Timeless news advice.
Terry Heaton on Local TV's New Deadlines:
When TV news shifted from a business of covering the news to one of managing audience flow, this fear of tipping competitors became the source of internal arguments between the news and promotion people. Sometimes we won. Usually, they won. Nevertheless, in every TV newsroom in America, news people still gather around a bank of monitors to compare their content with that of their competitors in a ritual that often determines how well the news director sleeps.
As deeply rooted as this practice may be, the truth is it is increasingly irrelevant in today's media environment. Worse, it is actually self-destructive, because it shields news people from the overriding reality of the post-mass market era -- that people no longer want to wait until 6 o'clock to get the news. It's an "I want what I want when I want it" world, and technology is its servant. The news broadcasts may still be your bread and butter, but that simply cannot last, and those who aren't moving in another direction RIGHT NOW are risking everything....
The "situation" is that the marketplace is ripe for a local station to have the balls to break stories online -- when they have them -- and not wait until their alloted broadcast time.
And dig these pieces of perfect advice:
The Internet brings with it new deadlines and new challenges for news people, and they are all driven around the reality that the user (formerly known as consumer) is in charge. Building an Internet strategy around this isn't as difficult as it might seem, but it begins with fundamental changes in our attitudes and approaches to the Internet. The attitude adjustment is this: We meet the news and information needs of our community wherever they are, and meeting those needs is far more important than beating the competition. Changes in our approach to the news include — but certainly aren't limited to — the following:
- Challenge our newsrooms to view our Internet delivery systems as vital to our overall strategy and as important as any broadcast.
- Make sure every member of the staff understands that they are as responsible for Web content as they are for broadcast content.
- Provide training to encourage staffers to explore the many varia
- Promote the value of RSS as a delivery means for Internet news hounds in our community, including offering links to downloads of free RSS readers, like FeedReader. RSS, whether inside a browser or in stand-alone news aggregators, is the news dissemination vehicle of the future.
tions of multi-media storytelling.- Regularly break stories online and let the community know we're doing it.
- Pay attention to our online competition. Create a bonus program that rewards news staffers for breaking stories online.
- Involve our audience in what we're doing by encouraging story and blog comments, newsmaker chats, and discussion boards.
But the biggest change is one that has to occur internally with all TV (and other) news people. Our deadline clocks must be reset. An ongoing story may have multiple deadlines throughout the day, and our obligation to online news consumers is to advance the story regularly. Perhaps one day broadcast news will evolve into something beyond the who, what, when, and where of the day — into something compelling and creative that can be referenced in online coverage throughout the day — a program that assumes (at least some) audience knowledge of the day's events before it begins.
Want to bring back some of the zillions of young people whose media preoccupations have drifted from TV to iPods and cell phones? Turn them into stringers.
Bonus link: Terry's Decentralized power is THE issue of the new millennium. Rocks.
[
The Doc Searls Weblog]
< 8:02:21 PM 
>
