• News consumers “are hunting the news by topic and by event and grazing across multiple outlets.”  This puts more pressure than ever on journalists to make important news interesting and relevant.
• In trying to predict the future, the authors suggest that journalists must continue to figure out how to work with people formerly known as the audience in newsgathering and presentation of content:   ”One concept that will get more attention is collaborations of old media and citizens in what some call a “pro-am” (professional and amateur) model for news.”
• Journalists appear to be falling short in the area of objective news reporting.  According to the study, “72% of Americans feel now most news sources are biased in their coverage.”  The question — is objectivity an unattainable and/or outdated concept?  If unbiased coverage is still important, what should journalists do differently to migitgate bias? 
• Technology is causing news organizations to place greater emphasis on breaking news than ever before:  ”Shrinking newsrooms are asking their remaining ranks to produce first accounts more quickly and feed multiple platforms.”  It’s critical that journalists become familiar with the tools that allow information to be disseminated quickly.

Other key points from the study include more specifics on what’s happening to the audience — the news for local TV is not good.

We’ve been getting used to the news about such audience losses in the newspaper industry, but the following should serve as a wake up call for local TV newsrooms:

According to PEJ analysis of Nielsen data, viewership of the late news fell an average of 6.4% in 2009, four times the rate of a year earlier. Early evening news, at the dinner hour, fell 6.7% (similar to 2008). And early morning news, the programs that air prior to network morning shows that have been an island of relative stability for audiences, fell by 5.5% on average.

And it’s no surprise that the loss of audience has an impact on employment at local stations as well.

In local TV news, PEJ estimated that about 450 jobs were lost at stations in 2009, on top of 1,200 jobs lost in 2008. Despite staff reductions, the average amount of news increased to 4.6 hours, from 4.1 hours the previous year. Researcher Robert Papper estimates that local TV newsroom staffing peaked in 2007.

The report is rich in detail on the economic issues facing local TV, as well as the need for continued experimentation and innovation on the editorial and business sides of journalism organizations.

Jeff Achen is an interactive media strategist for GiveMN.org.  He recently wrote a column for Quill magazine on using still cams for video storytelling.

1.  Use a tripod.  Ah, a piece of advice near and dear to our hearts.  Achen says handheld video should be a last resort. 

2.  Shoot in sequences.  Achen says that, “Just as in still photography, good video is a series of snapshots and details.”  He suggests going for wide, medium and close shots and holding each for 10-15 seconds while shooting.

3.  Use your ears.  This may be the most challenging task for a still photogrpaher who’s usually not focused on the sound at a scene.  Achen says it’s important to “get close”  to the source of the sound.

4.  Use depth of field.  Here’s where the DLSRs offer an advantage over Flip cams and other low-end video cameras. 

One of the reasons you’re seeing professional filmmakers and videographers pick up the new video-enabled DSLRs is the versatility that Canon, Nikon and other pro lenses allow in depth of field.  As in photography, the manipulation of depth of field is a trademark of a true pro in the video realm.  Use your fastest lenses to get stunningly shallow depth-of-field shots of details and close ups.  Don’t be afraid to use shallow depth of field on interviews, too.

5.  Lock exposure.  Achens warn that DSLRs can be “tricky when it comes to exposure.  They may be set to automatically adjust, which results in distracting flickers in your video as the exposure adjusts in response to the slightest change in your field of view. ”  He suggests setting your shot and then using the AE lock.

6.  Let the action be the action.  This is standard, but solid advice — Achen advises against overuse of pans, zooms or camera motion.

7.  Learn to conduct interviews.  Ok, so this isn’t really a video shooting tip, but Achen also suggests that still photographers need to practice asking questions of the people they’re covering, so they’re able to tell better video stories.

While other sites, including the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report, linked to the story, mainstream news organizations started checking. Within half an hour, Radar posted an update based on “new information” that Roberts will stay on the bench. But the site continued to insist that its original story was well-founded:

Despite considering resigning from the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts will stay on the bench, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned. As RadarOnline.com was first to report, Roberts, 55, was considering resigning from the nation’s highest court due to personal reasons. RadarOnline.com has now learned Roberts will in fact remain as Chief Justice.

That night, NBC’s Brian Williams told a black tie dinner in Washington, DC, that his network’s Justice correspondent, Pete Williams, had knocked the entire story down in about seven minutes. “Let’s just call it ‘primary sourcing,’” Williams said.

But where did the story come from in the first place? Did Radar just make it up to generate Web traffic, as some commenters on the site suggested? Not exactly. Turns out, a professor at Georgetown Law School was trying to teach his Thursday morning class something about the credibility of informants. As David Lat writes at Above The Law, Professor Peter Tague told his class they’d be hearing big news the next day from the Supreme Court about Roberts’ resignation. He also told them not to tell anyone.

“It was an exercise,” Williams said, “but in 30 minutes it had been Tweeted out of the classroom” and you know the rest. “Facts are tougher,” Williams said. “Information is easy. Facts are very tough. They’re best when they’re right. And we’ve got to get it right every day and every night.”

Is there a lesson here? I’d say there are several. 1) No story is too good to check. 2) Mainstream journalism still has standards that set it apart from (much of) the blogosphere. And 3) Primary sources beat rumors every time.

Sixty percent of Americans told the Pew researchers that they get news from the Web on a daily basis, making it the third most popular source and beating out both newspapers and radio. About a quarter of those surveyed say they read news on their cellphones. And the vast majority of news consumers get their information from multiple platforms every day. Only 7% rely on just one type of source.

But according to the poll, television news remains considerably more popular than news on the Internet, especially local TV news. The Pew study found that almost 80 percent of Americans get their news from a local TV station’s newscast every day; almost three-quarters said they watch network or cable news.

