WNCN-TV in Raleigh, NC is in a tough spot. The CBS affiliate, WRAL, is about as dominant as a television station can get and WTVD, the ABC shop in town is no slouch either. So this Media General station is…
Local TV station goes hyperlocal online
Month: March 2009
Specialized journalism will win
The Internet has taught old media plenty of lessons, but none more significant than this: “News as the product of mass production no longer seems sustainable now that it is feasible to create content for an audience of one.” So…
Media outlook bleak
There are few surprises in the sixth annual State of the Media report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The news business is in bad shape, especially local television. “Local television remained the nation’s most popular source for news,…
Twitter in the newsroom
Using Twitter as a resource can help keep a TV station on top of most local and breaking news. So says Patrick O’Brien, digital development director at WUSA-TV in Washington, DC, whom we introduced in an earlier post. O’Brien has…
J-schools revamp
At long last, journalism schools are changing what they teach in order to better prepare students for the media world that awaits them. This fall, the University of North Carolina will launch what it calls a “new curriculum for a…
Taking one for the team
After quarterback Kurt Warner took the Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl this year, the team offered him a new, two-year contract for a total of $23 million. Now, he’s offering to give some of it back, if it will…
Articulation matters
Delivering the news in a conversational way should not mean sounding sloppy on the air. Articulation makes the difference. If you suffer from “lazy mouth,” you may be hard to understand. Worse yet, you may lose credibility when poor articulation…
Newspaper video endangered?
Budget and staff cuts at newspapers mean fewer resources devoted to video storytelling, says Colin Mulvany, multimedia producer at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. Video has always been a hard sell at print-centric newspapers, Mulvany notes, but it’s getting even…
Mapping the recession
Maps can show the scope of a story in a way that words and pictures alone cannot. The New York Times has produced a simple map that shows the impact of unemployment across the country, county-by-county. Roll-over boxes show how…
The state of “convergence” in America’s newsrooms
Researchers at Rutgers and Arizona State universities surveyed hundreds of broadcast and print newsrooms about their convergence efforts in 2008. According to an article in the Convergence Newsletter, they found that about half of respondents had some sort of “cross-platform…