Newsheimer's

WSYX: 'Nuff Said

2007-08-14T22:28:00.000-05:00

This may not be verbatim, but it's very close... I grabbed my notebook right after the 10:35pm tease on ABC6.
"A young man dies when he's caught in a trash compactor. We'll tell you what happened, at 11."
Sometimes this blog just writes itself.

WSYX: The Stacking Trap

2007-08-07T19:06:00.000-05:00

It makes a certain basic kind of sense: you pile all the stories on one subject in the same corner of the newscast. This is typically done for team coverage of a big story, and weather lends itself particularly well. Today at 5pm on ABC6 it was hot weather that got the multi-element treatment. But in an attempt to beef up the coverage, the producer wound up burying a big story behind some small heat-related sidebars.
After a Sean Cuellar liveshot on an East side driveby shooting, hot weather coverage kicked off with a short forecast, followed by a cheerleader camp at OSU where a girl keeled over from the heat. After that, things began to go downhill in the name of "continuing coverage." A crew dropped in on the cooks at Phillips Original Coney Island, who have to work in a stifling kitchen. Maria Durant filed a package on the Central Ohio Breathing Association's free air conditioner program. Then, three sidebar graphics: where to put the fan in your two-story house for best ventilation, how ceiling fans should be set to pull air up in the summer (and push down in winter) and Chillicothe opens an air-conditioned room for anyone who needs to get out of the heat. The weather theme was capped off by great video of flooding in Cleveland.
Finally, at 5:08, the producer was able to get to a news story weeks in the making: the mayor of Columbus' wife in court for sentencing on charges related to lying on time sheets at her state job... taking money for hours she didn't work.
I'm not saying all those sidebars didn't have a spot in the newscast, but at some point, someone has to look at that lineup and say, "Do we really want to wait eight minutes to get to Frankie Coleman?"

WCMH: Who's Behind the Door?

2007-08-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

NBC4's Candice Lee did a newsroom liveshot in the 6pm about two Columbus police officers who were arrested in Licking county early Thursday morning and booked on alcohol and weapons charges. Police reports say one officer was picked up trying to cross Route 40 on foot, the other had run an SUV into the ditch a short distance away.
But here's the interesting part of Lee's script, verbatim: "Both officers made bond that night and arraigned today in Licking County... a hearing NBC4 unable to attend because both officers work undercover." That was covered by a shot of a dark closed-circuit TV monitor, tilting down and panning over to a closed courtroom door.
It's interesting, because WSYX covered the same story as a VO at 11. The video was a neck-down shot of one of the officers standing in front of the judge, then turning and walking away. Anchor Yolanda Harris explained they weren't showing his face because of his undercover status.
OK, it's not Watergate, but it's a nice get. Both crews made the drive, one came back with the shot.
Incidentally, neither station explained why the officers were charged with what Lee termed "using a weapon while intoxicated." To me, using a pistol suggests firing it. But it turns out it's illegal just to possess a firearm while drunk. The Columbus Dispatch online has a clear account.

Dispatch Layout: Spot the Terror Plot

2007-08-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

I don't often write about print. But when I saw this front page, I wanted to offer up some thoughts that I hope might generate some discussion.
At the top, all the way across, City sues for control of City Center. It's accompanied by a picture of men in suits behind a podium, who look ready to, well, sue somebody. It's a great story about a power struggle over a downtown landmark. The place has been a problem for years.
Near the bottom, in three columns and much smaller font, Somali man pleads guilty to plot. There's a picture of Nuradin Abdi and a jump to A6 after four and a half paragraphs. The article includes plenty of new detail about the case; the terror cell is bigger than previously reported, and more indictments are "likely." True, Abdi doesn't come across as a well-connected terrorist. He admitted traveling all the way to Kenya and Somalia in 2000 to attend terrorist training camps, only to discover that one had been dissolved and he couldn't find the other. Still, the idea that terrorists in Columbus, Ohio might have been trying to figure out a way to blow up a shopping mall captivated the city when Abdi was arrested. Now he's agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiring with terrorists.
And he's below the fold.

WSYX: Strange Package Choice

2007-07-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

Midway through the A-block at 5, ABC6's Carol Luper packaged a followup to a Memorial Day attack that put a motorcyclist in the hospital. The sell seemed to be that the teenage assailant was prompted by the judge to apologize in court to his victim. But after watching it, I'm not convinced there was a story there at all. And I think Luper makes the same case by what she doesn't say, and by what she holds back until the last possible moment.
Here's the live intro: "Well, Yolanda, we're not going to show you the face of the 15-year-old who was sentenced today." A flat statement like that sets you up to hear why in the next sentence, given that young offenders are sometimes shown, sometimes not - depending on the type of offense and other factors. (Also, she's using his name, but not his picture, which adds to the need for a short explanation.) So really, in this case, it's the kid's age combined with the relatively inconsequential nature of the crime that keeps his face off TV. But Luper doesn't point that out, because she'd be arguing against airing her own package. She never says what the 15-year-old is charged with, but it amounts to hitting an 18-year-old with the bar from a set of free weights, knocking him unconscious. Granted, the older teen's enlistment in the army has been delayed, but a serious injury like that is going to change any victim's life. So, big picture, this is an assault case.
Then there's the apology, which was "suggested" in no uncertain terms by the judge and then offered in a fairly matter-of-fact tone. It was made even less compelling by the fact that we couldn't see the teenager's face.
Finally, at the very end of her live tag, Luper offers up what the 15-year-old's sentence will be. Probation. And that really serves as the test for airing this story. If she'd said up front that one teen had been given probation for knocking another teen unconscious, would you stick around for any sort of apology?

WBNS: What's the Sell?

2007-07-28T22:10:00.000-05:00

I wasn't rolling tape on the tease that aired at 10:45pm but it caught my attention, and my note of the script reads this way:
"A pilot is killed in an Ohio airshow. Reaction at 11."
Writers often fall into the trap of wanting to promise "something at 11" at the end of a tease. Unfortunately, the promise is often something vague like "reaction." The tease in question was a :05, and vagueness can sometimes be driven by the enforced brevity of the promo - once you set up the basics of the story, you're low on time.
But what was this tease actually selling? Reaction to an air crash? That would predictably be shock and horror.
I think you can make a good case for just teasing the crash itself. The promo already included home video of the incident, and despite poor video quality, it's compelling. The pilot was a featured performer at the Dayton Air Show. It's likely a good portion of the prime-time audience didn't see the early shows on a Saturday but heard about the crash, and could easily be convinced to stick around for the story. Why not something like, "At 11, federal investigators probe a horrifying crash at the Dayton Air Show."
The other reason not to push "reaction"? As it turns out, the 11pm version of the story contained no references to "reaction" whatsoever.

WCMH: Protect The Lead

2007-07-26T20:38:00.000-05:00

It was easy to tell that something was blowing up NBC4's A-block at 5pm; relatively unimportant stories were pushed to strange prominence near the top of the block, anchors went too long without handing off reads, takes were sluggish. One of Colleen Marshall's tosses to a liveshot was waved off in mid-sentence.
I get all that. These things happen, and sometimes there's a domino effect that can bury an unsuspecting producer.
But you've got to protect the lead.
In this case, it was a huge story about a pair of teens plotting a Columbine-style attack on a Westerville church and several restaurants in the city's downtown district. Pipe bombs. Automatic weapons. Mayhem. But by the time it finally aired, it was 5:18, and I can't quite figure out why. The only reason to float that story (and elevate some questionable stories to fill) would have involved the combination of three factors: 1) No live shot and 2) no reporter package in house and 3) no script in the TelePrompTer for the anchor to at least vamp with, prove you have the story, apologize for a technical problem and promise the piece is coming up. Otherwise, viewers are going to think the second story is the best thing you've got... which, in this case, was a live-reporter-to-stillstore piece about the State Attorney General filing some environmental lawsuits. There was no tape; it was really just a promo for a 6pm story. And as a lead, it was an invitation for viewers to start looking around.
So, OK, say the liveshot went down. Toss to the package. We know Erin Tate tracked a package as an insert for her liveshot, and presumably fed it back (as opposed to rolling it from the truck). You can have the anchor re-identify the reporter at the end and read the reporter's live tag as an anchor tag. Not great, but you protected the lead.
What if the liveshot was ready but the package hadn't quite turned around? (This seems less likely given the 18-minute lag to air, but what if?) Let the reporter mention there's a problem with the tape, tell the best possible 30-second version of the story, and promise a great package at 6pm. Again, not great, but you protected the lead.
And finally, the doomsday scenario - no live reporter, no package in-house. NBC4's own website had a story filed at 12:24pm and updated at 3:02pm. If nothing else, drag :30 worth of that script over into the prompter, dress it up with a Top Story or Developing Story banner and lead with it. Explain you have a reporter on the story, she has a technical problem and she'll have in-depth coverage of this startling story as soon as possible. A long way from great, but you protected the lead as much as possible.
It's 2007. Viewers understand how TV works, and they'll forgive a technical problem. But if you don't protect the lead and tell them a compelling story, they'll go looking for better material.

