Tuesday, January 31

Crew Duty Over Break

BC Students Work Crew on Music Video














I ran late on posting this, but '04 Grad Jimm Needle tapped a few broadcasting majors to work on a music video and a documentary about making that video at Kennywood over the winter break. The video was for a band called Missing Pages.

Kirstan Gides, Luke Garrett, Josh Anderson, Justin Egley and Melissa DePaul ('05 Grad) were among those who joined Needle's "Kennywood Crew."

I want to thank Jimm for inviting students to come out and work on a very different kind of project. Don't forget to check out Jimm's work as director/producer for both creative and corporate clients up in the Cleveland area. BTW: '04 grad Jon Joy flew in from L.A. to direct the video for Jimm.

Sunday, January 29

Full-Time Students Take on Part-Time Directing Jobs on Competing TV Newscasts

BC Students
Now Dueling Television Directors
Congratulations are in order for Mike Wolenski and Luke Garrett as the two are working on the weekends as newscast directors for two of Youngstown’s television stations.


Junior BC major Wolenski joined WYTV (ABC) last summer. Senior BC major Garrett (with a BC Capstone Weblog) started at WKBN (CBS) this week. Both direct the weekend 6 & 11 newscasts at their respective stations.
Their weekend directing gigs at commercial stations show how hard work and dedication to broadcasting pays off. Wolenski and Garrett have achieved so much during their time at Westminster immersing themselves into becoming well rounded broadcasters.

Both have also served as directors for WCN for college and high school football and basketball games for some time now. Both have also worked as producers for WCN’s The County Line. Wolenski’s TCL duties include anchoring the show, reporting, directing and producing. Garrett also produces, directs and reports and recently wrapped up a stint as producer and host of the “On the Road” segment.

Wolensk and Garrett have answered the challenge of embracing everything from communications theory in the classroom to professional standards in the field . They have continued to hone their abilities in writing and journalism from the radio and television newsrooms to the web. They have mastered the technical and they have performed in front of the camera. Both young men now stand solid in their new positions because of this well-rounded journey at Westminster College.

Wolenski and Garrett will continue to excel and grow in any number of directions, creatively and professionally, due in part to their skill and experience linked to their diverse background at Titan Radio and WCN. These new opportunities at WYTV and WKBN will now allow them to make a rewarding transition from the college domain to the professional.

Tuesday, January 24

Outsourcing Local News to the Competition

Pittsburgh's Changing TV News Landscape
WPXI (NBC/Cox) in Pittsburgh has hired WPGH/Fox 53's Alby Oxenreiter as Channel 11 prepares to take over the 10 O'clock news duties on the Sinclair station on January 30. Oxenreiter is one of the lucky WPGH staffers with a new job as Sinclair dismisses its news employees and shuts down the Channel 53 newsroom.

Oxenreiter (who's married to Channel 11's Karen Wells) will do the sports for the 10 o'clock show while WPXI's John Fedko will keep doing his shtick at 6:25 & 11:25 (so far after the meter clicks why bother).

Cox & Sinclair call the move a partnership despite the fact the two stations have competed with each other in news and programming. It's really outsourcing, unless there's some other kind of deal in the works?

Another Interesting Development
I think it's also odd that this cross-competitor arrangement comes right before Time-Warner and Viacom announced the merger of the WB Network and UPN and create "The CW" network (CBS meets Time Warner) launching in September.


Currently in Pittsburgh WPGH (Sinclair) operates the WB Affiliate (Channel 22/WCWB) while KDKA (Viacom/CBS O&O) operates Channel 19/WNPA (UPN) where it does a 10 o'clock newscast. The merger means WNPA is "The CW" station in town. Channel 22 is left without a network affiliate when the deal goes through. But Sinclair is at least positioned with cheap, local outsourced news to weather the shake up. "The CW" announcement actually sent Sinclair stock tumbling.

Makes me wonder if WPXI (Cox) might be positioning itself to take over WPGH as WPXI is building a new station and tower in the same neighborhood with WPGH. Coincidence?

