Journalism

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for a news director in Los Angeles and a news producer in Raleigh, N.C.

Nexstar’s cable network gets a new name and will add two hours of news programming on weeknights beginning March 1 with Early Edition and The Donlon Report joining Banfield.

The station group taps Jonathan Forsythe as managing editor of its Verify anti-disinformation iniative. He will oversee the daily content production of Verify, including segments for television, web articles, social content and other products. He is also responsible for recruiting and managing Verify’s team of journalists, producers and audience-engagement specialists as well as working with Tegna stations to source story ideas and co-produce content.

Consistent branding that resonated with viewers, effective synergy between broadcast and digital and a simple, free marketing tool helped WDIV have a 2020 to remember.

Former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will announce today that she will run for governor of Arkansas in what will amount to one of the first tests of the battle for the future of the Republican Party.

Veteran anchor Ashleigh Banfield will helm an eponymous new primetime interview show for Nexstar’s WGN America in March. Her value proposition: offering an in-depth, quieter retreat from the ideological echo chambers elsewhere on cable news. “Eventually, you need a cleanse,” she says. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

The New York Times has received criticism for canceling the contract of editor Lauren Wolfe after she tweeted last Tuesday that she got “chills” over Joe Biden arriving in Washington, D.C., ahead of his inauguration as president. Wolfe, an award-winning journalist who has reported from war zones in Syria and Congo, became a trending topic on Twitter over the weekend as people expressed outrage over her ouster, called for her reinstatement and set up a Venmo account to provide financial aid.

A longtime nationally syndicated radio host, from 1985 through 2010 he was a nightly fixture on CNN, where he won many honors, including two Peabody awards. With his celebrity interviews, political debates and topical discussions, King was more than just an enduring on-air personality.

In my experience, panel discussions oversimplify, provoke outrage, and allow unchecked opinion to dominate at the expense of fact-based reporting. But in reporting the issue, I found there are more nuanced and dangerous reasons that the format dominates the airwaves.

Kamala Harris’ inauguration is an inspiring sign of progress — but it’s also a reminder of how challenging it is to increase racial diversity in the highest ranks of leadership. Sadly, the television station business stands as a sobering example.

The first official words by President Biden’s spokeswoman included truth and transparency. Wednesday night’s session with reporters, the first of the Biden administration, was so normal — so weirdly normal — that you could be forgiven for thinking that you had mistakenly put on an old episode of The West Wing. This return to norms is wonderfully welcome after the horrors of the past four years. It’s also potentially dangerous.

The 6.53 million people who watched President Joe Biden take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural address on MSNBC Wednesday was a whopping 338% bigger than its audience for Donald Trump’s swearing in four years ago, Nielsen says. On the flip side, Fox News Channel’s audience of 2.74 million for Biden on Wednesday represented a nearly 77% drop from its viewership for Trump in 2017.

A recap of notable moments from the historic inauguration of the 46th president … and the unusual departure of the 45th.

Michael Pack resigned as the chief executive office of the U.S. Agency for Global Media just minutes after President Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday. The agency runs the Voice of America and sister networks. Pack had created a furor when he took over the agency last year and fired the boards of all the outlets under his control along with the leadership of the individual broadcast networks. The actions were criticized as threatening the broadcasters’ prized editorial independence.

Forgoing any appeals for healing or reflection, right-wing media organizations that spread former President Donald J. Trump’s distortions about the 2020 election continued on Wednesday to push conspiracy theories about large-scale fraud, with some predicting more political conflict in the months ahead.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s first news conference with reporters on Wednesday stood in stark contrast to Sean Spicer’s first time before reporters four years earlier. Spicer made the plainly false claim that President Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd was the largest in history, which he later said he regretted. Psaki’s session was sedate, even boring at times, due at least in part to the newness of the administration.

“Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit.”

As Trump completes his time in office with made-for-TV images, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos says, “The image in my head is Richard Nixon in 1974.”