WSYX: Just Say No

2007-07-25T21:38:00.000-05:00

If you're ever tempted to put a groundbreaking on TV, just say no. There's usually a story there, but it almost never has anything to do with the people in business suits and ceremonial hard hats, wielding chrome shovels and pretending to do the first work at a construction site.
The Port Columbus story WSYX ran in the A-block of its 5pm newscast today is a good example. If they were going to use it at all, it should have been a story about a plan to get you into the airport faster at peak travel times, about keeping lines of cars from backing up onto I-670 when holiday travel snarls traffic around the terminal. But the piece opened in the worst possible way - eight people lined up to smile at the turning of the first spades of dirt. And that forced it to be a story about a groundbreaking, which has zero viewer value.
There is nothing compelling about that shot, and, as an anchor VO, it forces the writer to mention the groundbreaking in the second sentence, when you take video... further putting off the real news in the story that drivers and travelers might want to see. The rest of the story consisted of a woman taking snapshots of the dignitaries, a shot of a Port Columbus banner, a sound bite with Tom Rice (the airport's Federal Security Director), and a shot of a very small drawing of the project.
None of that material should have made air. Rice's explanation would have been more clear and concise written by a producer and paired with a couple of simplified large-scale maps of the interchange... showing the problem areas and the planned changes. I don't know if the station's Art Department is prepared to turn something like that around in a hurry, but it should be pretty simple. In a pinch, ABC6 could even use the Google map as a base and telestrate over the top. (The Google satellite shot of the airport interchange is remarkably clear.)
I'm just saying, there are several solutions that would have turned this into a watchable story that could have caught the attention of anybody who commutes across the east side of the city. None of those solutions involve a shot of the groundbreaking.

WCMH: It's Not A Trend, It's Just A Story

2007-07-24T21:05:00.000-05:00

NBC4's Erin Tate offered a good follow tonight at 5pm on the teenagers accused of torching an occupied apartment. Turns out, police and firefighters believe it's part of a trend. But the problem is, Tate never proves it... despite the use of graphics with stats.
The operative part of Tate's script read this way:
"According to Columbus Police and Franklin County prosecutors, the overall trend of teen crime is on the rise. Last year in the county, 233 juveniles were charged with violent offenses... 193 of them were affiliated with a gang."
The graphic that went with the copy looked basically like this:
Teen Crime 2006 Figures 233 violent offenses 193 gang-related
So, the first problem is the idea of a trend. The 2006 figures may be high, but with nothing to compare them with (the stats from 2005, for instance) there's no way to suggest a trend. The firefighter Tate talked to asserted that teen arsons go up in the summer, but that's not a trend, it's a pattern. If you tell me that numbers of teen crimes are headed up, and you go to the trouble to make a graphic to prove it... you've got to include a number for comparison, or you haven't made your case.
The second problem is, Tate's script says "233 juveniles were charged with offenses," but the graphic says "233 offenses." The first refers to criminals, the second refers to crimes, and it's not the same. If the script is right, and there are 233 offenders, there are like more than 233 offenses, since criminals are often charged with more than one crime. If the graphic is right, and there are 233 offenses, then it's likely there were somewhat fewer offenders, for the same reason.
Script and graphic have got to track, or you wind up with a package that doesn't say what you meant to say.

WBNS: Strange Preshow Element

2007-07-23T19:48:00.000-05:00

The 5pm led with an update on a camp counselor accused of molesting kids in his care. Angela An's story was well structured, from the VO set up (our story so far) to the anchor tag (listing the suspect's previous run-ins with the law). But the tease for the story right at the top of the show, the place you really want to sell hard, was a strange pair of sentences that really didn't sell anything.
"New accusations against this camp counselor," Jerry Revish read. "Investigators officially charge Timothy Keil with what he allegedly did to some children."
The two sentences are completely disconnected. After "new accusations" you'd expect to hear something about the number of potential victims rising, or you could go with a parallel construction like, "...And new information about past legal troubles involving one of his own kids." The fact that he's "officially charged" with something doesn't have that much more tease value than the original arrest, and he's still behind bars.
The other thing I kept wondering about was his name. In the tease, it was "Timothy." In the sound bite with a parent of a kid at the camp, it was "Timothy." On the 10TV website it was "Timothy." But on the mug and in An's package script, it was "Timmy," which on a 43-year-old child molestation suspect gets your attention. (It was also "Timmy" on Dispatch.com.)
I'm just saying, if he goes by "Timmy," great, stick with it.

WCMH: There Must Be More To The Story II

2007-07-20T20:39:00.001-05:00

I think the case of the disappearing coach is easily the most underplayed story of the month.
At 5:08pm NBC4 only ran an anchor VOSOT to update a story that's still missing a lot of pieces... and, I think, missing the point. The transcript follows.
Colleen Marshall: "The investigation continues today into the case of a mystery man who was volunteering with Thad Matta's youth basketball camp.
63-year-old Fred Develey was reported missing on Wednesday when he didn't show up for camp. When he returned to the dorm early yesterday morning police had questions about his identity. Citing papers found with different names, police have been trying to figure out just who he is."
Assistant Chief Rick Amweg, CPD: "So that's part of the ongoing investigation. I think it's premature to say that we have verified or made valid his identity. That's one of the things we'd like to speak with him about."
Colleen Marshall: "Develey was supposed to show up at a 3:30 meeting today to retrieve his belongings. He did not show. Police officials say they will try to speak with him on Monday."
This story concentrates on the question "Who is this guy?" But I think the more interesting question, irrespective of his identity, is "How does a guy roll into town, volunteer to coach children at an OSU-sponsored camp, when even the police can't figure out who he is?"
So far, I haven't seen anyone contact the University to ask about their security policies concerning volunteer coaches. There were lots of kids at that camp. If I were the parent of a kid in that program, I'd be demanding answers about how someone who can legitimately be described as a "mystery man" gets to be a youth coach. That's the story. Who he really is may be very interesting, but compared to how he got there, it almost doesn't matter.

WCMH: Scripting Issues

2007-07-19T15:42:00.001-05:00

It could have been a chilling tale of a double stabbing in broad daylight, a story of horrified bystanders on a busy downtown streetcorner shocked by sudden violence. It wasn't.
Cabot Rea's anchor intro went this way:
"New at 5, two co-workers were attacked in the middle of downtown Columbus and their alleged attacker: a former disgruntled employee. NBC4's Matt Alvarez is live in the newsroom with that story tonight. Matt?"
Two problems, here. First, the odd construction former disgruntled employee. Formerly disgruntled? Formerly an employee? Both? Second, the phrases two co-workers and disgruntled employee don't immediately suggest they all worked together, which apparently they did. Something like a former colleague with a grudge ties them together much more naturally.
Alvarez took over:
"Cabot, it all happened at the intersection of Broad and High Streets downtown."
This is, of course, redundant. It all happened at Broad and High.
"49-year-old Anna Carter was apparently terminated from her place of employment just two weeks ago." It isn't apparent, at all. Maybe police say that's what they were told by the victims, but it's not on the bare-bones web version of the report (case #070622952). It could be elsewhere in the paperwork. But this goes straight to the motive, so it matters who you paraphrase about why it happened.
"But this past Friday, according to Columbus Police, Carter attacked two of her old co-workers with a pair of scissors, and when the victims ran, Carter allegedly chased them down and stabbed one of them repeatedly." It would be nice to know where these three worked, because according to the police report, this happened at 1:35pm. Was the assailant waiting outside an office for the pair to come back from lunch? Maybe at a bus stop, where the two arrive for a second-shift gig? Again, not in the web report, and it's hard to tell what other sources Alvarez found to quiz. The answers might have provided some real meat for this story.
There are other, more minor, issues... like the barber shears in the graphic. That's a fairly niche piece of equipment to put in a graphic (as opposed to generic office scissors) unless that's actually what was used in the crime.
I'm just saying if you're going to do a live VOSOT on a six-day-old story at 5:04pm, you're going to need more than this to sell it. Victim sound, or just more details. Something.

WBNS: There Must Be More To The Story

2007-07-18T19:19:00.000-05:00

10TV led all three half hours this afternoon with a missing youth basketball coach, in town for some sort of camp. But Lindsey Seavert's stories left me with a lingering question.
Investigators told Seavert that Coach Fred Develey either lives in Cincinnati or California. That's quite a spread, and it made me think, "This guy's been in town two days coaching youth basketball... and nobody knows where he lives?" You would think that the camp organizers who signed him up to work with children should know exactly where he's from.
Seavert didn't say whether she asked organizers about his hometown, but if she did, she didn't report it.
Surely the police talked to the camp organizers, so there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. But I guess my point is, if you don't know the answer to an important question (like how it is police don't know his home town), you've got to say why you don't know.

Spelling, Shmelling

2007-07-17T17:37:00.000-05:00

If you surf like I do, you may have noticed there's some dispute about how to spell the name of the 19 year old who escaped from a mental health facility in the Hilltop area.
I watched 10TV today at 5pm, and saw they were spelling the young murder suspect's name "Bullucks." It's spelled the same way on the Dispatch website, which is using an AP story, as shown below.

