Home Depot lays off 500 people at its Atlanta HQ. It’s a big story. The best way to chase the story is to talk with beleaguered just-fired employees. To find them, the TV reporter beelines to the HQ parking lot. He camps out at the exit. He tries to chat with those who’ve just lost [...]
Archive for January, 2009
28 Jan
Top 10 assumptions about TV reporters
10. They can tell you what’s really going on. Well, yes. But chances are they’ve put almost everything they know into a story already. 9. They have writers who tell them what to say. No. They write it, which explains why some of it is so poorly written. 8. Reporters love dirt. Absolutely true. 7. [...]
26 Jan
Flunking history
The occasion was important enough to send two of its well-paid anchorpersons to Washington DC for a couple of nights to cover it. So when WXIA previewed last week’s inauguration Monday night, what could possibly explain the shoddiness of its coverage? The picture on the left tells much of the story and illustrates how WXIA, [...]
22 Jan
Background noise
Lord help anybody watching WGCL’s news in the last two weeks. Nothing wrong with the content, as local TV news products go. You see decent stories. You see some enterprising reporting and some pretty solid investigations. You endure the Restaurant Report Card only once a week, thankfully. You’ve accepted Dagmar as a pleasant part of [...]
22 Jan
Conservative wanted
The AJC is holding a contest to find a conservative columnist. It’s an odd way to hire a staffer. But maybe this makes sense. – Once Jim Wooten starts to fade away, there will be no more skilled conservative writers left on the staff of the AJC. The purges of the last few years have [...]
19 Jan
No action
First, a pet peeve: “Action News” is almost the stupidest handle ever applied to a local TV news brand. It dates back to (probably) before your birthday, when TV stations quaintly told their stories by way of 100-foot spools of mag-stripe news film. As Electronic News Gathering busted through the technological gate, some genius in [...]
16 Jan
Rock star
If you read this blog — oh wait, you do read this blog! — chances are, you’ve never heard of Gringo Star. If you have, likely it’s only because you’ve seen their name painted on pallets, which are infrequently set up around town to promote their rock shows. It’s interesting guerrilla marketing. They’re a persistent [...]
15 Jan
Take a week off….
Presumably, staffers at WXIA and WATL will get an unpaid and unwelcome week off sometime between now and April Fools Day. Gannett CEO Craig Dubow issued a memo yesterday, reportedly affecting 35,000 US workers. From the Gannett Blog: Today Gannett is implementing a furlough program across all U.S. divisions and at Corporate headquarters. This means [...]
14 Jan
Winne watch 1.9.09
“Ashley Elder says she and fellow bartender and buddy John Henderson had just closed the Standard Food and Spirits on Memorial Drive shortly before four in the early morning darkness Wednesday when four or five masked men smashed their way in.” WSB’s Mark Winne crammed a lot of words and several thoughts into that one [...]
11 Jan
Standup kid
The technology is always improving. So why does local TV news increasingly stink as a career choice? A blog by a Miami TV reporter named Mark Joyella provides a bit of insight. Though more awkwardly titled than even this blog, standupkid’s localtvnews is full of insight into developing technology, and the ever-increasing squeeze the industry [...]
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