Newscasts May Need Overhaul, But Not At The Expense Of Viewer Connection

While the way TV is distributed and consumed has changed dramatically since the days when families gathered around the TV at 6 p.m. to watch the nightly news, one thing remains the same — viewers consume local content to stay connected to their community.

As a result, news organizations are considering how to maintain that connection while innovating the way they produce and distribute content.

“Local newscasts are in need of modernizing, adapting and of catering the newscast experience to a modern audience,” said Socrates Lozano, senior director, ScrippsCast and newsroom innovation, The E.W. Scripps Co. at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum in New York City on Dec. 13. “If you go into any of our archives across any of our newsrooms across the country, not a lot has changed in terms of formats since 1970. We have a big opportunity in front of us.”

“We need to find the viewers where they’re going and make it more convenient for them [to consume our content],” said Meredith McGinn, EVP, diginets and original production, NBCUniversal Local.

“It’s important to experiment,” McGinn said, “but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” stating an idea echoed by many panelists throughout the day.

“Adapting is a wise way to think of it,” said Sam Peterson, chief operating officer of media software solutions provider Bitcentral. “What does it look like to adapt how we put content together? We have an opportunity to tell these stories differently.”

Even if stories are being told differently, viewers still need to feel connected with talent, and the more connected they feel, the better, said Micah Gelman, senior editor, director of editorial video at The Washington Post.

“I think newspapers are just figuring out what TV news has known for a long time — people come to TV news because of the people. Newspapers didn’t really understand this until much more recently,” Gelman said, noting the lesson has caught on at the Post, which produces an extensive array of regular video content. “We are making a concerted effort to attract some personalities.”

That connection can be heightened, Lozano said, by getting anchors out from behind the news desk and into the field. “The role of an anchor needs to change. Most shows are put together with an anchor at the center of the show. But what makes us strong as a journalism company is that we have community expertise, so we need to get our anchors out in the field to be a part of the community,” he said.

While technology seems like the area to focus on when it comes to innovation, the panelists said the process really needs to start with the content.

“Technology can get in the way of innovation and the creative process,” Lozano said. “My own philosophy is to think about what we’re trying to accomplish from a content standpoint and then work backwards to the technology.”

“Technologists can make life harder for those who are telling the stories,” Peterson said. “The question is how do we put technology in front of [journalists] so they can … produce content quickly but thoughtfully. The challenge is how do we do these things at the same time.”

One thing some broadcast groups are experimenting with is “cinematic journalism.”

“We are doing that with LX News, which is graphically driven and leaning into cinematic journalism,” McGinn said. “If you think of the beautiful documentaries that you may watch on cable TV, we’re modeling that idea but doing it in far less time.”

For example, she said, “we had one of our amazing storytellers go to his hometown of San Angelo, Texas, and shoot a full documentary in four days. It was an impactful story about the COVID pandemic debate and how it was tearing that town apart. The end product ended up being an hour, but we showcased it in multiple shorter-form segments across different platforms.”

News, which is graphically driven and leaning into cinematic journalism,” McGinn said. “If you think of the beautiful documentaries that you may watch on cable TV, we’re modeling that idea but doing it in far less time.”

For example, she said, “we had one of our amazing storytellers go to his hometown of San Angelo, Texas, and shoot a full documentary in four days. It was an impactful story about the COVID pandemic debate and how it was tearing that town apart. The end product ended up being an hour, but we showcased it in multiple shorter-form segments across different platforms.”

LX has the benefit of having innovation and experimentation as part of its mandate. Other news organizations, like WCBS New York, still have to feed the news beast at numerous hours every day while filling auxiliary platforms with content.

“The pace at which we are turning out newscasts is probably the greatest single challenge to innovation,” said Sarah Burke, the station’s VP-news director. “We are focusing on taking smart risks that allow us to innovate. A recent example is the 10th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. We created a documentary using archival footage and then we interviewed survivors. The lasting impact of that experimentation and the time and money spent showed our newsroom what we can do and what we will do to innovate the content for the future.”

Capturing stories in broader, more cinematic ways has become a priority at many news organizations, especially as they compete against high-quality video production on social and other platforms.

“It’s important to modernize our storytelling.,” Lozano said. “You have to cater your content to what’s relevant today.”

Fully mining that relevancy means approaching stories as a team, he said. “If you have a photographer, you have to make it worth it,” Lozano said. “The expectation from the Scripps side is that they team-shoot stories. A lot of people don’t know how to shoot as a team. Our responsibility is to teach people the newest way.”

Figuring out what sorts of content newsrooms want to produce is one part of the challenge; another part is determining how and where they want to distribute this content — whether that’s on social media, FAST (free ad-supported television) channels, apps or during linear broadcasts.

“The goal is that you’re creating the content in a way that serves multiple purposes,” Lozano said, although different panelists approached this question differently. Some said that each platform requires content to be custom created for it, while others agreed that the sheer amount of resources absorbed by content creation requires producers to consider how to get the most out of each piece.

“We are very platform-specific when we tell stories,” Gelman said. “We can’t use one thing in multiple spaces. We recently reported on the rise of Fentanyl using text, photography and video. Some pieces were made just for YouTube, others just for our site and others just for Instagram.”

The Washington Post also has launched a very successful presence on TikTok, where it has 1.5 million followers.

“For us, TikTok was born of failure,” Gelman said. “We had a really talented producer, Dave Jorgenson, who was trying to do some lighter storytelling on YouTube, which we all felt was necessary after the 2016 election.”

Jorgenson wasn’t getting traction on YouTube, however, and he felt his style would work better on TikTok. The Post launched a TikTok channel without a lot of fanfare and it quickly caught on. Today, Jorgenson has a team of three.

“At the time, I thought it was a low-visibility thing,” Gelman said. “But due to Dave’s sheer force of personality and intellect and knowledge of the platform, we very quickly knew it was something that was going to be exciting.”

Looking to the future, innovation will come if people — whether those are viewers, talent or producers — are the priority, Lozano said.

“My job is to help remove barriers that we’re all experiencing in a newsroom, especially in larger markets,” he said. “If you talk to any journalists, there are pressures that they feel every day. They may not on a regular basis think that this business is fun or rewarding. How can we use technology to make their jobs easier so what we do can be fun again?”

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