WBA Hall of Fame member and internationally known instructor on newsroom leadership, Jill Geisler, is sharing 2020 resolutions for news leaders.
She shared the resolutions with Columbia Journalism Review.
Her first resolution is for leaders to “do better by your people.”
“Stories are important; new product development is essential; community engagement is vital. But your team is everything,” Geisler writes. “Your staff’s smarts, strength, and engagement drive your progress.”
The Newseum in Washington D.C. closes for good on Tuesday, Dec. 31, after 21 years of telling the story of journalism in America.
This piece from Philip Kennicott at the Washington Post explains how the timing of the Newseum’s closing coincides with recent developments in American journalism.
“The Newseum, however, was also prey to the economic and cultural forces that have bedeviled institutions as diverse as symphony orchestras and the electronic media. It had to compete for audience and achieve the right balance between substance and entertainment. Like so many organizations in American society, it struggled to find a compromise between being authoritative and being accessible.”
The turn of a new year is a great time to resolve yourself to be better. Newsrooms can do the same thing.
RTDNA is out with a list of resolutions for newsrooms to consider for 2020.
The article points out that “TV news is at a tipping pint and needs to innovate and and invest more and faster.”
Sarah Gray has been named news director at WISC-TV in Madison.
Gray previously worked as news director at WSAW/WZAW-TV in Wausau. During Gray’s two and a half years at the station, WSAW-TV was the recipient of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association’s award for Station of the Year for small market both in 2018 and 2019.
Gray’s last day in Wausau was Dec. 20.
TODAY’S TMJ4 (WTMJ-TV) is launching a weekly show dedicated to telling positive stories from southeastern Wisconsin.
The show’s title, Positively Milwaukee with Carole Meekins, comes from the station’s long-running weekly news segment which highlights positive people, organizations, and events in the community. TMJ4 also produces The Positively Milwaukee Awards, an annual televised event honoring unsung heroes.
Award-winning journalist Carole Meekins will host and executive produce the program. Meekins will be joined behind the scenes by Supervising Executive Producer Kim Buchanan who will also continue to oversee The Morning Blend on TMJ4. Meekins is stepping back from some of her nightly newscast duties in order to focus on this new project. She will continue to anchor Live at 5:00 Monday-Friday evenings, but will step down from Live at 10 starting in January.
Meekins has been the force behind the Positively Milwaukee news segments since the early 2000s when she took over the franchise from anchor/reporter Bill Taylor. Meekins has been with TMJ4 for 28 years.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have this Positively Milwaukee assignment for almost two decades now. The opportunity to share the stories of local heroes has really been a blessing to me,” Meekins said. “Our community is filled with inspiring people. We asked ourselves, why aren’t we telling more of these stories? So now, with this weekly show, we will get that opportunity.”
The weekly Positively Milwaukee with Carole Meekins will air on Sundays at 9 a.m. following NBC’s Meet the Press, starting Sunday, Feb. 16.
“Sunday morning is the perfect fit for this show,” said Vice President and General Manager Joe Poss. “We hope this program will leave people feeling inspired to be positive forces in their own neighborhoods and communities.”
Milwaukee TV station FOX6 (WITI-TV) has filed an open records lawsuit against Governor Tony Evers in Dane County Circuit Court. The suit alleges that the Governor is refusing to provide copies of his emails, unlawfully insisting that FOX6 provide search terms for those emails.
Fox6 investigative reporter Amanda St. Hilaire filed a request seeking all of Evers’ and his chief of staff’s emails over a four-week period. Journalists often file this kind of “spot check” record request to learn who government officials have been communicating with and what they have been discussing.
Gov. Evers denied the request insisting that St. Hilaire provide search terms for her request. The attorney representing the station, Tom Kamenick, said Evers’ staff attorneys have claimed that turning over a block of emails is too burdensome. Kamenick said searching for specific emails would actually require more work.
St. Hilaire tried again, asking for only a week’s emails. That request was denied for the same reason. She asked for a single day of just Evers’ emails, which was also denied despite Evers stating publicly that the public should be allowed to see his emails. Evers eventually relented on that final request, but still claimed he was extending an “exception” to St. Hilaire and that he could deny a similar request in the future.
“Governor Evers’ denial is unlawful,” Kamenick said. “State law requires requesters to provide a limitation on either time frame or subject matter, not both. And even if they do need both, the subject matter of this request was emails to and from two identified people. That’s more than specific enough to satisfy the law.”
Facebook made two announcements this week related to its efforts to improve trustworthiness of content on the platform.
Both changes are aimed at empowering and supporting fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram.
You can read all the details here.
Competition is open for the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association’s Eric Sevareid Awards. The entry deadline is Jan. 17.
The awards will be given out at the MBJA Conference April 3-4 in Bloomington, Minnesota.
The MBJA is also seeking applicants for scholarships for college students and professionals.
The Knight-Cronkite News Lab recently conducted an experiment to see how a TV newscast might look like if it didn’t have an anchor.
The experiment involved rethinking the newscast itself and finding ways to re-imagine the roles anchors play in producing a newscast.
You can review their work and their results here.
With all the shopping associated with the holiday season, it’s a great time of year to focus your attention on consumer stories.
RTDNA is sharing a list of holiday consumer story ideas. Check it out here.
The ideas are centered on returns, holiday bonuses, shipping, and tipping.
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