CINCINNATI (AP) — A man charged with murder who escaped from a state mental health hospital in Columbus on Sunday was captured today in Cincinnati, police said. Gerald Bullucks, 19, had been charged in the December shooting death of a Cincinnati man. He was being held at Twin Valley Behavorial Healthcare, which houses people with mental conditions accused of the most violent crimes, according to prosecutors. Tuesday, July 17, 2007 4:10 PM

Well, that spelling caught my attention because I had spelled it "Bullocks" yesterday, after watching NBC4's piece at 11. Their mugshot graphic carried that spelling.
As late as 6:10pm, the NBC4i website was still using that version. Note:

CINCINNATI -- More than 24 hours after his escape from a mental health facility, a murder suspect has been caught. Gerald Bullocks, 19, escaped from the Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare facility on West Broad Street on Sunday night. He was caught in the Cincinnati area at about 1:15 p.m., NBC 4 reported. Tuesday, Jul 17, 2007 - 01:44 PM Updated: 06:10 PM

I was tempted to just buy the AP spelling because, well, it's the AP. But it's a Cincinnati case, I thought, so I'll make one more check: the Cinci papers. The Enquirer says "Bullocks." See below.

A man accused in a December homicide in Westwood was arrested today after escaping from a state mental hospital in Columbus where he was being treated pending trial. The Southern Ohio Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team, a U.S. Marshal’s task force, tracked Gerald Bullocks, 19, to the Sycamore Hotel on Reading Road in Roselawn, said Hamilton County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Barnett. Last Updated: 1:54 pm | Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Eventually this will sift out, I'm sure. See the comments below.

WCMH: More Attribution Issues

2007-07-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

At 11pm, Mike Bowersock had the lead with a liveshot on the hunt for a murder suspect in the Hilltop area. 19-year-old Gerald Bullocks had escaped from a mental health facility, and neighbors were worried he might be hiding in a nearby park. Bowersock quoted the Highway Patrol as saying he got away by somehow getting on the roof, but they weren't offering details. Then he said: "However, an unnamed source who claims to be close to the case says Bullocks got into the courtyard and jumped a fence. He also claims Bullocks had been at the facility for three weeks and was an unruly inmate."
First, if Bowersock is using an "unnamed source", presumably he knows whether the source is "close to the case," so the word claims is a little worrisome in that first sentence. The source either is or isn't close to the case, and if Bowersock doesn't know, I'm concerned about the claim making air.
Second, the reference to a three-week stay and unruly behavior suggests the source is from the mental facility, not a law enforcement agency, so I'm not at all sure how "close to the case" he could be.
I guess my point is, you've either got to name the source or explain why we can trust that person, by offering a descriptor like "a detective close to the case" or "a hospital supervisor who spoke on condition of anonymity." Then there's no need for a "claim."

WCMH: Attribution Is A Virtue

2007-07-13T21:16:00.000-05:00

Just after the quarter hour in the 5pm, Amy Basista did a live newsroom VOSOT on the Licking County boy who was attacked by his own family dogs. Turns out his condition has improved. But as she tagged the sound bite, the script ran off the rails.
"When Animal Control officers arrived, they too were attacked by one dog. Allegedly, that dog was shot and killed."
Reporters tend to use the word allegedly in lieu of attribution. For example, "the suspect allegedly fired at police during the chase," or "the congressman was allegedly killed with a letter opener." The reporter wasn't there to witness the action, so he or she couches statements with allegedly, even though it offers little legal protection and just muddies up the story. This is always best avoided by just attributing the description of what happened to whoever told you about it. "Detectives tell us tonight, the congressman was stabbed between the ribs with a letter opener and died on the spot."
Tonight's example is, "Allegedly, that dog was shot and killed." The dog's alive/dead status is a knowable fact, as is the presence of bullet holes. Surely, someone investigating the case was willing to verify that the dog had been shot dead. Quote that person and move on. If, for any reason, there is any question later about the manner of the dog's death (though I can't imagine one) the reporter has a real person with a real quote to point to.

WBNS: 10 Investigates And Scores

2007-07-12T21:16:00.000-05:00

After an orgy of Gee coverage all over the dial, I was ecstatic when Tracy Townsend and crew turned in a solid investigative piece at 6pm on one of those church groups you see collecting cash on street corners. This was no document-fest, but an interesting story on a subject everybody wonders about. "Curbside Charity" ran 3:25, but felt like 1:50, and that's because of the wealth and diversity of sound. Townsend had members of the New Life Christian Church on hidden camera, soliciting money for a variety of causes; a spokesman for the church explain why he thought it was OK that the money went out of town; police officers shooing the group out of the street for creating traffic problems; another cop warning of potential violence; and finally the bishop of a local church urging people to give locally. This was well-produced, well-written journalism. See it at 10tv.com on the "video" section.

WCMH: Zero More People Now At Risk

2007-07-11T18:57:00.000-05:00

At 5pm, a huge update in the state probe of a missing "computer storage device" holding the personal information of thousands of Ohio residents. But NBC4's anchor lead misstates the real issue, and simultaneously misses the opportunity to point out how big a story this is.
Colleen Marshall's script begins like this:
"Hundreds of thousands more Ohio residents are now at risk for identity theft."
No, no more Ohio residents are at risk of identity theft today than there were yesterday. We just know the list of potential victims is longer today.
Marshall continued:
"Nearly a month after the state data device was stolen from an intern's car, the state says there was more information on that device than they previously believed, including more than 600-thousand taxpayers' names, bringing the number of those affected to nearly one million people."
And that's the second problem. Framing the issue that way buries the multiplier that really sells the story. The AP put it this way in The Wall Street Journal Online. "A stolen computer storage device had triple the number of taxpayers' identifications that had been previously reported." Now, the AP's wording is cumbersome and would be tough on the ear, but they got the point - a month after the state started looking into this mess, investigators just discovered the problem is three times bigger than they thought. (And they go on to say there's no telling how many more names they might find.)
"Triple" is the descriptor that says "This is big! Watch this story!"

WBNS: Health Source Anticipointment

2007-07-10T18:35:00.000-05:00

It started with a pretty good tease about 5:21pm for a real talker in the Health segment. Andrea Cambern began conversationally, turning to her co-anchor. "Imagine a cure for gambling, smoking, even alcoholism... all in one little pill." Jerry Revish picked it up. "Could be a reality, too. Up next, the drug that's gaining attention." That's 11 seconds.
But after the break, a story that ran only 20 seconds and really didn't contain anything that wasn't in the tease... except the name of the drug. Here's the script.
"In Health Source tonight, here's a question: Could a pill that helps smokers kick the habit hold the key to killing other addictions? Wouldn't that be great? Researchers say a drug called varenicline might just be able to do that. It could help curb drinking as well. And the research suggests the medicine might be considered for many more addictions."
That's two questions, two "might"s and two "could"s.
Not included: any reference to how the drug actually works, which is interesting. Varenicline adheres to the same brain receptors nicotine hits when you inhale cigarette smoke. The new study all this is based on suggests alcohol attaches to the same receptors nicotine does. So when they tried varenicline on heavy-drinking lab rats, they stopped over-indulging. (Yes, heavy-drinking lab rats.)
The Toronto Star covered this story with only one question mark in eight paragraphs of an AP dispatch. See it at: thestar.com
And The Times of India's story includes the reality check that the 10TV piece should have included as well: "Several experts not involved in the study cautioned that there is no such thing as a magic cure-all for addiction and that varenicline and similar drugs may find more immediate use in treating diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's."

WCMH: It's Hot Outside

2007-07-09T19:02:00.000-05:00

NBC4's leads today through the early 90... the heat.
At 5pm, the story was the importance of recognizing heat stress and stroke. It's a story stations do whenever the temperature reaches an arbitrarily high point. (See Just Rinse This Story and Use It Again.) The preshow and the multi-element tease had shown a soccer player in the heat.
At 530, it was UPS drivers delivering meals on wheels and being on the lookout for elderly people who might need help to cool their homes. The preshow and multi-element tease had shown the socccer player from the previous teases still out in the heat.
And at 6pm, a combo: firefighters training in the heat, kids playing in the park and the importance of keeping your dog cool. The multi-element tease this time had shown a guy mowing in the heat. But the script went this way: "As the temperature climbs, what is the city and others doing to help those without air conditioners stay cool?" (The banner read "Helping Those Without.") Unfortunately, the only mention of help for the needy at 6pm was a :10 graphic tag about people who might qualify for a free air conditioner through a Greater Ohio Breathing Association program. Hard to believe the tease was written to promote the tag; it seemed to have been written for the 530 package. Maybe something got moved.
Anyway, given that it was a predictable triple lead today, you'd think photogs would have been asked to bring back a good deal of video to visualize the story for teases, bumps, graphics, etc. But all they had (or all that got used) was the soccer player and the guy on the big mower. Certainly no video shot specifically for stories, and no teases that were written tightly to the video.
One more thought: through all this heat coverage, Jym Ganahl and Paul Stelzer wore long sleeves and tightly-knotted ties.

