At Scripps, News Breaks On Facebook Live

Want the latest breaking news from an E.W. Scripps station? If you’re looking on Twitter or even one of its stations’ home pages to find it, you may have to wait a few beats as those platforms catch up with Facebook Live.

Facebook’s live streaming platform has become Scripps’ principal means of breaking stories over the past six to nine months, a paradigm shift that has shaken up stations’ news workflow.

While Scripps says younger journalists and smaller newsrooms have embraced the shift, others more bound to the old ways have pushed back. Facebook Live comes with caveats including a lack of full newsroom control and limited monetization opportunities.

The change has come organically with the stations taking the lead. “There has never been a corporate mandate of ‘this is the approach we’re taking,’ ” says Sean McLaughlin, the VP who oversee news at Scripps’ 22 news-producing stations.

“My staff really embraces that this is the future of journalism,” says Leeza Starks, news director at KERO Bakersfield, Calif., noting that many entry-level journalists are inclined toward the platform.

“Even the milliennials choosing this profession don’t have television sets,” she says. “That’s very telling.”

Matt Brown, news director at WFTS Tampa Bay, Fla., says his newsroom saw the value of Facebook Live as early as last April, when its initial streams of content like police chases saw a reach of over one million.

Now for stories with live pictures, he says, Facebook Live has become the go-to platform with typically up to six live streams a day.

“It has become a kind of muscle memory for a lot of the assignment desk and the producing team, so much so that we have to also answer the question of how soon we can get this on the air,” he says.

Perhaps the biggest loser in that shift has been Twitter, which had entrenched itself as the front line for breaking news in the social media age and has been trying to make inroads in live streaming, too.

But McLaughlin says audiences didn’t get that memo. “The audiences for Facebook is much larger and more representative of the local news demographic, broadly speaking, where Twitter is more niche,” he says. “If you have some sort of video-intensive breaking news situation, Facebook Live is simply a better platform than Twitter.”

According to the Scripps news execs, Facebook Live is starting to erode some of the newsrooms’ rigid job distinctions.

Most of KCKZ’s on-air talent are multimedia journalists (MMJs) and are used to toggling between platforms while producing their work. But when it comes to live streaming, all newsroom hands are on deck, especially if the MMJs are all out covering stories and a new one breaks.

In that case, producers will start streaming themselves, even if it’s just from their iPhones.

“It has done wonders for improving what I think is already a great culture in our newsroom,” Starks says. “It breaks the mold.”

Having more hands available for streaming also means a higher volume of breaking news, she says, noting that the station now averages about five live streams a day.

Streaming has become much easier thanks to APIs that let the newsroom route anything to Facebook Live, and the ability to superimpose graphics and branding on the streams.

And now that Facebook has also enabled voiceovers, Brown says, stations can provide users with narrative rather than just running an unmediated stream.

Facebook Live has its drawbacks, too, Brown says, starting with a lack of full editorial control.

“We can have images or words that go through those live broadcasts that do not match our standards,” he says. “We don’t have as many editorial processes in place to screen that information as we would if it was going live over the air.”

That can happen when the station is live streaming from an affiliate partner or a content partner like CNN or when other reporters on the scene aren’t aware that a colleague is streaming and obscenities or other offensive talk slips out.

Brown says training staffers to always have their game face (and language) on is part of the Facebook Live learning curve.

Another downside is that reporters have less time to do their work behind the scenes or simply to get their thoughts together about a story.

MMJs are already juggling reporting, setting up shots and shooting for broadcast,  and Facebook Live is now tossed in like a flaming torch, Starks says. “The last thing they want to hear when they have all this responsibility is ‘Before you do any of this, you’re streaming live on Facebook.’ “

The need to adjust to the demands of Facebook Live also extends to sources like government officials who may balk at live streaming and prefer to have their interviews recorded for later broadcast.

“Getting them on board with ‘if we’re with you, we’re probably live’ has been a little bit of a challenge,” Starks says. She says she’s had to be “polite but persistent” to get them to go along.

Recording is a delay newsrooms can’t afford any longer, especially since anybody can live stream on Facebook Live at any time and, if something newsworthy is happening, they usually are, she says. “This is the new norm.”

At times Facebook Live can interfere with the actual broadcasting. Brown says WFTS sent a reporter to cover a sinkhole. He dutifully started streaming on Facebook right away, but when the station’s helicopter arrived on the scene, the newsroom couldn’t reach him because he was so engrossed with reporting on Facebook.

“It was one of those moments where it was a little bit of TV versus digital,” Brown says. “But in the end, we just took his Facebook Live to the air and it worked well.”

And then there’s the problem of monetization. Because it’s difficult for stations to make money directly from the Facebook Live feeds, the Scripps stations try to nudge viewers back to their advertising-supported websites or broadcasts.

“The million-dollar question for us now is how do you drive people from one platform to another,” McLaughlin says. He says he tries to encourage thinking about Facebook Live in terms of brand awareness and a long-term payoff. And the wealth of immediate viewer reactions and data that comes from Facebook is his best ammunition against “elements of legacy thinking,” he says.

Still, he adds, he is continually evaluating the value of Facebook.  “It’s a constant daily chess game,” he says. “You have to weigh so many different variables.”

And digital media are in a continuous state of flux and priorities may change in six months’ time, he adds.

In the meantime, the stations will plow ahead with Facebook Live. Says Starks: “To me, it’s just common sense that this is what we do now as journalists.”