Fallout over WKRN, NashvilleisTalking
Cory Bergman July 9th, 2007
Yesterday we linked an article about WKRN’s uncertain digital strategy now that most of the station’s key executives have left. We’ve discovered a barrage of new reaction that includes former GM Mike Sechrist, NashvilleIsTalking’s former blogger Brittney Gilbert, architect Terry Heaton and some of the Nashville blogosphere. NashvilleisTalking itself does a great job summarizing it all, but pay special note to Heaton’s (or someone calling himself Heaton) frustrated comment on a Nashville blog. “Like everybody in corporate America, it’s all about the quarterly report to shareholders. Nobody invests in the future anymore,” he writes. “I don’t advise WKRN anymore, but if I have a voice that people in Nashville wish to hear, then hear this. NiT is there for the taking as a community venture. Take it and run with it.” In the meantime, new WKRN GM Gwen Kinsey hints at changes to come with NiT. “Like any innovation, change presents an opportunity to assess and evaluate,” she writes. “We are close to finalizing a working solution that will take NIT to a next step.” Some believe this may be downplaying NiT.
I find all of this very fascinating. As many of you know, I recently launched CitizenRain.com over at KING 5 — a Seattle version of NashvilleisTalking, but we took it a step further and split the blog aggregator into categories. The initial response and traffic have been strong, and I don’t really understand all the fuss over in Nashville. Engaging and empowering the original citizen journalists — local bloggers — is a natural progression for a local news and information company. If you ask me, the biggest question mark I have about WKRN’s online strategy is its practice of pushing video over text to the point it makes it difficult to browse WKRN.com for the news — just a little too ahead of its time.
8 Comments Add your own
1. Safran | July 10th, 2007 at 5:12 am
I can’t believe I just read Cory Bergman saying a local news site’s use of video was “too ahead of its time.”
2. Terry Heaton | July 10th, 2007 at 6:07 am
Nice, Cory.
3. tdc | July 10th, 2007 at 6:11 am
i’d comment, but being an ex-files watcher i’d probably come up with a conspiracy theory.
4. tdc | July 10th, 2007 at 6:12 am
sorry, that was X Files, not ex-files.
must have been thinking about my first wife.
5. Rob | July 10th, 2007 at 10:56 am
The legacy of NiT is going to be one of a ’successful failure’ … it exceeded the expectations of the organization in the short term and got people talking and communicating from Nashville to NAB, but personnel changes and concerns from corporate probably helped bring about its big, messy, public implosion.
The new GM’s boilerplate comments about evaluating and assessing NiT smack of corporate speak for let it wither and die as soon as the brouhaha dies down. Hope I’m wrong.
6. Ginger | July 10th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
“If you ask me, the biggest question mark I have about WKRN’s online strategy is its practice of pushing video over text to the point it makes it difficult to browse WKRN.com for the news…”
Yes! As the “average viewer,” there have been more than a few times that I have sent the powers at WKRN e-mails regarding the difficulty in navigating their website due to the rather large gray video screen in the middle of the page.
It’s ugly and makes for a very difficult search of the top stories.
7. jimwilson | July 10th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I found all of WKRN entirely too difficult to use.
Why do I want to watch a video of something that has no video *value* when I can read it MUCH easier and quicker?
Why have all the blogs that segregate all the content to the point that I have to go to 20 different URLs to get the days leading information?
And, I can’t do a search across all of it — that I can tell.
I feel like we have reached the point where comments on stories have the EXACT same effect as blogs, but keep everything under one easy to navigate and understand (and from the back-end program and maintain).
I seriously can’t even find the most popular blog posts on the WKRN site… something that could easily be done if these were all articles with comments…
Here are some easy fixes:
Move the blogs to become stories with comments and program them on WKRN section pages.
Make more non-video stories text.
Slim down the home page and segregate the content by content type. As it is now, its all just one long list.
Oh well.
8. Richard | July 10th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I really like that front and center video screen. I don’t need no stinking text, show me pictures.
I wouldn’t leave it gray though. Instead there should be some compelling video racked and ready to go.
By compelling of course, I mean beer-drinking bicycling bears.
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