WBNS: What's In The Giant Monitor?

2007-07-07T23:37:00.000-05:00

The top story on 10TV at 11 was a raid at a vacant lot packed with what police think might be stolen property - cars, boats, shipping containers. Good story, marred only a little by a technical glitch near the top. But that's not what I'm writing about.
This post is about what was meant to be in the giant monitor behind the anchor intro for the story. I've written before about how that giant TV in the WBNS set is a great tool... but you have to be careful what you put in there. Tonight, it was unreferenced video, and it was more than a little distracting.
Tracy Townsend voiced the VOTOP, video of a loaded tractor-trailer. And the script was written to the pictures. "So much taken from a Central Ohio property, it took hours and several trucks to haul it away."
Take Townsend in front of the giant monitor showing stilled video of the front of a house. OK, clearly the wrong thing in the monitor; these things happen. Townsend kept moving. "A massive effort to haul away that property, as you just saw there." The monitor went black as she introduced herself, followed by video of a small piece of construction machinery. Townsend continued: "Now, today's raid happened in the town of Millersport. And it may answer some questions neighbors have been asking." Then the pitch to a live reporter.
I think the picture of the house was from the reporter package; it showed up about :55 into the track. And again, you can't fault that, or the short take of black in the monitor. Believe me, things happen. But it looked like the construction machinery was meant to be in the monitor, and as completely unreferenced video it would have been no less confusing without the technical problems.
To reference the video, the producer could have written in a list of the amazing items taken from the property, showing them in quick succession in the monitor. But I'm not suggesting that. They had me at hello.
What would have been nice is a map, since nobody said where Millersport is until reporter Britttany Westbrook mentioned the cops in the video were Fairfield County deputies. I'm sure the point was to bury the fact that tonight's lead didn't take place in Columbus. But I say, show me where it is on a map and heighten the contrast between the little town of under a thousand souls and the treasure trove uncovered there. That makes it even more amazing.
Great story. Careful with the giant TV.

WCMH: Bomb Scare Story and 911 Tape

2007-07-06T22:43:00.000-05:00

On the 6pm, Candice Lee used the 911 tape from a downtown worker who spotted a suspicious briefcase, which was a fine idea. But I wonder about the choice of the edit from the tape. It went like this.
911: "911, what's your emergency?"
Caller: "Yes, I work at the Red Roof Inn and I am downtown on Nationwide between the Red Roof Inn Hotel and our support center, and there's a metal briefcase that's just sittiing out there in the corridor between two buildings."
It's a lengthy clip for one thing, but Lee did have the video of the hotel and the case to cover. But the caller wasn't excited, and really didn't reveal anything that hadn't already been said in the coverage or couldn't be said more succinctly by Lee.
And more frustrating, I got the feeling, listening to the clip, that the caller was about to say what most anybody would say in that situation: "I feel kind of silly calling, there's probably nothing suspicious about it, but I thought with everything going on these days, you know, maybe you ought to check it out." Something like that would have probably provoked a response from the 911 dispatcher that would provide the grist for a very interesting story. But if the caller actually said something like that, Lee didn't use it. Instead, he just told us where the story was taking place.
Now, you could actually justify using a clip like that if you used the 911 calls from all three suspicious packages in her story as a kind of montage, to illustrate the number of calls and the stress on the bomb squad. But she didn't.

BBC Journalist Freed

2007-07-04T00:07:00.000-05:00

GAZA (Reuters) - Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in Gaza, was freed and handed over to Palestinian officials early on Wednesday after a late-night deal with the al Qaeda-inspired, clan-based group that kidnapped him in March.
More Reuters coverage at reuters.com.

Kidnapped BBC Correspondent Update

2007-07-03T21:34:00.000-05:00

JERUSALEM, July 4 -- The kidnappers of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston released him Wednesday to a Hamas-run security force in the Gaza Strip, the most hopeful sign yet that he would soon walk free after 114 days of captivity.
The full Washington Post story at WashingtonPost.com.

WCMH: Issues Abound On Live Remote

2007-07-03T21:29:00.000-05:00

Right from the start of the 5pm, NBC4 was talking up the fact that their Red, White and Boom coverage was in hi-def, but the problem was their lips didn't match their words. It was one of those weird satellite glitches that makes everything look like a badly-dubbed Japanese movie. (This problem remained through the 90 whenever the main anchors were on from their remote location.)
OK, some technical problems, you just can't fix. You just go with what you have. But it seems like the right thing to do is own up to the issue on-air, and tell people you're trying to fix it (as I'm sure they were).
But there are some technical problems you can do something about, like poor quality video from the helicopter over the Red, White and Boom site.
Those pix got progressively worse up to a tease at the end of the second block, and I kept thinking "They can see the quality of the video in the control room (which, by that point had degraded to a "posterized," black-and-white quality). Why do they keep taking it?"
The chopper shot was fixed for the rest of the show, but holy cow. Just say no.

WBNS: Good Sidebar

2007-07-02T21:58:00.000-05:00

10TV at 6pm led with former Delaware County Sheriff Al Myers being cleared of accusations he had child porn on his work computer for "personal use." (I hope anybody who thought Myers was unfairly treated by the original coverage of the investigation saw the high-profile treatment this end of the story got.) And while Patrick Bell's story was solid, the part I really appreciated was the sidebar afterward... pointing out that just because Myers was cleared in this case doesn't make him Sheriff of the Year. He was convicted of ethics violations in May and was found to have discriminated against two employees. Really, the political motive behind the child porn case was so brazen, I'd forgotten abouot the other problems - which is exactly what those sidebars are for.

Dispatch: Front-Page Choices

2007-07-01T20:29:00.001-05:00

Let me say right up front, I have no newspaper expertise. At the same time, I have a good deal of experience making news judgments, how to play what and where. And for that matter, I know what I would expect on the front page as a reader.
Take a look at this Sunday Dispatch front page, and see if you think something is missing from the picture.
That's right. The Glasgow airport attack. It's on page 3. I don't know if the editors thought folks in Columbus weren't that interested in Britain's second terrorist attack in two days, or if they thought the front page was already full of more important stories.
But wow. I was surprised.

WCMH: Self-Evident Tease For Downplayed Story

2007-06-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

One of the items in NBC4's multi-element tease at the top of the 11pm show wasn't really a tease at all.
The video showed the now-familiar burning SUV outside the Glasgow airport. Here's the script: "...Also, a flaming vehicle on a mission. Why this attack puts airports everywhere on high alert." The idea of a "flaming vehicle on a mission" aside, there's no promise in this tease. I think nearly anyone would figure an incident like that at a major airport might make security officials a little antsy. And as it turns out, the payoff in the story was "...expect an increase in airport security across the nation as a precaution."
There were plenty of reasonably new facts to tease. Arrests. Some sort of device found on one of the men who jumped out of the blazing Jeep. A raised terror alert level in Britain. If the producer wanted to go with something with more obviously local impact, there's "Why US officials aren't raising the terror alert level in this country, after two days of attacks in Britain." Then pay off with a Chertoff bite, or a security analyst.
All I'm saying is, it's one of the biggest stories in months. Promote it.
The story itself was relegated to the number two position, behind the Akron funeral of Jessie Davis. I would rather have seen the Glasgow story coming right out of the gate with new details and the freshest sound, then push the funeral down a bit in the block. Tease that. There was great sound, and viewers wouldn't mind waiting for it.

UK Bombings

2007-06-30T23:15:00.000-05:00

You know what would really help a local station put this complicated story in perspective? A timeline. Here's one from the Washington Post. As a sidebar after a network liveshot or package, it would really add value for viewers. I mean, the story's just getting more and more complex.
The BBC has a good timeline, too, but you wind up having to do the time conversion. And who can do that kind of math?

WBNS: Nice Work

2007-06-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

AND THE LATE UPDATE: For the 11pm show, 10TV's Lindsay Seavert went hunting for a better response from the Columbus School District on the Mark Boster story (see the previous post), and dropped in on a school board meeting tonight. Of course the Communications Director, Michael Fulwider, still declined to say anything meaningful about why Boster was allowed to keep teaching after numerous complaints... but viewers got to see him avoid the issue. Good work running 'em down on this one.

WBNS: Good Catch

2007-06-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

Patrick Bell had a great follow at 5pm on the story of a Columbus teacher accused of trying to set up a meeting with a 14 year old for sex. The district released Mark Boster's personnel file, and Bell did a good job laying out all the accusations against the teacher. But on top of the document pulls from the file, Bell had the parent of a student who claimed to have been abused by Boster, and it was compelling sound.
Still, even though Bell explained the district declined an interview, I kept feeling like there had to be somebody who could shed some light on the policies that let the teacher keep his job after all those complaints. The teacher's union? The superintendent from another large district to explain how their policy works? I don't know, I'm just spitballing here. But parents have to be scratching their heads over the district's handling of this.

By the way, can somebody explain the hairy poncho Boster seems to be wearing in this mug shot? What's up with that?

