Journalism

President Trump has long called mainstream media “the enemy of the people,” but after the deadly Annapolis newsroom shooting, he now says reporters should be “free from fear” of violence.

KUSA, Tegna’s Denver NBC affiliate, has appointed Eric Valadez as the station’s director of content. In this newly created role, Valadez will oversee the vision, hiring and strategy for all KUSA coverage and distribution of news across all content platforms.

Five employees of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md., were shot dead Thursday afternoon in the paper’s newsroom, and several more were wounded. Jarrod Warren Ramos, swiftly arrested by police after the attack, was charged Friday with five counts of first-degree murder. Tom Marquardt, retired publisher and top editor at the paper, told the paper that he had long been concerned about Ramos’ history of escalating social media attacks against the newspaper and its journalists.

PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff (above) is honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. It was presented to her by last year’s honoree, Jane Pauley who said: “There should be no more exalted role in society than the role of journalists. When that ceases to be, we will no longer rightfully call ourselves a free society.”

SmithGeiger exec Andrew Finlayson says smartphones are a critically important tool for stations in driving viewership. “You can reach out to viewers watching Netflix or Amazon and tell them you have breaking news. Mobile screens really matter. Get people to reach for the remote.”

The best way to better cover underserved communities is for newsrooms to reflect those communities, and newsrooms still have a way to go on that front, and there’s actually a growing gap in financial investment in newsroom diversity and inclusion.

Tegna consumer reporter and digital deal hunter Matt Granite leads the DealBoss coverage across TV and digital. The service provides discounts, information and reviews from major online stores and many smaller, independent retailers.

Sinclair-owned ABC affiliate WJLA Washington (DMA 6) has introduced the free crowd-sourced TrafficWatch7 App, what it calls “the only news station navigation app in the D.C. area.” TrafficWatch7 App lets […]

Jacob Soboroff’s charged reports for NBC and MSNBC from the Texas border, where children were being separated from their parents, helped push President Trump into a rare policy reversal.

CEO Suzanne Scott summoned producers to a meeting to direct them to take more control over hosts and panelists. Scott told the producers that they would be held accountable for anything said on their air, and that it was their job to head off any inappropriate remarks.

NBC is marking six months with its new team of Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb at Today, a pairing made necessary by Matt Lauer’s firing on sexual misconduct charges. Their performance has allowed NBC News to recover from the shock with little apparent damage to its most valuable property, even as morning television in general adjusts to a world in which many people reach for smartphones instead of TV remotes upon waking.

The former Fox News executive, who was ousted for his handling of sexual harassment scandals at the network, met with President Trump in recent weeks for the communications director post left open by Hope Hicks.

The percentage of women and people of color in TV newsrooms and in TV news management are at the highest levels ever measured, but while the minority population in the U.S. has risen 12.4 points in the last 28 years, the minority workforce in TV news is up just 7.