BTW: I predicted 53 would take the ax to its news department when it brought Jeff Alan on board to manage things. He has a serious history of shutting down news operations from Missouri to Texas. I remember I was in St. Louis a few years ago when Jeff Alan was the hatchet man on duty when Sinclair shutdown its newsroom at ABC affiliate KDNL.

Friday, January 6

A Tired Parade of Reaction Interviews

BROKEN NEWS:
Exploiting the victims & their families...

“Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry

You don’t really need to find out what’s going on

You don’t really want to know just how far it’s gone

Just le
ave well enough alone

Eat your dirty laundry”

(1982, Dirty Laundry lyrics by Don Henley from the album "I Can't Stand Still)


Moving from one mess to the next, the media circus in West Virginia has traveled up I-79 to Morgantown to Ruby Memorial Hospital and now to Pittsburgh’s Allegheny General Hospital to follow the lone survivor’s medical treatment from this week’s mining disaster. But little substantive, enterprising reporting has come out of the hundreds of reporters, photographers, freelance producers and bookers, satellite and audio techs, etc., chasing this story.

Right now it’s all about getting wave after wave of reaction from the victim’s families—exploiting private pain—asking that lame-old question: “how do you feel?”
Newsbreakers
has satirizes this situation in the past with that groups take of asking “what’s the mood?”

This pathetic procession of interviews featuring victims and their grief fails to advance the story. How many interviews and follow up interviews and follow up to the follow up interviews does it take before the market for victim and family reaction is saturated. When is it time to leave these people alone?

How many times can the same newspaper, the same local or cable news operation or network news magazine announce to the world that they have an exclusive interview with the survivor’s wife or the widow or the son of one of the dead miners.

Sure these families agree to talk, but how tacky, even ghoulish is it to ask them to talk over and over-- night after night-- from Larry King Live to Dateline NBC. How many different interviews does a single network need-- separate ones for GMA, Primetime Live, 20/20 & World News Tonight? But hey, I bet someone has promised someone a trip to Disney World as they prepapre a network pitch for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. What's next, a walk on appearance during the The Bachelor. It may happen as these families and now the doctors are becoming
pseudocelebrities in this tragic reality show playing out live on TV.

And speaking of doctors, I've always wondered what happens with the tightened
HIPPA regulations protecting one's personal and private health information in these cases. It's impossible to find out the condition of a shooting or traffic accident victim for a local story, but what kind of paper work do they file waiving HIPPA so doctors can hold these news conferences. Then these physcians, who pledged to do no harm, appear live on the Fox New Channel and MSNBC revealing intimate medical details to the world. Wouldn't one simple news conference be enough for eveyrone-- why do the doctors need to talk one-on-one with every cable news anchor over. Should they get agents to handle all the bookings? What's next, appearance fees?

The scheduled news conferences would also seem an appropriate place for the media to exact its pound of flesh from these poor souls. But it's immediately after the news conferences end that the network & cable news swoop in with their freelance field bookers and producers armed with gifts, cash and even cell phones to make sure they secure a one-on-one, live interview with yet another coifed talking TV head.

From exposing and showing the notes from the dead miners to chasing down family members in the hospital cafeterias. From stalking church members to eavesdropping at local diners. These are just some of the tactics local reporters covering this story have noted to me. They characterize it as nasty and cut-throat when it comes to the behavior of the network and cable freelancers. It’s even come to near shoving matches in a few cases.

It would appear the networks insulate themselves from accusations of checkbook and driveby journalism by using these hungry freelancers. That way if complaints of unethical practices go public, the suits at the network can distance themselves by saying that sort of thing goes against company policy and employee of their news organization would never do such a thing.

When I teach BC 111 (Broadcast Writing) this semester, I’ll definitely use this as a learning moment about the problem of sensationalism, the danger of becoming too competitive, the rush to be first and lameness and sameness of this type of reporting. It merely exploits and sensationalizes the pain and suffering of victims and soils the credibility of the professional journalist engaged in more ethical practices.