WCMH: Turning Video Into Wallpaper

2007-06-27T18:28:00.000-05:00

Right off the top of the 5pm show, in the multi-element tease, a weather element over this script from Cabot Rea: "And it felt like the hottest day of the week, but did Central Ohio break 90 today?" The answer, being yes or no, is unlikely to hold viewers who already know it was plenty hot for a state in the upper Midwest.
But the real problem with this tease was the visual, which was a shot of two guys grouting some sidewalk tile downtown. A photog was surely sent to find people working out in the heat, did so, and brought it back. Then, since the tease was about heat, the video was plugged in without another thought. And truthfully, the guys in the shot were probably hot, but not noticibly so... and it certainly wasn't referenced in the script.
So, lacking a tie-in between words and pictures, the video just became wallpaper. And a little distracting, too, since it took a second to mentally tie the script and pix together.

WBNS: It's Not Just A Background, It's A Liveshot Location

2007-06-26T19:16:00.000-05:00

Angela An's assignment today through the earlies... the city of Columbus' request that people cut back on water usage. Her liveshot backdrop: a yard in New Albany where the sprinklers were running nonstop.
Interesting, I thought, she'll point out how this homeowner's lawn-watering habits are costing big money and wasting a precious resource. The sprinklers in her shot were watering the driveway as much as they were the yard, and they were running in the hottest part of the day. That meant not only was much of the water running straight into the storm sewers, but what was actually aimed at the grass was evaporating at a high rate. Yet through three half hours and several sidebars packed with water-saving tips, there was only one brief mention that watering at night or in the early morning might be a good idea... and no mention at all that the homeowner right there was doing pretty much everything wrong.
An was surrounded by bad examples, but didn't point them out. She could pull the sprinkler away from the driveway, show the water running down the gutter and/or turn off the sprinkler because it's sunny and hot. Show how a drip hose saves water in the garden. Go to a business where the sprinklers are on timers, because the company's got an incentive to save money.
Don't get me wrong. Absolutely a great story pick. Topical, it's stuff you can stretch out through the 90 and tease. But as Don Adams used to say, "Missed it by that much."

WCMH: Odd A-Block

2007-06-25T23:55:00.000-05:00

Hard to say what happened to NBC4's A-block at 11pm. It looked blown up, but I can't quite tell why.
Cabot Rea and Colleen Marshall started with a breaking news reader about a grenade found at a North Columbus Wendy's. (The grenade was later determined to be empty, a "practice grenade.")
Then, a live VO-SOT on a warehouse fire. I had concerns about this story almost immediately. Marshall started the anchor lead with: "A vacant slaughterhouse on fire in South Columbus is still burning at this hour." The word "vacant" says is this important? and the word "still" says is this timely? Rea answered both questions when he picked up the lead: "...And Tacoma Newsome tells us why firefighters at first rushed to douse the flames, but instead have chosen to let it burn." Even the fire department doesn't want to save the building. The soundbite was gathered in full daylight, so there's nothing particularly timely about this five-hour-old fire. And it turns out the building was being demolished anyway. If there had been no breaking news, was this story actually going to be the lead?
Another Tacoma Newsome package followed, this one a news feature on a "teenage most wanted list." Interesting, but not as the 3rd story in a newscast. Plus, two pieces by the same reporter in the same block is unusual. Not unheard of, but unusual, so that's another tipoff something was up.
The 4th story was a VO about a semi with a fake pipe bomb taped to it.
Finally, at 3:40 into the show, the story of the day: the court appearance of the Canton police officer accused of murdering a pregnant mother - Jessie Davis. Marshall voiced an anchor package and Rea did the sidebar, which is fine. But a story that big, that late in the block, reinforced the question What happened to this A-block?

WBNS: Form Over Function

2007-06-22T19:50:00.000-05:00

10TV's got a nice set, newly redecorated for HD, so you can easily forgive a producer for using all those toys whether it's the best choice for a particular story or not. At 6pm, Kurt Ludlow read into a VO on camera standing next to a giant video monitor. It's a cool looking shot, and works great with graphics or video with simple composition. You just have to be careful what you put in that monitor, because the viewer at home winds up with what amounts to picture-in-picture. In this case, it was a story about the memorial for the firefighters killed in a Charleston, South Carolina warehouse fire, and there were seemingly endless lines of fire trucks and motorcycles, shot from the air. I'm sure the video was chosen to convey the impact of that long, somber procession, but putting it in the monitor stripped all the emotion away. Show the good stuff full screen.

Dann Those Reporters!

2007-06-22T16:18:00.000-05:00

From Dispatch.com:

Attorney General curses reporter outside Obama event BOARDMAN, Ohio (AP) -- Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann was caught on tape cursing a reporter outside a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama because of an article about a woman Dann raised as his daughter landing a state job.

WYTV in Youngstown caught it on tape and posted it on their website. You have to see this. Actually, the cursing is less interesting than the body language.

Opinion: AdAge Blogger on Media Bias

2007-06-22T08:57:00.000-05:00

Interesting essay on Advertising Age.com. Report from the Land of Obvious: Journalists Lean Left

WCMH: Breaking News

2007-06-21T20:01:00.000-05:00

NBC4's A-block was jammed with breaking news at 5pm.
First, a Fairfield County fireworks warehouse fire - great pictures from the air, the promise of a ground crew later, and solid, poised commentary from Ana Jackson. The buildings apparently went boom around 4:20, so good job getting in the air and ready for the top of the show.
Next, a gas leak at a downtown building. Reporter Matt Alvarez started his package with a soundbite from a firefighter. Like any public safety officer empowered to speak to the press at a scene, he did so in the most emotionless and matter-of-fact way possible. "We evacuated the tall building, 300 East Broad, for safety concerns," the firefighter said. This is why these sorts of official bites should be avoided. I'd much rather hear from the construction company, although they probably clammed up. Or the evacuees. According to Alvarez, there were "hundreds and hundreds" of people waiting outide the security perimeter to get to their cars, but they didn't begin appearing on air until 5:30. Since Alvarez was introduced as the beginning of "team coverage" (but the rest of the team never appeared), I suspect he had been assigned the "nuts-and-bolts" story and Ana Jackson had the evacuees before being pulled away to the giant fire. But "nuts-and-bolts" doesn't justify boring sound. If the bites lack, well, bite, don't use 'em. Do a walk and talk, get a sample of the type of pipe that broke, do something that doesn't involve an assigned spokesman. And maybe someone back at the station could pull a couple of Jackson's evacuee bites to use.
Oh, and it happened again. Through three bites, there was no banner over the firefighter's chest and he wasn't identified by name until :35 into the package (turns out it's Lt. Duckworth, first name unknown). Name that newsmaker!

WBNS: Sidebar Missing

2007-06-20T20:23:00.000-05:00

Stations do all sorts of FYI-type sidebars... how to not poison your family with underdone turkey (tied to a Thanksgiving story), how to find a reputable roofer (after a hail story) or how to improve your mileage (with a story on gas prices). We see most of these lists over and over, sometimes on a humorous seasonal basis.
Tonight at 6pm on 10TV, a story that really should have had a sidebar but didn't - the discovery of a baby on a Wooster doorstep. It may or may not be tied to the disappearance of a pregnant Canton woman, but that's not the point.
The point is the obvious tie-in: a piece on Ohio's "Safe-Haven" law. The "Safe-Haven" law allows a birth mother to leave a newborn with a medical worker in a hospital, a medical worker at a fire department or a peace officer at a law enforcement agency - no questions asked. Apparently, word hasn't gotten around, or babies wouldn't still be left on doorsteps. Here's the ODJFS website.
Instead of another sidebar on how to keep your home from being targeted by burglars (outdoor lighting, trim the shrubbery and put deadbolts on doors), remind young women of something that could actually save a life.

Congratulations!

2007-06-20T09:57:00.000-05:00

WBNS Producer Melissa Gleason won the station's first national Edward R. Murrow award for her October 19th 5pm show. That broadcast featured coverage of the recapture of an escaped prisoner who was awaiting trial for the killing of a Chillicothe police officer.
She is modest about her Best Newscast win, but it is well deserved.
Nice work, Missy.

WCMH: Leading With Rain

2007-06-19T19:18:00.000-05:00

It rained today after a long dry spell, and that meant a weather lead. Problem is, when the weather's not really all that rough, you have to look for broader issues... relief for farmers, wildlife impact, mosquito production, that kind of thing. NBC4's Mike Bowersock, unfortunately, really only had the rain to work with.
Bowersock's live VO went this way: "Here's something we haven't seen in awhile. We're at Berliner Park." Bowersock points to the ground. "Ponding water! Water that's actually in the parking lot." The "pond" was a puddle, about 1' x 2' x 3/4". Now, this isn't really about Bowersock. It was clear he chased rain all afternoon, looking for a story. He had video of menacing clouds from the highway and he had people crossing downtown streets in a pretty good shower. He kept it to :50, which was good. But at some point, somebody's got to say "There's no story where the reporter's going live, there's no real story where he's been. Maybe this isn't team coverage material...?"

