What Stations Do To Maximize Graphics Hubs

How are newsrooms integrating graphics hubs into their workflows? What role do reporters play in this process? And how can media companies take advantage of the game changing potential of augmented and virtual reality?

These and other questions were addressed Monday during TVNewsCheck’s annual NewsTECHForum in New York, which featured a series of presentations given by graphics experts from Hearst, Tegna, and Vice News Tonight.

Suzanne Grethen, VP of promotion and marketing for Hearst Television, discussed the group’s four-year-old graphics hub in Orlando, Fla., which delivers approximately 10,000 graphics per week to 26 local Hearst-owned stations. “Templates are the basis of what we do,” she said, “from lower-third graphics all the up to virtual environments, election results, school closings and more.”

With more than 200 templates currently in use, the hub’s integrated workflow has proved critical to the operation. “We consider it part of what it means to work at Hearst,” she said. “It allows us to keep our employees and move them from station to station.”

Other keys to a successful graphics hub she listed: long-term commitment from top-level leadership, strong bonds with local stations and a willingness to constantly evolve the graphics package. “What we’re thinking about for 2017, we never would have thought about in 2012,” she said.

Grethen’s presentation was followed by Joel McDonald, manager of technology at Tegna’s CBS affiliate WUSA Washington, where he’s worked with the group’s Denver-based graphics hub since its creation in 2008. While they began experimenting with augmented and virtual reality a few years ago, the hub’s breakthrough with the new technology didn’t happen until this year’s election. A big reason for that, McDonald said, was the decision to simplify the experience for the newsroom.

“We gave a [designated] producer and reporter three templates and said here’s all you can do,” McDonald said. “We had a lot more to offer, but when you limit it down, you let the creatives start driving what it is they want to see template-wise.” The result, he said, was a seamless on-screen augmented reality experience on election night.

The final presentation was given by Lucy Paynter, real-time graphics art director for Vice News Tonight, who discussed the unique role of graphics in HBO’s new millennial-targeted nightly news show. Paynter, who spent five years at NBC, said the show has prioritized style in a way that other nightly news programs don’t, owing to a staff “unwilling to sacrifice the artistic integrity of our product for the sake of making it to air.”

After playing a reel from Vice News Tonight’s first six weeks of programming, Paynter discussed the show’s preference for sleek hand-animated segments and elements over more typical graphics such as banners. But those preferences have not always been easy to satisfy, as she noted the institutional challenges of designing an intuitive and open-ended workflow, introducing broadcast television to a Mac-based 24P Premiere house, and working without a control room.

“We’re still very much in the exploratory phase, where we’re deciding the role that the real-time graphics are going to play in this,” Paynter said. “Going forward we’ll have to find more creative ways to do it.”

To listen to a recording of this panel session, click here.

Read all about the NewsTECHForum here.