the various late afternoon/early evening newscasts are likely to claim stories for their shows. Generally, it’s not a battle of equals, with the 6 p.m. producer getting the first shot because that’s likely to be the newscast with the largest audience. Even that varies, however.
In order to determine what to cover, stations—whether implicitly or explicitly—ask two fundamental questions:
1. What’s important?
2. What are people talking about?
A station commits its resources in response to the answers to those two questions. When a single story is the top answer to both questions, then you have a clear lead story for the day. More often, the answers are different and less definitive.
Commonly, stations have a second assignment meeting in the afternoon, usually around 2:30 p.m. or 3 p.m. This smaller meeting involves the “nightside” crew—afternoon/evening assignment editor, 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. producer, night-side reporters and, perhaps, others. The concept is the same as the morning meeting, but the target is the late evening newscast. At some stations, the afternoon meeting includes a late review of the early evening newscasts and an assignment desk handoff from the dayside assignment editor to the nightside assignment editor.
SUMMARY
The basic tenets of broadcast journalism—or any kind of journalism—involve a newsperson being accurate, fair, clear and interesting. What we call news isn’t simply random facts, it’s material that contains one or more of four basic news values: importance, prominence, conflict and/or human interest … and passes additional hurdles of timeliness and proximity. From a station coverage standpoint, those news stories break down into six categories: breaking news, planned event reporting, enterprise reporting, investigative reporting, special segment reporting and features. Ideas for those stories come from a wide variety of sources and are discussed at the morning and afternoon meetings, where the late afternoon and early and late evening newscasts are planned in response to two underlying questions: What’s important and what are people talking about?
KEY WORDS & PHRASES
accurate
fair
clear
interesting
importance or significance
prominence
conflict
human interest
time
proximity
breaking news
planned event reporting
enterprise reporting
investigative reporting
special segment reporting
features
the assignment desk
future file or daybook
morning and afternoon meetings
EXERCISES
A. Watch or listen to a local or network television or radio newscast and evaluate how each story measures up in terms of accurate, fair, clear and interesting. Check facts to see if the stories were correct. If the story involved something controversial, how were the different sides treated? Does treating people fairly mean giving everyone the same amount of time and space? Did you understand all of the stories? Were the stories interesting to you? Even if they weren’t, do you think others might find the stories interesting? If so, who?
B. Watch or listen to a local or network television or radio newscast. Do you think all the stories were really newsworthy? Might others think so? List each value or characteristic of news and score or explain whether each story scored high or low in that category. Why was each story on the air?
C. atch a local or network television newscast and determine what type of story each item was. Do you notice any organizational plan in the sequence of those stories? How does each story answer those two fundamental questions that stations ask to determine what to cover?