Journalism

It is one of the most noticeable trends in local television news in Buffalo. To borrow a phrase from WKBW-TV’s promotional campaign, women reporters are everywhere. Of the last 23 new reporting hires made at the three over-the-air network affiliates in a little more than a year, all but one has been a woman.

Suddenly, TV news outlets that have found climate-change coverage difficult to emphasize for prolonged periods are warming up to more ambitious reporting.

New opportunities posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings in creative services, news and traffic from Cox, Gray, Paxton Media and Fox.

The Second Circuit reverses a federal judge’s ruling with a provocative opinion that concludes Joel and Mary Rich can indeed sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress over how Fox News covered the murder of their son.

As tech companies try to make amends with publishers, Google changes its search engine to address an old complaint.

Thursday night’s ABC News debate was smooth sailing for the first two and a half hours, until a group of protesters heckled Vice President Joe Biden during his closing remarks.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit today against CBS Corp. and CBS Broadcasting in New York, alleging the network published false statements by two women who have accused him of sexual assault.

Kerry Drew and Bianca Peters are tapped as the faces of the Fox O&O’s early morning broadcast.

Executives from seven newspaper companies lobbied Capitol Hill this week to urge Congress to pass the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act,” a bill that fights the dominance of tech companies like Google and Facebook in the digital content business.

Fox News morning programming and talent development chief Lauren Petterson has been named the new president of Fox Business Network, taking over for Brian Jones, who is leaving the network for unspecified reasons.

The digital news industry in the United States is facing a complex future. On one hand, a steadily growing portion of Americans are getting news through the internet, many U.S. adults get news on social media, and employment at digital-native outlets has increased. On the other, digital news has not been immune to issues affecting the broader media environment, including layoffs, made-up news and public distrust.

More details are trickling out about Facebook’s planned News tab. Facebook has said repeatedly that it isn’t in the journalism business, but a team of human editors responsible for an upcoming news initiative by the company will exercise significant control over the presentation of top stories, including judging them over their use of anonymous sources, according to internal guidelines.

Hoda Kotb’s return to Today boosted the NBC morning show’s ratings above competitor Good Morning America last week. Today topped GMA both in total viewers and in the key news demographic of adults 25-54 for the week of Sept. 2, according to Nielsen. Overall, Kotb’s first week back from maternity leave pulled in an average of 3.872 million live-plus-same-day viewers compared to GMA’s 3.835 million. In the demo, the numbers were 1.202 million to 1.150 million.