When reporting on issues in your community, are you doing all you can to reach out to a diverse group representing the actual community?
Melba Newsome is writing this week for the Reynolds Journalism Institute about how to find those sources and getting them to agree to talk to you.
The Wisconsin Humanities Council is hosting a virtual panel on water justice and public policy in Wisconsin as part of its Behind the Headlines project. This event is designed for journalists, community leaders, and policy makers focused on the water justice issues related to climate change.
The free event is scheduled for March 9 at 2 p.m. You can register here.
Here’s more information:
Join us for a virtual panel on water justice and public policy issues related to climate change in Wisconsin. The goal is to provide attendees ideas and resources for telling the story of climate change impacts from a human perspective.
Panelists include:
Guiding questions include:
For more information about this program go here.
A new newscast at Green Bay TV station WBAY is getting attention from Knight-Cronkite News Lab.
News Director Matt Kummer in the article says reaction to the 4:30 newscast has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
Read all about it here.
Starting out in the broadcast journalism field is tough. Many smaller markets employ a “sink-or-swim” mentality due to small staff size which can leave many young reporters floundering. Questions like these often go un-answered:
Your peers are here to help you with those questions. There are numerous Facebook groups where threads like those are daily conversations.
The groups also help those on the hunt for their first job. I have seen many people post their reels and receive constructive criticism in return. It is extremely common for members to post links to jobs at their current stations. I have also answered many questions myself posed in these groups, such as ‘When should I call a News Director to follow-up?’ and ‘Should I include live shots where I’m wearing a mask in my reel?’.
Another big benefit of these groups are they are a hotbed of insider information on stations you may be looking at. A simple post can put you in contact with a current or past employee. Or, if you want to know what it is like to work for a specific company, another post will you get you honest feedback.
While some groups I am familiar with are specifically geared toward women, there are groups open to all.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Digital Career Opportunities Worldwide
Kristen Shill
News Director
WQOW-TV, Eau Claire
WBAY-TV anchor Kevin Rompa announced his retirement Friday after 32 years on the air in the Green Bay market.
“I arrived here back in 1989 to become Green Bay’s very first morning show anchor and I never left. In fact, in the 32 years I’ve been here, I’ve never even sent out a resume or tape to apply for another job,” Rompa said.
Rompa is part of the Action 2 News This Morning team and anchors Action 2 News at Noon.
Kevin grew up in Winona, Minnesota. He attended college at Winona State University and the Brown Institute of Radio and TV. He has worked as a news director and anchor/reporter for Wisconsin radio stations in New London and Appleton. His professional television experience began as an anchor and news reporter at WAOW-TV in Wausau.
In retirement Rompa plans to catch up on lost sleep, take extended road trips, and care for his mother.
Rompa’s last day will be March 19.
Melissa Langbehn is marking 30 years on the air at WAOW-TV in Wausau and the station is marking the anniversary Friday.
Langbehn joined the station in 1991. She is the lead anchor at News 9, anchoring the 5 p.m. news and co-anchoring the 6 p.m. news. As a reporter, she continues to discover and share local stories that are important to the community she serves.
She’s described by peers as driven, meticulous, thoughtful, and kind.
Langbehn’s work has been recognized by both the Associated Press and the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association. In 2008 the Associated Press honored her with the state’s biggest individual award for journalism, “The Carol Brewer Award.” Langbehn also attended the prestigious Poynter Institute, and she has repeatedly taken home top honors as “Favorite Television Personality” by readers of the Wausau City Pages.
Langbehn grew up in the Wausau area and graduated from D.C. Everest High School. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, she began her broadcasting career.
Over the year’s she’s given her time to group like Toys for Tots, Jefferson Awards, Susan G. Komen, Go Red for Women, Pet Saver, Women’s Leadership Conference, Crime Stoppers of Marathon and Portage County, Children’s Miracle Network, and the United Way.
People are relying on local media to give them good information about the COVID-19 vaccine.
RTDNA is helping with a list of dos and don’ts in your vaccine coverage.
