Name Me a TV Station That Says Online First
December 6th, 2007 — Dave Peters
About 12 or 13 years ago, I was told by my newspaper editor that I was now the liaison to this thing called a website. The task was to convince newspaper reporters and editors that online was going to be important and they needed to file news for it.
Fine, they said, but we don’t want to scoop ourselves online, right? The answer then was pretty much: Right. The print version of the paper was the 800-pound gorilla, the dog that wagged the online tail. What was good for print was what reporters and editors did first.
But the gorilla has slimmed down over the years; many newspapers have been getting the news first online for some time now. Many an editor now says flatly to his or her reporters: “Your job is to think online first, print second.” And it took top editors saying that, not the newsroom liaison, to make a difference.
In a half year dealing with the news operations of TV stations, I’m still waiting to hear that edict again. Why are TV news operations, with their penchant for breaking news and scoops, so slow to figure this out? On a big breaking story, why are reporters not pressed into helping the online folks? I understand the simultaneous demand to be live on the air, but that’s not an 800-pound gorilla either, is it? My most pressing question: Can anyone give me the name and station of a news director who has said, “Online first, on air second”?
December 6th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Simple answer here: WISC-TV, Madison
December 6th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
tom,
that’s great.
now, how about tacking on some huge numbers?
yours is one of the very few ib sites whose uniques have NOT gone parabolic over the last month (read a few of my previous comments on the subject for context).
i’ll contend right here and now that numbers are being fudged.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
ps. in case you drew the inference that “tdc” is calling out ib as the “gamer”, i am not.
but you’ll hear more on this in the coming weeks i’m sure.
considering sources say ib is wanting to go public, don’t you think it would be in their best SEC interest to see to it that EVERYTHING coming out of the company (and its equity investors) is on the up?
December 12th, 2007 at 10:53 am
I would offer up the name of Bob Morford - News Director at WCPO in Cincinnati as someone who is willing to say Online First . This is especially true if it is in a daypart where the station is not on-air with local news product.