Al Jazeera America Betting On Straight News

Allen Schauffler is a recognizable Seattle personality, having worked for the past 20 years as a reporter and anchor at Belo’s KING, focusing on stories that impacted the community he lived in.

“I had one of the great jobs in local broadcasting,” says Schauffler, who covered seven Olympic games for the NBC affiliate.

Today, his journalistic mindset shifts to the national level as the Seattle bureau correspondent for Al Jazeera America, the biggest domestic broadcast news organization to launch in years.

The 24/7 cable news network, which has been in the works since January when the channel’s parent company, the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Media Network bought Current TV, goes live at 3 p.m. ET today with its “straight news coverage” that its executives say the competition is lacking.

“It’s less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrities,” Al Jazeera America CEO Ehab Al Shihabi said in a press conference last week. “There are viewers that need information, not infotainment and they’re underserved.”

Schauffler heads one of 12 news bureaus dotted across the country for the New York-headquartered network. Each bureau includes a photographer, producer and reporter, all of who have familiarity with their particular markets and regions, says SVP of Newsgathering Marcy McGinnis.

In addition to Seattle, the other bureaus are located in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco and Washington.

The teams may be small, but resources are big. Schauffler says his bureau can supplement the staff with freelance field producers, photographers, reporters and ENG vehicles as needed.

“If we’re covering a wildfire east of Boise and news breaks in Eugene, Ore., we’ll hire a crew to cover that story,” Schauffler says.

He says he never had a plan to leave the local airwaves — not even for a cable network. But in the past year, he got the itch for something different and contemplated going into public relations or nonprofit work. When his agent approached him with the idea of applying for Al Jazeera America, he quickly became captivated with the network.

He says his decision led to nothing but positive feedback from his viewers and former colleagues.

“People here in the business are fascinated by the idea of this network,” Schauffler says. “They’ve actually been asking me if we’re still hiring.”

Al Jazeera America launches today with 850 employees, about 75% of whom have editorial backgrounds, according to a company spokesman.

The new team includes a number of other notables from both broadcast and cable news. Kate O’Brian, who spent 30 years at ABC News, most recently as SVP of newsgathering operations, is the new channel’s president. Soledad O’Brien, John Seigenthaler and Ali Velshi are the best-known namse on the on-air roster. Seigenthaler will anchor the channel’s primetime news.

Edward Pound, who worked as an investigative reporter for publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News & World Report, is heading a 16-person investigative unit. Former NBC correspondent Michael Viqueira will cover the White House. Longtime international correspondent Sheila MacVicar will be a correspondent for America Tonight, a daily primetime current affairs magazine program.

In additions to the local, U.S. bureays, Al Jazeera America can also call upon its 70 or so overseas bureaus that provide content to Al Jazeera English, the company’s international English language channel, for global stories. The channel also subscribes to the NBC News Channel, the news feed service, to complement its own coverage when needed, says news-gathering chief McGinnis.

McGinnis, who logged 30-plus years at CBS News before shifting to academia, says she has been guaranteed editorial independence and sees the solid staff as key to the network’s plan to cover “interesting, important stories that affect regular Americans. The fact of the matter is we are a shop filled with experienced journalists who understand the job.”

At the same time, the staff is intentionally diverse, so that stories are covered from the perspectives of people with different backgrounds, she says. “It is not your typical all-white, all-American newsroom,” McGinnis says, adding that Al Jazeera America is “not afraid of accents” on-air. “Another way we want to differentiate ourselves is by reaching everyone.”

To do so, the staff is charged with delivering stories that have more depth and insight that’s lacking in much of its competitors’ coverage, she says. “Some of our domestic news channels have morphed into talk shows in many ways. So we feel like we have a niche that viewers might be looking for.”

What that means in concrete terms involves covering stories at greater length — and from a wider range of angles — than can typically be accomplished in television’s traditional 90-second stories, “so that you learn more over time,” she says.

Coverage of a story like the city of Detroit declaring bankruptcy would include not only reporting the news itself but also subsequent stories looking at what a move like that means to the city, its institutions and its people.

“We are not just covering news as it’s happening,” McGinnis says.

She believes providing the enhanced news coverage will overcome preconceived notions about Al Jazeera, mostly that it is a mouthpiece for the Arab world, which hasn’t been particularly popular in the U.S. since 9/11.  “I think our coverage is going to eliminate those as people are going to see good, strong journalism.”

Schauffler admits he balked at the name of the network when approached by his agent about the job.

“I told him, ‘You’re crazy,’” he says. “It took a trip out to New York City to meet with the management to really understand what everything was all about.”

Steve Dickstein, a Philadelphia attorney who represents talent, says his experience negotiating with the network indicates “they are very serious and they have approached this with a great deal of initiative and energy and commitment.”

“If they drop the ball on Al Jazeera America, if they demonstrate something less than journalism bona fides, you can expect that there will be a significant number of people who would depart and not quietly,” he says.  “And I think that the powers that be at Al Jazeera America know that and they are going to do everything in their power and to make sure that their reputation is solid.”

Aaron Brown, a former CNN anchor who now teaches at Arizona State University, says the new network certainly has its work cut out for it. Not only does it have to combat “baggage,” but will also have to really stand out to win in a market “that is locked right now.”

“Are viewers sitting around saying that they are wishing for another cable news channel,” he says. “I’m not persuaded that they are. They are going to have to kick some serious ass somewhere,” he says. Once viewers actually find the channel, “the story better be pretty damn good because people are going to take shots at it just because it is a product of Al Jazeera.”

“Part of me hopes that they do it really well,” Brown says. “I’d like to believe that a serious effort can work on enough people to make those of us who believe in the importance in journalism have some faith in it.”