One resource I will likely tap into for all my journalism courses this semester will be the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma--a resource of guidelines and ethical approaches for journalists covering stories such as the mine disaster. Perhaps scolding the members of the media circus currently in town is futile. But I can offer my students lessons learned and tools to develop the character and credibility they need to change the things we've watched go horribly wrong during this week's coverage.

Thursday, January 5

Turning the Spotlight on the News Media

MORE ON THIS WEEK'S
BROKEN NEWS


Liz Farry, Executive Producer for our Broadcast News Operations, sounds off on a number of items from laziness to reporter emotion contributing to the BROKEN NEWS situation at the mine disaster. You can link here to her weblog. I think Liz does a solid job puncing holes in Anderson Cooper's defense of how the CNN and the media handled the situation which you can read at the Milwaukee Journal.

Ian Durham (a West Virginia native, Westmisnter '05 grad and sports reporter for The Review in East Liverpool, OH) is highly critical of the sensationalism and hype. He sent me the following e-mail offering his take on the media frenzy at this mine disaster: Personally, I think the way the media is covering the mining disaster in is a joke. Sure, 13 miners trapped in a mine explosion/collapse is very gripping as far as a human interest story (so is a three-year-old stuck in a well), but it has been blown way out of proportion.

How can it be possible for such a blatant falsified rumor to be spread worldwide? I heard that 12 of the miners were alive and saved on the radio coming home from work at about 1:00am Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, I turned on CNN and saw the "Oops! Sorry, 12 of them died and the 13th that we thought was the only one that died is actually alive, but clinging to life."

It's sad that professional media would stoop to reporting completely false information gathered from unidentified and unreliable sources. As a media consumer, I want to know the truth. I don't care if I have to wait a few more hours for it. It's not ethical to report information such as this.Also, I believe the continuing coverage of every second of the surviving miner's existence and the publishing of the death note one of the deceased miners wrote is wrong. Sure, the public should be updated as to the 13th miner's condition, but the media is constantly outside the hospitals at which this poor man is fighting for his life. The other miner that wrote the note to ease his family's pain is a heart-felt story, but it's a PERSONAL story.

These two things, if any, are extreme breaches of privacy simply done to gather ratings.I'm sure we'll all see this in a made-for-TV-movie in a few months, anyways.

Wednesday, January 4

Communication & Ethical Breakdown

Broken News
Rushing to Be First Means Getting It Wrong at WV Mine Disaster

What happened to attribution, confirmation, using trusted & reliable sources?


You can put the blame it on the wolf pack mentality/media circus that took over in Upsher County, West Virginia, but the miscommunication of 12 trapped coal miners found alive when indeed only one survived is a telling symptom of the breakdown in ethical journalism in the wake of live, cable-driven coverage of such events. The media frenzy clearly demonstrates what can go wrong when emotions rule reporters, producers and editors.

In the heat of the moment of trying to break news and serve the master of “immediacy,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper and other broadcast outlets were just as culpable of adding to the pain. Most of the journalists failed to seriously question the “unofficial” information they were putting on live broadcasts. They failed to approach the rejoicing cautiously.

Journalists failed to nail down official confirmation. They failed to seek out the facts through multiple, trusted sources. Instead the professional journalists were lead around by emotional reaction from locals residents reconstructing their reality from what they heard passed around from second and third hand sources.

According to Editor & Publisher, "It's one of the most disturbing and disgraceful media performances of this type in recent years," as newspapers published headlines of “12 Alive” it clearly demonstrated how dedication to truth and fact finding was shoved aside for breaking a story based on hearsay.

"Journalists -- whether working in the field or in the newsroom -- should be professionally skeptical. Journalists should push constantly the "what if?" button. "What if that information isn't true?" "What if the source is wrong?" That professional skepticism is part of a vigorous checks and balances process that debunks rumors, reveals false assumptions and clarifies misconceptions. Ideally, professional skepticism produces high-quality, believable reports," writes Poynter Institute's Bob Steel.

