State of Local

The mall shootings in Omaha and the availability of security photos and 911 tapes forced a lot of consideration in newsrooms about how graphic to be and what kind of warnings to issue to viewers and online readers. At almost the same time as the shootings, a thousand miles away, a smaller but also horrific incident took place and forced a similar weighing of high interest against community standards.

KPHO in Phoenix was providing live coverage of police chasing a bank robber at up to 100 mph when the robber crossed the center line of a four-lane road and crashed head-on into another vehicle. Both drivers were killed in what anyone seeing it would describe as a spectacular and jaw-dropping collision. Some would say that’s what the helicopter chase business is all about.

But cameras immediately pulled away and the station did not show the crash again on TV. Viewers instead saw tape of the chase leading up to a split second before the crash, including smoking brakes on the innocent car. Meanwhile, the KPHO website posted the full tape and kept it up for a couple of hours before news director Tom Bell pulled it down, going instead with the chase leading up to the impact but not showing the collision.

Bell’s initial call is tough to argue with. TV is different from the web, he pointed out in an email exchange with me. It’s on in the living room with grandma, kids and everyone else watching with little expectation of extremely shocking content coming over the air.  Read More… »

Who knew? Good local news coverage that people want to read depends on good journalism.

Steve Outing, proponent of citizen journalism and columnist for Editor and Publisher, shares an excellent cautionary tale about his experience relying on user-generated content to create a business.

The idea seemed solid: Create a site centered on an expert contributor (say, a climbing enthusiast who knows what she’s talking about and can write informatively) but count on energetic climbers out there to jump in and provide lots of great content. Read Steve’s post because I’m glossing over details, but fundamentally, the user-generated stuff as a whole just wasn’t good enough or consistent enough to attract a big enough audience to make a business. Too much crap, not enough real information that readers found worthwhile.

It will be a while before the primordial ooze of user-generated content evolves into a living, breathing reliable news provider without a strong framework of  people who are paid to find stuff out and tell the world about it.

The number of people systematically gathering news in an organized fashion matters. Having thousands of user/gatherers out there sending comments, photos, videos, documents and more is a tremendous opportunity. But that mass needs help. As the economic model crumbles for old-fashioned newspapers and TV stations, the old-fashioned gatherers, writers, choosers and filterers continue to have value.