That’s surprising, because other surveys and ratings reports have shown a steady decline in viewership for both network and local news over the past 20 years. The Pew Center itself reported in 2008 that just over half of those surveyed reported watching local TV news daily; 40% said they watch cable news and 30% watched network news. It doesn’t seem possible that daily viewership could have almost doubled in two years, does it?

Sourced from: NewsLab

“It’s kind of like a bricklayer knowing he needs to bring certain tools to the job to build a wall,” Schuh said. “He doesn’t think about, do I need a trowel…do I need a mixer, my pickle bucket? No, he just brings all that stuff and then he looks at the blueprint of a job and figures out what kind of wall am I building today.”  TV journalists, he said, need to be so certain about the tools of their craft–the shots and sound they need to do the job–that they can focus on simply telling a good story. As Schuh put it, “Once you’ve aced the mechanics of how you build a story, then you can worry about the story line and the plot, the quest, conflict and resolution, the reveal, all these other parts.”

With all the necessary elements in hand, Schuh has one simple goal when he sits down to write: “to get out of the way.”

One obvious step is to take a test run in the studio before you do it for real. Get comfortable with the teleprompter, especially if you have to run it yourself. Have someone talk to you on the IFB while you’re reading. If you don’t have your own earpiece, make sure there’s one available that fits you well so it won’t pop out on the air.

Randy Tatano has some additional, excellent advice on his blog at TV News Grapevine, including this tip:

Make sure you have plenty of breaks in the first newscast. Packages and vo/sots give you a chance to regroup. Nothing is worse for a rookie anchor than to have two straight minutes of copy at the top of the newscast, because if you stumble out of the gate you’ll be a snowball going downhill.

Tatano also suggests meeting with the director before the newscast to make sure you’re both on the same page. And one last useful bit of advice: Have water on the set. “Cotton mouth is a really common problem among rookies,” he says.

If you’ve found other useful ways of preparing to anchor for the first time, please chime in with a comment.

According to a national survey, the vast majority of reporters and editors use social media when researching stories. As MediaPost reports on the study by Cision and Don Bates of George Washington University:

Among the journalists surveyed, 89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter. The survey also found that 61% use Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia.

But just because journalists consult these sources doesn’t mean they use what they find without checking further. In fact, 84% of those surveyed said social media sources were “slightly less” or “much less” reliable than traditional media.

Another finding that’s probably no surprise: Journalists working for online publications are considerably more likely to use social media sources than journalists working for traditional media like newspapers and magazines. The study apparently did not include broadcast journalists.

What I am sure of is that the announcement indicates that the more multimedia skills a journalist has, them more job security.  Take a look at a couple excerpts from ABC News President David Westin’s memo to the staff:

In newsgathering, we intend to dramatically expand our use of digital journalists. We have proven that this model works at various locations around the world. We believe we can take it much further.

In production, we will take the example set by Nightline of editorial staff who shoot and edit their own material and follow it throughout all of our programs, while recognizing that we will continue to rely upon our ENG crews and editors for most of our work.

Some of the concerns expressed about all this are quite valid –  it’s going to be harder for ABC News to do some of the things it used to, and yes, quality may very well suffer.   But what’s the alternative?  Continuing to do the same old things in the same old way is definitely not the answer.

The topline summary suggests that pay-for-view news is going to be a tough sell as 79% of users say they would no longer access a Web site that charges them. 

However, the study also found that about 8% of people have already paid for newspaper content at some point and more than 40% say they would consider paying.  For radio news/talk, about a quarter of those surveyed say they might pay for the privilege of listening. 

Though the survey did not ask specifically about TV news, about 50% of people said they would consider paying to see “professionally produced video” (and yes, there was a separate category for theatrical movies).

But here’s the rub — the survey also indicates that “71% of global consumers say that if have to pay for online content it must be considerably better than what is currently available for free.”

The new report from Nielsen surveyed 27,000 consumers from 52 countries.

Guidelines like the RTDNA ethics code, which warns journalists not to “manipulate sound in any way that is misleading,” are a good starting point. But that general rule is open to interpretation and reasonable people may disagree.

A recent issue of News Photographer magazine quoted this sound advice from an ethics guide David Leeson developed for the Dallas Morning News:

Audio should always be presented in context. It is perfectly acceptable to edit out unwanted audio as long as the audio chosen for your story is used in proper context.

That leaves room for interpretation, of course, which isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe that’s why this set of guidelines on audio ethics from J-Source in Canada struck me as just a little too detailed in terms of what’s permissible.

It’s okay, even expected, that you will cut out ums, ers, long pauses, and other examples of verbal stalling – unless their verbal stalling is key part of the story, as in the case of a politician ducking tough questions.

It’s okay, even recommended, that you will cut out extraneous words.

In other words, it’s okay to make edits that help someone sound sharper, tighter, clearer. It’s just NEVER okay to change the meaning of what they said.

Yes, technology makes it easy to cut stuff out, but heavy internal editing can raise questions of credibility, even if your motive is simply to make someone “sound sharper, tighter, clearer.” If the person just doesn’t talk that way, isn’t it misleading to make them sound on the air as if they do? Leeson again:

In general, subjects should be presented…’as they are.’ If your subject naturally uses a lot of ‘umms’ and ahhs’ while talking then it could be inappropriate to remove them and change their natural way of speaking. Use good judgment.

“Cleaning up” bites used to be common practice in some newsrooms to save time or to make stories flow better. But these days, when the same audio is often available from lots of different sources, it’s easy for listeners to compare an edited version to the original. And that’s bound to raise questions about why stuff was taken out.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Sourced from: NewsLab