Go out to eat with someone who has worked as a server, and you’re almost certain to hear what the person waiting on your table should be doing better. Show off your DIY home improvement project to your friend who is a general contractor, and you can bet that friend is thinking about (but may be kind enough not to say) the mistakes you made along the way.
It is the nature of people who have experience doing something to look for inexperience when someone else does the same task. Pointing out the errors may come across as snobbery or condescension — and unfortunately, it sometimes is the complaining party’s intent — but often those people who have experience simply want to share that lesson with someone else.
I know that, because I am one of “those people.”
After two decades of print journalism experience, my antenna goes up when I read print versions of broadcast stories and see obvious copy errors. A knowledge of print journalism is important for a TV journalist because of what local TV news operations produce. In addition to the on-air content, there are web stories, social media posts, and the omnipresent crawl along the bottom of the screen during newscasts.
Your station may be producing news for visual consumption over the air, but for every other platform, it’s largely relying on the written word to convey the story.
What people read on your station’s site is often just a modified transcript of a reporter’s script. But scripts are meant to be spoken, not seen. What should and shouldn’t be capitalized doesn’t matter for teleprompters. It’s more important to write out a person’s last name phonetically than spelling it correctly. It doesn’t matter if you refer to 500 or five hundred, as long as the person reading the script says that number.
Print journalism does not provide such leeway.
The basics of quality reporting are the same for TV and print. But there are styles to broadcast writing that don’t equate to effective print copy, and vice versa. Take almost any story from a major newspaper and try reading it as if you were on the air, and you’ll see what I mean. It may be extremely well written, but it would also make for extremely clumsy copy for an on-air script.
Here are some of the most common mistakes I see in stories on local news websites.
Not following AP Style Guidelines: The Associated Press Style Guide is an important tool in making sure everything that is generated by your staff has a consistent look to the reader. Your station has its own guidelines for how things look on air — for instance, your lower-third graphics have a certain design, and the weather graphics look consistent no matter who is presenting the forecast. Your print content should strive for similar uniformity.
At first glance, the Style Guide looks daunting in the sheer number of “rules” it provides. Rest assured, it’s not something a reporter is expected to memorize, but it is something that writers should eventually absorb into their minds via repetition — especially when an editor circles the style mistakes and hands it back to you for corrections.
Here are 10 quick examples of correct style usage and the incorrect version that’s more commonly found:
If you can memorize those 10, you’re off to a good start and ready to move to the next level:
Its vs. Their: This is a perfect example of something that sounds correct in conversation, but is obviously incorrect in print.
“The Vilas County Sheriff’s Department welcomed their newest deputies.”
The subject (the department) is singular, so the correct pronoun modifier is “its,” as in “… its newest deputies.”
It can get tricky with corporate names. For instance, “McDonald’s has told their employees it will be raising wages,” would be incorrect. McDonald’s is a singular corporate entity, so use the singular “its.”
However, it would be correct to say, “McDonald’s employees are excited about their raises,” because “their” is a pronoun reference for the employees, which is plural.
Says vs. Said: In print, “said” should be used anytime you’re referring to a quote or statement, even if you’re paraphrasing. “Says” should be used to describe a commonly used phrase, motto or philosophy.
“Coach Matt LaFleur said turnovers were the difference in Green Bay’s victory on Sunday.”
“Coach Matt LaFleur often says turnovers will make the difference in the outcome of a game.”
Unnecessary Modifiers: These are details that provide no useful information and are unnecessary in print, even though they happen naturally in conversation.
“It’s been a mild winter so far, but tonight there will be plenty of snow falling from the sky.” (Where else would the snow be falling from?)
“In response to the controversy, the governor tweeted out a statement.” (Tweets only go in one direction — out. Until they start going in, over or under, just go with “tweeted.”)
“The concert has been rescheduled for April 15, 2021.” (Only use a year if it’s not the current year.)
Hyphenated Modifiers: You’ve probably interviewed a small-business owner. What about a small business owner? Hyphenated modifiers are important to use if there might otherwise be confusion.
