Journalism

ROXi’s FastStream technology allows local TV news organizations to create interactive versions of their broadcast TV news where viewers can pause, play and skip news segments instantly without need to download an app. The new format is designed to make broadcast TV compelling and attractive to younger consumers and build demand for NextGen TV devices.

Natalia Martinez, WAVE’s investigative reporter who executive produced the documentary, says “the response has been overwhelming. Viewers sent us messages and emails and called the station.” She says the volume of responses is unlike anything the station has seen.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for an account executive – trainee/new business development and existing jobs include 13 openings in news, sales, digital and engineering.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, PBS, NBC, NPR and The Associated Press are among those that signed on to the letter urging presumptive presidential nominees Joe Biden and Donald Trump to agree to debates this year.

Netflix has landed Rather, the documentary about veteran journalist Dan Rather‘s landmark career in news. The film, which premieres April 24 on the streamer, uses the story of of Rather’s life on television to also explore the evolution of broadcast journalism, the troubles a free press now faces, along with the slide of American society from hard-fought advances in social justice and democratic freedoms.

MacNeil first gained prominence for his coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings for the Public Broadcasting Service and began his half-hour Robert MacNeil Report on PBS in 1975 with his friend Lehrer as Washington correspondent. The broadcast became the MacNeil-Lehrer Report and then, in 1983, was expanded to an hour and renamed the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. The nation’s first one-hour evening news broadcast, it was the recipient of multiple Emmy and Peabody awards. He was 93.

Catherine Herridge — the acclaimed CBS News investigative journalist known for her reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal — accused the network of “journalistic rape” for seizing her files after she was fired. Breaking her silence during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday for the first time since her controversial dismissal in February, Herridge called the move by her former bosses an assault on journalism.

Kayleigh Donaldson: News of O.J. Simpson’s death on Thursday predictably inspired a lot of intense discourse. The footballer-turned-actor who was put on trial and found not guilty for the murder of his wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman never stopped being the subject of fascination and fury. It was called the Trial of the Century for a reason, after all. The Trial of the Century turned a tragic reality into public fodder, and we were never the same.

Time- and staff-starved newsrooms often cling tightly to practices they’ve always had, impeding their ability to take on newer, more relevant projects. Here are some practices to question and some enterprises that might better replace them.

ABC News was the most watched broadcast network during the two-hour period (2-4 p.m. ET) when the broadcast nets provided live coverage. Fox News, which simulcast Fox Weather’s coverage, led all the cable news networks in total viewers during the three-hour period (1-4 p.m. ET) when the cable networks offered coverage.

As NBC News Group chairman, Cesar Conde, is already busy overseeing the network’s broadcast and digital news operations, along with CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo and NBC-owned local affiliates. Yet the executive also has a second paid job. And a third — as a member of Walmart and PepsiCo’s corporate boards. The arrangement has raised some ethical concerns, and reveals a potential blind spot for a news business usually very serious about conflicts — real or perceived.

Two anchor jobs are being eliminated at WCPO, as the Scripps ABC affiliate in Cincinnati shifts priorities to invest in five additional reporters. Exactly who will be leaving and when has not been determined. “We are making changes to staffing so we can build the largest reporting staff of any newsroom in Cincinnati,” said Jeff Brogan, WCPO GM.

Richard Leibner, a pioneering talent agent who represented such notable broadcast news journalists as Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Andy Rooney, Norah O’Donnell, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer and Fareed Zakaria, died Tuesday.

In an unusual move, the five major broadcast and cable news networks have prepared a joint open letter that urges President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump to participate in televised debates ahead of Election Day, according to two people with direct knowledge of their plans. The letter — endorsed by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — thrusts into public view a question that has swirled within media and political circles: whether the presidential debates, one of the nation’s last remaining mass civic rituals in a polarized age, will occur this year at all.

CBS News and Stations is making moves to better unify CBS News, its owned stations and CBS Media Ventures, and better cover breaking news, as Wendy McMahon, president and CEO of CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures, shared at a town hall meeting today. One initiative involves building a larger coverage footprint across the country, which the company refers to as a national movement of community journalism. CBS said the following cities will get new multimedia journalists, and perhaps become what the company calls a “news hub”: Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; Des Moines; Kansas City; Nashville; New Orleans; Raleigh, N.C.; San Antonio; St. Louis; Phoenix; Las Vegas; Houston; and Tampa.