WBNS: Name That Newsmaker

2007-06-18T21:23:00.001-05:00

A reporter simply can't rely on a banner to supply a newsmaker's full name on first reference, then use only the surname for second reference and beyond in the audio track. (See Basic TV Writing.) It doesn't work when you have a banner, and 10TV found out in the 5pm lead that it really doesn't work when you don't have a banner.
Tracy Townsend anchor-packed the latest on the missing Cleveland-area mother. It began with nice touch - a gentle drift on the picture of the missing woman, to give the still photo a little movement before the pitch to the track. But the first-name problem hit almost immediately. Under a photo of the missing woman, Townsend read, "Jessie Davis' family waits in agony." The picture continued over a sound bite from an unidentified woman, presumably a family member, who says, "We don't know what happened, and I just want my daughter back." Then Townsend's track continues under b-roll of a blond woman slouching on a couch; she must be the woman we just heard, which would make her Davis' mother. "Porter," Townsend said, "discovered her 26 year old pregnant daughter missing Friday." Porter? More than a little jarring without a first name.
Here's what I think happened. Townsend (or a producer) wrote that package assuming that Porter would have a banner over her chest during that first sound bite, and it would be fine to call her by her last name after that. But the editor (I'm betting) made the solid call that the sound bite worked best while we're looking at the missing woman's face. That meant the banner moved down to the second sound bite, and we found out :17 too late that Porter's first name is Patricia.
I'm saying just name the newsmaker, and you'll never have to worry about whether the banner hits or not.

Free Alan Johnston

2007-06-18T12:53:00.000-05:00

Things may be coming to a head in the abduction of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. But it's not too late to sign the petition demanding his freedom.
If you haven't been keeping up, here's a post from the Guardian Unlimited site:

Islamist group Hamas has told the Palestinian militants holding BBC correspondent Alan Johnston it will free him by force if they do not release him by the end of today. Johnston was abducted by armed men in Gaza City on March 12 and Wednesday will mark his 100th day in captivity. Reuters quoted a senior Hamas official as saying: "If he is not released we would use all means to secure his life and to free him. Today is the last day for the captors to release Alan Johnston." Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip last week, routing security forces dominated by President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah faction. Militant group the Army of Islam, which says it is holding Johnston, has demanded that Britain free Muslim prisoners, particularly Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, in return for the journalist's release. Johnston, who turned 45 in captivity last month, is the only western correspondent based full time in the Gaza Strip, where a year-old economic embargo and fighting among militants have worsened living conditions. Several foreigners have been seized in Gaza in recent years but none has been harmed. No captive has been held as long as Johnston, most being freed within days. -Leigh Holmwood of The Guardian and wire services

Go ahead and sign up. It can't hurt.

Look to Other Formats for Inspiration

2007-06-16T14:44:00.000-05:00

This may sound like heresy, but here goes. I have long been convinced that the best-written teases are not on TV news programs... they are often on entertainment shows. The teases on "Deadliest Catch" or "MythBusters" are often startlingly compelling, for the same reasons the best news teases work - great video married to crisp, tantalizing copy. Sure, the deadlines are longer. Sure, they're written by promotional pros who aren't sitting in loud newsrooms with constant interruptions. But I'm saying producers should watch programming teases with an eye to improving their own scripts. Listen to the radio, too. My favorite tease today comes from Lynne Rossetto Kasper's "Splendid Table" on NPR: "Coming up... the nun in the cheese cave, and Chairman Mao's home cooking." Quirky and concise, a tease like that makes you want to hear more, without invoking a lame line like "we'll tell you why" or "we'll explain." All I'm saying is, they're holding tease school on a hundred and fifty cable channels. Watch and learn.

WCMH: Giant Story Deserved Better Coverage

2007-06-15T22:12:00.001-05:00

The only story today was the theft of computer files containing every state worker's personal information. And as a viewer, I still have questions... which is not good.
But first, let's get to some writing issues, which begin in the lengthy and unnecessary 3-element cold open at 5pm. Today, the lead was huge, and this piece of boilerplate should have been tossed out in order to get straight to it. Another problem: in the computer file theft element of that cold open, Mike Jackson promised "NBC4 has team coverage on what the state is doing now." It is true there was team coverage, but the rest of the team didn't show up until 6pm when a second reporter was added to the mix.
Now we move to the anchor lead, which was overly wordy. Here's Jackson's portion of the script: "More than 64-thousand state employees are discovering their personal information, including names and social security numbers, have been compromised." Then, Amy Basista took over. "A backup computer storage device containing the sensitive data was stolen last weekend. The question so many are wondering tonight... how could this have happened? We begin our team coverage with Patrick Preston who is live at the statehouse. Patrick, what can you tell us?" (There's that team coverage, again.)
All this material plus an unnecessary bit of track at the top of Preston's package put off sound from the governor for 1:24. My point is, this was an incident that forced the governor to call a press conference; he didn't call it for some political or legislative event. It's highly unusual, and while I don't often extol the power of official talking heads, this was an instance where we needed to get to the governor quickly.
How about...
Jackson: "Every state employee's personal information... including social security numbers.... stolen."
Basista: "Computer files taken from an unlocked car put 64-thousand state workers at risk for identity theft. So many questions, tonight.... How did it happen, why was an intern carrying the files around town and what can all those people do to protect themselves? Let's start getting some answers from our Patrick Preston live at the statehouse."
That's about :25.
But aside from writing issues, I'm left scratching my head. What, exactly, was stolen? In the 5pm, it was called a "device." In the 530, it became a "disc." And by 6pm, it had become a "tape," the word chosen by the intern for use on the police report. If Preston knew, but didn't describe it for fear it was too technical, I disagree with the thinking. People work around computers and peripherals all day. Viewers will get it. If Preston didn't know, he should have asked. This has two advantages: 1) it would tell people (like pawn shop owners) what to look for, and 2) it would allow Preston to get one and hold it up as a demonstration. Finally, if police know but won't describe it for reporters for fear of jeopardizing the investigation, Preston should say that... and file an FOI request.
Interestingly, I think WOSU may have had the best coverage of the day from a storytelling point of view. Here's the mp3 from WOSU.org. It was complete, easy to follow and best of all, saved a great nugget for last. When the intern told the investigating officer what had been taken, he mentioned a radar detector, and valued it at $200. He also mentioned the backup tape, filled with priceless personal data... and valued it at $15.

WSYX: The Definition of Anticipointment

2007-06-12T19:57:00.001-05:00

For the earlies, Shannon McCormick was covering the Rachel Ewers case out of Delaware County. Ewers had been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of her infant but changed her plea today, got the charges reduced and avoided a jury trial. Ewers' boyfriend, Ray-Tone Wilson, faces much more serious charges in the case, and will go to trial in a few weeks.
At the end of her package, McCormick came back on camera with this tease: "Now I asked, will Rachel Ewers be called to testify against her boyfriend at his trial in August? That answer is coming up at 6." That is a classic yes-or-no tease, with an obvious weakness. If the answer - yes or no - is really the only new thing you'll have next hour, there's really no reason for another package, is there?
In her 6pm liveshot, McCormick paid off with the answer... but as it turns out, this is a rare variant of the yes-or-no tease that is guaranteed to induce anticipointment in the viewer. Here's the operative part of the script: "Prosecutors say they don't know if Rachel Ewers will testify against Wilson. That wasn't part of her plea deal." So the answer, in this case, was "I don't know."
The only thing that could have kept this from being completely anticipointing is if McCormick had some information about what the testimony might mean or how Wilson's attorney might react. But any of that would have given her better material to tease in the first place, and avoid the whole yes-or-no problem.
It's a pretty good rule of thumb; if the tease calls for a yes-or-no, the answer is likely to be unsatisfying.

WBNS: Thimerosal News, Eventually

2007-06-11T18:49:00.000-05:00

In the 5pm, Andrea Cambern came out of a break talking about a chemical called Thimerosal, which used to be used in children's vaccines and was linked (in a widely-disputed study) with autism. But there didn't seem to be any new news about the stuff; it was just a kind of survey course. Forty-seven seconds into the anchor package, the first mention of what might have prompted 10TV to put this in the lineup: "A federal court in Washington is now hearing the first of these suits." It's the kind of vague sentence - without a "this afternooon" or "today" - that makes you wonder whether the writer is burying the time element. Add that to the lengthy wait for a news peg and I still wasn't clear what the news was. Turns out the first of nine Thimerosal "test cases" began today. I know that because I went to Forbes.com, which has the complete story.

WBNS: Big Story Actually Was

2007-06-06T20:46:00.001-05:00

Kurt Ludlow led the 5pm with the news that former Delaware County Sheriff Al Myers' computer contained child porn. Was it the Sheriff's for investigative or recreational use? Who knows yet, but Ludlow's treatment was clear and even-handed. It's impressive because this appears to have been a story that came together in the late-afternoon. Here's the Columbus Dispatch article on the subject. It appears to have been posted just before 4pm. And Ludlow had the money shot - the computer being carried out of the Sheriff's office. That video, sound from the interim Sheriff and sound from Myers was all he needed to tell the story concisely in live VO-SOT form. As a practical matter, he might not have had time to do much more than that and still get his 6pm piece together... but I'm saying it benefitted from the straightforward presentation. And, by admitting he actually found out about the computer files while interviewing Myers about ethics violations, he pulled viewers into the process... while getting a promotional boost from being the one to break the news to the ex-lawman.
One strange aspect to all this... the Dispatch article mentions that a press release about all this went out yesterday. By carrier pigeon?

