local news

The Nexstar Fox affiliate in Charlotte, N.C., has a new owner, new general manager and now a new news director, all since March. I caught up with Casey Clark in the WJZY Charlotte newsroom on Thursday, his second day on the job.

Over the last 15 years, Ken Doctor has made his living as a critic of the news industry. A onetime media executive who started out as a publisher and editor of an alt weekly, Doctor regularly warns against hedge-fund ownership of news outlets in a column he writes for Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab. Media companies hire him as a consultant, and he is often quoted in articles on the dismal state of local news coverage in America. Now, at age 70, Doctor is leaving his life as an armchair expert and starting a local news company.

Charter’s Spectrum Networks has launched the Spectrum News App, offering video- and text-based stories and live linear video feeds from its more than 30 TV news networks. The mobile-first service, free for all of Charter Spectrum’s 28 million residential internet, TV and mobile customers, is intended as a value-add to help maintain and grow Spectrum’s broadband and video customer base.

Ellen Crooke, Tegna’s VP of news, says the Black Lives Matter movement has promoted greater “intentionality” in the group’s efforts for diversity and inclusion in its news organizations and leadership. She adds that COVID-19 has also supercharged Tegna’s Verify fact-checking project and data visualization efforts.

Local TV promos that move you, enchant you and convince you of the value of local news are on display here in part 4. It’s a historic moment, and local TV news and its marketing are giving voice to viewers, whether they’re marching in the streets, or searching for answers about COVID-19.

Local TV news is where viewers are turning now because the COVID-19 pandemic is a neighborhood story. And it’s not going away any time soon, it appears. Creative services directors from markets in Florida, Virginia and Indiana share their most recent marketing messages. The phrase “information you need” is truer now than maybe it’s ever been.

On Monday, Dawn Baker, an anchor at Gray Television’s WTOC Savannah, Ga.,  became the first volunteer to receive an injection in the first Phase 3 clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine in the United States. She said the many lives lost and impacted by the coronavirus pandemic inspired her to volunteer.

Station groups say they will send fewer correspondents to August’s largely virtualized political conventions and centralize their reporting resources. At the same time, they see local coverage opportunities of the conventions expanding, largely down to use of the remote production technology they’ve already been mastering for months during the pandemic.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for a news director in Lincoln, Neb., a market known for its parks, bike trail network and low cost of living.