CBS News has broken new ground both behind the scenes and on the air in collaborating with local TV journalists. For the first time, the network enlisted the help of reporters at local affiliates in reporting an investigative story and…
“Coincidence or Cluster,” an investigation by the Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, Illinois, proves you don’t have to be a big news organization to make an online splash. The small-circulation daily put together a meaty online version of its six-part…
Everyone knows that newsrooms have been cutting staff and shrinking their budgets. When there aren’t enough people to get the daily job done, in-depth reporting can suffer. What’s to be done? Chuck Lewis thinks he has an answer. The founder…
Did they ever really go away? SPJ’s Jon Marshall contends that hidden cameras fell out of favor in TV newsrooms after the ABC News-Food Lion case in 1992. On his NewsGems blog, Marshall writes, “Fortunately, it looks like they’ve made…
Al’s Morning Meeting just featured a “how-to” for requesting FBI files on the famous and not-so-famous. WTTG-TV reporter Tisha Thompson is working on a series of reports involving the files and she shares what she’s learned so far. If you…
Too many good stories never make it on TV because they fail the “pitch test.” With resources tight and air time limited, news managers aren’t going to green light every story idea. If you want the opportunity to tell a…
How does he do it? Bob “Scoop” Phillips has spent half a century chasing breaking news in Dayton, Ohio, and he’s still going strong. Featured on the cover of this month’s News Photographer magazine, Bob is a reporter/videographer at WDTN-TV.…
At a recent workshop, a reporter complained that she got her assignments too late to do anything creative with them. She worked night side at her TV station and covered a lot of meetings. The assignment desk would tell her…
Reporters call it “door knocking” and most of them hate it. Joe Fryer of KARE-TV in Minneapolis, Minn., is no exception. The one part of his job that he absolutely loathes, Fryer says, is asking family members to talk after…
When Wired magazine first used the term crowdsourcing in 2006, it referred to “the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts.” It didn’t take long for news organizations to take advantage of that potential to develop and report stories. The…