WSYX: A Tease in Name Only

2007-06-05T20:54:00.000-05:00

ABC6's tease ran this way: "Pictures of Princess Diana, dying. You can understand why the Royal Family wants those pictures banned."
First, the play on words - Diana dying - just seems like bad taste.
But more importantly, the tease doesn't sell anything in particular. It sounds like the whole story. I guess some viewers will stick around for any story involving Princess Di, but why not give others a reason to wait, too? Here's a suggestion. Since the BBC4's reason for showing the pictures is to establish the truth behind claims made about the behavior of the paparazzi, why not sell that? "Why British TV producers are saying 'no' to Buckingham Palace... and airing controversial photos of Princess Diana's last moments."

WCMH: Short on B-Roll

2007-06-04T21:37:00.000-05:00

Erin Tate's story at 5pm focused on a teenage boy charged with raping a girl at a teen "campout" held by some Madison Plains High school students. Plenty of material to work with - she had the accused rapist in court, sobbing, the juvenile prosecutor was willing to talk and she had some kind of charging paperwork. But she and her photog were challenged when it came to covering material relating to the scene, which was the land around a rural home. Sure, the home was still there, but nothing about the house or yard connected visually with the facts of the case beyond Tate's mention that the girl said it happened "here." She used a shot of a field, a tilt down from open sky to the house, another shot of the house and a shot of the door. But it was the following piece of track that really caught my attention, near the end of the package: "Other charges could follow for other Madison Plains High Schoolers who were also drinking, and for those who contributed to the delinquency of the minors." First, that sentence could easily be simplified to: "Other teens at the party could be charged with underaged drinking... and whoever bought the alcohol could be charged, too." But the bigger problem was the video covering the track - a shot of a flock of geese in the yard where the party took place. That's the sign the b-roll has turned into wallpaper. What to do? A) Shorten the track. B) Rescript to more closely follow items you can pull from the charge sheet, and shorten the track. C) Use more shots from inside the courtroom (it's pretty powerful stuff, with the young defendant weeping) and shorten the track.
In any event, just say no to wallpaper.

WBNS: Story 1, Tease 0

2007-06-01T20:34:00.000-05:00

Kevin Landers' story in the 530 show was plenty interesting. It was about the PGA meteorologist who uses laptops and high-tech weather gear to watch for lightning during tournaments. Unfortunately, the standup tease Landers cut from the field didn't really sell viewers on why they should wait for the story. Actually, it didn't really sell anything.
Here's the script: "It's the biggest threat on the PGA golf course." Landers gestures behind him and the shot widens out. "I'm talking about those clouds up in the sky. I'm Kevin Landers. I'll explain coming up." From that setup, there's really nothing to explain. Weather can be a threat on the golf course.
After watching Landers' story (which I've pointed out was interesting and well worth a good tease) I'll offer this: "Somewhere on the course behind me is one man with the power to stop this tournament at a moment's notice... and he says no one ever complains. I'll introduce you to him, coming up."

WSYX: A-Block Priorities Jumbled

2007-05-31T22:12:00.000-05:00

The problems for ABC6 began with the preshow of the 5pm.
Gabe Spiegel read, "A local doctor, arrested for exposing himself. Is he still treating patients?" Since the promo didn't read, "Why is he still treating patients?" the viewer's got to figure the answer to the question is probably no. The Newsheimer's rule of thumb is, if you can answer the question in the tease with "yes" or "no," you almost certainly need to rewrite the tease. Usually the answer is painfully obvious, so viewers won't wait around.
Then, also in the preshow: "Desperate for rain and sprinklers are working overtime. Are water restrictions on the horizon?" See the Newsheimer's rule of thumb above. But there are other problems as well.
This story actually turned out to be the lead, right after a weather hit off the top. On any given summer day, that could happen. But this is how the anchors set it up: "We begin tonight with another spring scorcher," Spiegel said. The key word there was another. You're admitting this isn't different or new. Better follow this with some kind of development. "For the second day in a row," Terri Sullivan read, "temperatures approached the 90-degree mark." There again, you're not selling this as new news by pointing out it was hot yesterday, too. But what about those water restrictions that might be on the horizon?
After a chart showing water usage in recent days, Spiegel pitched to an anchor pack. He talked to a guy watering his lawn and an official with the Columbus Water Department. After 1:50, no mention of water restrictions. None. So the only sell for the story was one the producer had to invent.
After a pair of stories about wrecks, a motorcycle crash near Newark and a lunchtime highway pileup near downtown, a story that was potentially worth the lead. WSYX reported the Assistant Director of Student Health Services at OSU had been arrested for indecent exposure at a Columbus city park. Inexplicably, it was treated as a VO. No try for an interview with the doctor, no sound from cops who ran the sting, no reporter presence... just a printed statement from the university. By the way, if you voted "No, he's not treating patients," you were right.

WBNS: Good Show, Odd Tease

2007-05-30T20:26:00.000-05:00

Solid hour and a half on 10TV's early shows. The only bobble I saw was in the tease for Angela An's story on a citizen patrol being set up in Fairfield County.
The story was about volunteers training to ride in a marked squad car to supplement patrolling deputies at peak crime periods. The problem with a story like this, of course, is that it hasn't happened yet, so the only video available really has little to do with the subject. So you know right away it's going to be tough to promote. Here's the tease script: "Picking up where police leave off... how you can become part of the Citizens' Patrol." The video? A pastor who plans to volunteer with the patrol, tidying up around his church sanctuary... picking up canteloupe-sized balls off the floor. So visually, it plays off the wording "picking up," but it doesn't reinforce the idea of a Citizen's Patrol at all. In fact, the shot pulls the viewer in some other direction completely.
So the producer's stuck... in order to tease An's story, you have to use video that just doesn't make sense.
Just say no.

WCMH: News Delayed, Central Element Missing

2007-05-29T18:29:00.001-05:00

After a mention that pop-up storms might be a factor in the weather tonight, Cabot Rea launched into a lengthy and passively-written 5pm lead.
"For seven years, a Central Ohio mother has been fighting in her late daughter's name for sidewalks in front of a local high school."
Colleen Marshall picked it up.
"In December of 2000, Andrea Casterano was killed after she was hit by a car near Briggs High School. At that time, there were no sidewalks there for students. Today the city and students from Briggs celebrated a new, safer walk to school." It took :17 to hit the first "today" reference. (And most of Marshall's read was under a graphic that had "Today:" and "New Sidewalks" on separate bullet points.) If you're going to try to draw me in with the sad details, roll VO from the original scene, then toss to your reporter. But I think the best bet is - just shorten up that lead.
Try: "It took seven years of protests and petitions... but one determined Southwest Columbus mother can claim victory tonight. New sidewalks are in place where her daughter was struck and killed in 2000, just trying to get to class at Briggs High School." Or one of a hundred other variations with a "today" reference.
The package itself was what's called "one-stop shopping." Patrick Preston's sound all came from people who had conveniently gathered for the press conference. The mayor. The mother. The principal. Lots of shots of sidwalks. Empty, empty sidewalks.
Had the crew been there when school let out, they might have seen students using the sidewalk, and shot some video. Or, if no one was using the sidewalk, perhaps parents would want to talk about convincing kids to use the new, safer route. Or, if it was still officially closed until the press conference, Preston could have talked to students and parents who are thankful this was the last day without a safe place to walk. Or (finally), if the press conference took place before school let out, start cutting the piece in the field from a live truck and add the parent/student sound last. Something.
In all, it was more than 2:00 on the need for new sidewalks at Briggs, but there was no video of them actually being used and no sound from any of the peeople most affected.

WCMH: Basic TV Writing Issue

2007-05-26T18:39:00.000-05:00

At 6pm, a recurring problem with the identification of people in sound bites. The issue: the interview subject is only referred to once... after the sound bite and by last name only. This would be inside baseball, except for the impact on the clarity of the story.
Example one: the lead, a Matt Alvarez package about a wreck that split a car in two and scattered auto parts all over some poor guy's yard. A CPD Accident Investigator sound bite was inserted without any setup (which is fine as far as that goes). But he was only referred to as "Modar" (his last name) after the bite. The thinking must have been that there was a banner over his chest bearing his name, so the first audio reference became second reference - "Modar." But the ear needs a complete audio narrative, and the lack of a first name or identifier (Accident Investigator, in this case) was just jarring.
Example two: in an anchor VO-SOT on grilling safety, somebody named Gina Nicholson reminded viewers to grill their burgers to a specific temperature. But the sound bite wasn't set up, Nicholson just appeared with her name in a banner and was referred to as "Nicholson" afterward.
It may sound technical, but it's basic to effective show producing, because TV deals in two mutually-reinforcing media. If you don't want to set up a bite with a name, fine. Back-sell. You get the impact of a bite hitting cold, you use the banner for a visual identifier, and then you work the name into the script right afterward.
The fact that a banner might not actually appear (for any number of reasons) is a second argument for identifying people in the copy.

