Monthly Archives: September 2015

From the folks at Poynter, here are some interesting observations and statistics on how Millenials think about paying for things – like TV, music, news, and many other services. The summary is here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Did the suspect flee on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash? Does the incident remain under investigation?

Or, did the robber run off with the money – and we just assume the incident remains under investigation, because all such incidents remain under investigation (even though that shopworn cliché phrase was the last sentence of the police report).

Horrible news writing is usually rife with “news-speak” or “journalese” – a form of English only written by careless practitioners who’ve never been adequately coached.

Some news-speak/journalese is stuff that’s been around forever and just keeps popping up – like “fled on foot”, a phrase you’ll frequently find in police reports but never in spoken English.

And some newer forms of news-speak/journalese just appear, like saying “welcome in” instead of simply “welcome”, or using the word “closure” instead of “closing”. These things are repeated because news writers hear them, and they tend to use them until they get worn out and then they just seem to disappear.

Here’s a great short article on one of the latest fads, from a disciple of Merv Block, one of the best TV news writers of all time.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

An article from the RTDNA reveals that the Federal Aviation Administration may not have been entirely forthcoming about the number of “near miss” incidents between drones and commercial aircraft. The article says a lot of the incidents categorized as “near miss” were actually just drone sightings. Read the brief article here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

For a number of “capital J” journalists, the thought of promoting a story makes them uneasy. But this veteran Emmy-winning investigative TV reporter says the two can work together quite nicely with no one compromising any values.  Read her thoughts here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Newsroom leaders at WDBJ-TV in Virginia faced a set of circumstances never before encountered in any TV newsroom when one of their reporters and her photographer were attacked and killed by a gunman, while they were doing a live shot on their station’s morning news program. Read the interesting article about the decisions they made during and after the shooting here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

This conference, EIJ15 for short, is a great annual gathering of movers and shakers in journalism. It starts today, and this article from the RTDNA describes this year’s event and includes a link for multiple daily updates all weekend.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

No, it’s not WITI-TV/Milwaukee’s first Murrow award. But the lengths to which the Fox 6 news staff went in covering oil companies and railroads is certainly award-worthy. Read a brief article about it here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Here is the final installment in an RTDNA series regarding the increasing use of smart phones as ENG cameras. Well worth the few minutes it takes to read.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Did you know the iPhone and a number of Android phones record 720p video? Info about that, and more, in this article.

Posted by Tim Morrissey