While newspapers could quickly repair the headline and coverage snafus online, USA Today and other papers sent out second runs to replace their hardcopy mistakes. USA Today’s original story also veiled attribution to an unnamed source in the governor’s office is suspect of fabrication as West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin refuted the attribution to Matt Lauer who was bigfooting the story for the Today show.

Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz agrees that the media botched the story. He faults the journalists getting caught up as part of the story.

"You don't broadcast or publish until it's absolutely nailed down, or at least you hedge the report six ways to Sunday. This was, quite simply, a media debacle, born of news organizations' feverish need to breathlessly report each development 30 seconds ahead of their competitors," writes Kurtz.

Journalists need to revisit the guidelines for the truth and attribution and take a critical look at their role in all that went wrong. While they've been eager to shine a spotlight on someone to blame as they question mine officials about how this communication breakdown occurred , they've conveniently forgotten to shine that same light on their own behavior.

Reaction & criticism from the WC community:

  • Titan Radio News Director Amanda Hauger addressed the situation in her BC Capstone Blog.
  • Westminster Economics & Business Instructor Walt Dunlavey (he taught the Communication Law class last semester) responded to my posting with the following in an e-mail: "TV news shows, particularly cable TV news shows, are nothing but super market tabloids...one step shy of Jerry Springer."

Tuesday, January 3

New Sheriff in Town at News Talk 1020/KDKA

Congratulations to my buddy Marshall Adams as News/Talk 1020 KDKA in Pittsburgh has named him the new news director. Marshall leaves WBT-AM in Charlotte, NC. He's been a good friend over the years since we worked together at WPXI-TV. During the recent semester he reviewed Titan Radio newscasts for the BC 311/Broadcast Journalism students. Last year he hosted a Westminster intern at WBT.

Below is the news release KD sent out this week:

PITTSBURGH: January 3, 2006 – News/Talk 1020 KDKA radio announces the addition of Marshall Adams to the position of news director effective January 23, 2006.

Adams comes to News/Talk 1020 KDKA from WBT-AM in Charlotte, NC where he served as news director for the last four years. He is a former assignment editor at WPXI-TV and airborne traffic reporter at Metro Networks, both in Pittsburgh.

Keith Clark, VP Programming/CBS Radio Pittsburgh said, “News/Talk 1020 KDKA is the station Pittsburgh turns to for news and information. When we decided to hire a news director, we looked for someone who understood KDKA radio’s history of delivering award winning news coverage and could bring a fresh approach to that effort. Marshall’s experience as an anchor, reporter, editor and director covered all the bases. The news department Marshall ran at WBT-AM in Charlotte is world class and that is the benchmark here at News/Talk 1020 KDKA as we break new ground in local news reporting.”

A Harrison City native, Adams attended Penn-Trafford High School and Clarion University. He is looking forward to the opportunity to return home and work for KDKA radio. "I grew up in Westmoreland County, and my first impressions of radio news came from KDKA. I look forward to the honor and challenge of building on KDKA's rich heritage and making the news sound even better. I'm very proud to have the chance to lead and learn from the most talented anchors, reporters and editors in the industry."

Michael Young, News/Talk 1020 KDKA SVP-General Manager says, “This is a very exciting appointment for the KDKA News Department, and for the station’s overall on-air product. Marshall’s experience with major-market News/Talk stations combined with his roots in Western Pennsylvania make him the ideal choice to lead KDKA’s news coverage.”

Adams also was an anchor, reporter and editor at KTRH-AM in Houston and assisted with the station’s coverage of the Enron bankruptcy and the Andrea Yates child killings. Under his leadership, WBT-AM has won a number of news awards including AP “Best Newscast” and “Best Spot Coverage” plus the RTNDA’s prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award in 2003. He also has a close working relationship with CBS Radio News. KDKA is owned by CBS Radio and is a CBS Radio News affiliate.