A newspaper in Northern Wisconsin recently printed a photo of a group of people enjoying a ride through a snowy park on fat-tire bikes. The cutline of the photo, however, described the woman leading the group as a “fat bike rider” rather than the more accurate (and less insulting) “fat-bike rider.”
Acronyms — In another example of why press releases and AP Style don’t mix, acronyms should not appear in parenthesis or offset by dashes after the name of the organization.
For instance, “The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced today …”
If the agency is referenced again in the story, you can use DNR. If the agency is not referenced again, then obviously no acronym is needed.
For agencies such as NASA or the FBI, simply use the acronym since most people recognize its context. For others with acronyms not commonly recognized, avoid the use altogether and simply use the name of the agency or organization on each reference.
Press Releases: I’ve seen multiple Wisconsin stations running press releases verbatim on their sites. To compound the problem, I’ve seen at least one station running these with the byline and photo of the person who posted the story, suggesting that individual wrote the release.
There are obvious ethical concerns with a reporter attaching their own byline to something they didn’t write (it’s not plagiarism in this scenario, since the writer of the release wants as much of his/her content to appear in its original form as possible). But adding a byline implies to the reader that a reporter has taken the time to review all of the information provided by the source and has carved out the most important information. In reality, however, you’re letting the source have free reign over the content by controlling the message and the details they want to highlight (as well as those they want you to ignore).
In addition, agencies that issue press releases don’t often follow AP Style guidelines, so the releases do not look consistent with other news stories. For instance, releases from government and corporations often capitalize words and titles that should not be (i.e., “The School District of Waupaca announces our newest School Superintendent.”)
Releases from law enforcement are common offenders when it comes to date/time references — “At approximately 8:00 a.m. on the morning of Monday, February 15th, 2021 …” might be official police style, but AP Style would use 8 a.m. for the time, delete the redundancy of “the morning,” use only “Monday” or “Feb. 15” for the date reference, and eliminate “2021” unless the event happened in a previous year.
Last but not least, it simply looks lazy not to edit releases into another format. It’s as if you’re telling the reader that you just didn’t feel like taking the time to look further into the story and find out if there was additional information that would be relevant to them.
These tips won’t make you a better reporter, but they will make your stories look better in print. And that can be valuable knowledge, because becoming a more competent writer not only makes it easier for you to advance in television, but also opens other career options in public relations or digital media.
If you want to test your AP Style skills, check out these quick quizzes by clicking here. Don’t worry how many you get wrong, just remember the correct answer going forward.
Scott Kelnhofer is a Wisconsin native who began his career in TV news before spending more than 20 years as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines and web publishers. He currently resides in Arizona.
From our friends at Poynter:
The Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship is a year-long dynamic experiential fellowship that blends educational opportunities with work experience to accelerate your career in journalism.
As a fellow, you’ll have the opportunity to find placement as a paid, full-time journalist at a participating news outlet, joining colleagues who are passionate about journalism and the critical role of the free press in society. You’ll learn from each other, on the job, and from a robust, real-world curriculum presented by seasoned, professional journalists.
Cost: Free for selected applicants. Apply by Feb. 26.
The RTDNA is offering a session on Feb. 25 about social media ethics:
As the RTDNA Code of Ethics states clearly, our guiding principles are governed by Truth and Accuracy in reporting above all else. This dedication extends out from on air reporting and digital news platforms to social media and online blogs. Social media and blogs are important elements of journalism as they narrow the distance between journalists and the public. RTDNA’s new coverage guidelines offer advice and direction on managing your social media and blogs with this dedication to truth and accuracy at the forefront.
Join members of the RTDNA Board of Directors and Ethics Committee, Sheryl Worsley of KSL NewsRadio in Salt Lake City and Kimberly Wyatt of WEAR-TV in Pensacola, for a 30-minute Lunch & Learn to review the newly updated coverage guidelines and develop strategies to apply them in your newsroom.
WBA Newsroom