Archive for May 14th, 2008
Just take a look at this post on WestSeattleBlog.com and the subsequent comments after a shooting broke out in the neighborhood. While police searched for suspects — a chopper swirling overhead — readers in the area posted comments with observations and questions, which the West Seattle Blog (WSB) worked to answer. “Thanks for the late night work WSB. My wife and I aren’t able to sleep,” says one commenter. “I live so close, info like this is invaluable,” says another. A new level of interactive journalism, folks. (We wrote about the West Seattle Blog earlier, right here.)
May 14th, 2008
If you work in local TV news, what percentage of your interns in the last couple years have said they want to become anchors? In my experience, the number is 50 percent or greater. But let’s look at the trends. News consumption is shifting fast to the “anchorless” internet. Stations are negotiating anchor salaries down and even moving some shows to a single news anchor format. Layoffs are growing increasingly common, and some TV stations are dropping news altogether. While I don’t like to shatter an intern’s anchor dreams, it’s time for a dose of reality. Journalism schools, as a public service, should strongly discourage students from pursuing an anchoring career. The emphasis should be on the “do-it-all” multimedia journalist who can produce, report, write, shoot and edit both on TV and the web. Flexibility is key. As we saw from NBC Local’s announcement a few days ago, even the definition of “producer” is changing, and who knows what we’ll see five years down the road. Don’t get me wrong — anchors are important — but I can venture this prediction: we’ll see fewer anchors in the years to come.
May 14th, 2008
Diana Marszalek in TVNewsday does a great job wrapping up many of the niche sites that local TV stations across the country have recently launched. One that we haven’t mentioned here on Lost Remote is GoLo.com, a local social forum produced by WRAL.com.
The site (actually a subsection of WRAL.com) is less than a year old but has nearly 7,000 registered users. “GoLo.com grew out of WRAL.com [the station site],” says WRAL.com General Manager John Clark. “So many of the site’s viewers naturally went to GoLo to carry on community dialogue, post blogs and pictures. It was and still is a good fit.”
Also in the TVNewsday story, Fisher says it plans to launch a hyperlocal site in Bakersfield next month and Belo released a few stats on HSGametime.com (Full disclosure: I work for KING5.com, which is a Belo Corp. property.)
May 14th, 2008