WBNS: Nobody Asked the Obvious Question

2007-05-25T23:58:00.000-05:00

At 11pm, reporter Tanisha Mallett's story focused on an apartment complex where security guards make random searches of apartments, as a way to keep drug dealing at bay. There were obligatory sound bites from two tenants; one seemed to have no problem with it, the other thought the guards often went too far. She also talked to a rep for the management company, who explained in reasonable tones about how the searches are designed to keep people safe in their homes.
But all I could think through this whole story was, "Is that legal?" Random searches of homes by private security? And it seems like such an obvious question, I would have thought it would have been answered in the piece. You know, something like, "...and it turns out the complex is on perfectly sound legal footing. We spoke with..." But that moment never came.
So I did the first thing that came to mind; I typed "tenant's rights Ohio" into Google and pressed return. Five hits from the top, I found the Ohio State Bar Association's Tenant/Landlord Rights and Obligation page. There, under "What are my rights as a tenant?", I found this: "You have a right of privacy, which the landlord must respect. The landlord may enter your apartment after reasonable notice (at least 24 hours) for certain legitimate reasons and in certain emergency situations."
Now, I'm no lawyer. But that statement suggests to me that there is a real question about the legality of the searches. Did residents sign their rights away? Is there case law that can sometimes trump the boilerplate legislation? I don't know, and again, I'm no lawyer. But it seems so clear in the Bar Association's guidelines, I have to wonder why Mallett didn't at least ask someone, anyone, the obvious question.
"Is this legal?"

Check Out A Friendly Site

2007-05-25T14:08:00.000-05:00

For more conversations about Columbus media, check out "Columbus Media Chatter". It's moderated, but lively.

WSYX: Odd Story Priorities

2007-05-24T22:10:00.000-05:00

At 5pm, after a brief breaking news piece about a fatal shooting on the east side, ABC6 got to its lead story - an 18 year old who crashed his motorcycle Wednesday night and died. The Dispatch website covered this in four sentences. WSYX set it up with a VO of the scene, then a Shannon McCormick newsroom liveshot with a package. Total: 2:25, including a graphic detailing calling hours and funeral arrangements. Then, as is typical for the earlies, the story showed up again in the 5:30 and 6pm shows.
By comparison, the story that affects thousands on the east side, has huge economic implications, winds up months of wrangling and features very cool video - the demolition of Woodland Meadows - was covered in VOs and VOSOTs.
I understand the demographic appeal of profiling a well-liked teenager coming out of Maury. But sometimes, the news is just the news.

WCMH: Out of Control GFX

2007-05-23T19:19:00.000-05:00

"High Gas Prices." Every station's done this graphic dozens of times over the years, and it often has the same treatment News4 gives it: the digital price moving upward on the face of a stylized gas pump. I don't have any problem with repeating the familiar; it quickly conveys the idea to the attention-impaired. But WCMH's graphic takes the whirling numbers to silly extremes. Like the hundredths on a stopwatch, the graphic zooms from a dollar and change (presumably per gallon) to the $30.19 figure below - and then above $50 before it dissolves to "High Gas Prices." (The blur of the $30.19 below is partly due to the screen capture and partly due to the built-in dissolve of the graphic.) Was the insanely high pricing intentional hyperbole? Was it designed to illustrate the speed of the climbing prices, but not necessarily the eye-popping amounts actually shown? This seems like form over function, and while I'm not against that in principle, this graphic just struck me as very odd.

P.S. 05/24/07: A Newsheimer's reader suggested the graphic may have been meant to illustrate the total price of a tank of gas. If true, this seems even more off-target to me. When people think about gas prices, they think about the price per gallon.

WBNS: Good Story, A Bit Off-Target

2007-05-22T23:55:00.000-05:00

Turns out people are having their ears stapled to lose weight, and that made for a really promotably story for 10TV's 11pm B-block. The angle, in a piece voiced by anchor Andrea Cambern: nobody regulates this procedure in Ohio and there's a relatively high infection rate. But the best angles seem to have either been left out or not gathered. BNS talked to a clinic operator where the staples are put in by a nurse who warns patients about the possibility of infection. They also found three other nurses, an osteopath, and a chiropractor offering ear stapling. Some states limit the procedure to doctors, but in an HMO era when most people routinely get care from physician's assistants or nurse practitioners I think it's hard to excite the home viewer about medically-trained personnel wielding surgical staplers. About midway through the story, the Ohio Cosmetology Board discovered a beautician doing the stapling, and that's where 10TV could have generated some really interesting tape. The beautician in question had made her case to the Board in April, and the panel will decide what to do at some point. But presumably the beautician could be found and interviewed; there's a state license to track her down with. Where was she trained? How does she deal with dissatisfied clients? If she was found but refused an interview, say so. Do some document pulls, using her testimony to the board. The story suggests another beautician and a manicurist were also found doing the stapling. Would they talk? Those are the people I'd be worried about... not nurses and doctors. It was an interesting story. BNS just didn't get tape from enough people.

WCMH: What Happened Here?

2007-05-21T22:38:00.000-05:00

Hard to say whether this was a busted live shot or what, but Lauren Diedrich's story at 6pm on confiscated fighting dogs was oddly short... about :35, actually. It was also short on some of the things that could have turned the gruesome video of injured dogs into a truly compelling piece. The Assistant City Attorney was there, and happy to talk... but do we need the official sound bite? (To no one's surprise, he's against hurting dogs). What do the neighbors say about living next door to a guy who's now been busted twice for this? How do the animal rescue workers deal with the dogs' injuries? How do they deal with having to go back to the same places over and over? Anybody on city council calling for a crackdown? So many angles to chase, such riveting video. What happened here?

WSYX: Just Say No

2007-05-20T23:50:00.000-05:00

In the press to fill a show, producers can sometimes be tempted. Tempted to air video that should never see the inside of a playback machine, let alone the viewer's TV screen. Video that only exists because the photog figured he'd better bring something back, even though it's clear to him there's really no reason to pull the trigger. Please take my advice: just say no.
Case in point... this bus wreck from the 11pm:
"A bus headed from Ohio to New York crashed this morning, killing two people. Another 32 people were injured. The bus was headed from Youngstown to New York City. Investigators are having trouble determining what happened because many of the passengers were Asian and did not speak English."
First, nice job burying the fact that this is in no way a local story. The banner read "Clearfield, PA," but the anchor led with Ohio and never actually mentioned where it happened. And even if we agree that the piece should get some air in the A-block (and I do), there was no reason for the video. The wreck was clearly long gone by the time some hapless Pennsylvania shooter got there, so he did what he could with what was left. There were shots of oil-stained pavement and roadside grass littered with what might or might not be debris from the wreck, but that was it. It didn't help illustrate the story. It actually detracted from the presentation. Someone should have called this a reader instead of a VO.
Next time, just say no.

Saunders Employed

2007-05-19T21:33:00.001-05:00

Please join me in congratulating my good friend Jay Saunders. He will be joining "WTMJ-TV" in Milwaukee soon, producing the 10pm. It's a great town, a good gig, and we'll miss Jay.
To see an actual WTMJ "News 4" editorial by veteran broadcast journalist Ed Hinshaw, click here.
Did I mention this was from 1960?
Seriously, Jay, vaya con dios.

WBNS: Crimetracker 10 Unspoiled

2007-05-17T23:28:00.000-05:00

At 11pm, Angela An's CrimeTracker 10 piece "Exposing the Exposers" was what WCMH's "Park Problem" only wished it could be: a compelling story. Both were supposed to be about the problem of city parks plagued by men having sex with themselves and others. But An's track says she spent three days on the street working her story, and it shows. Candice Lee's piece on Wednesday, mentioned here on Newsheimer's in "Uninspiring Pre-Show", was clearly done as a spoiler to the BNS piece. That would account for thin coverage of the topic; the idea was just to beat An on with the the basics. Lee's story was all wide shots and graphics. An had the goods.
I won't go into detail about An's story, but it was a home run... the uncomfortable on-camera denials of men caught masturbating in parks, deviants cruising from one park to another, the detritus of illicit sex off the hiking trail. Newsheimer's readers know I don't often rave about stories like this. Follow the link above. Compare the stories. Watch the video.
Great story, Angela (and your shooter, too).

WCMH: Uninspiring Pre-Show

2007-05-16T21:09:00.000-05:00

Coleen Marshall had the read for the 6pm preshow and the energy was fine, but the script just didn't sell the show.
Element A) "Keeping you safe while having fun at local parks," Marshall said. Other than positioning NBC4 as being the station that will somehow protect you at the park, this sentence has no value. "Tonight we review police reports to tell you which parks are the worst offenders for public indecency." This is evidence the writer believes reinforcing the "Working for You" image is more important than convincing viewers to watch the show. It's :08 before Marshall pitches the actual story, which later turns out to be "find out which four city parks have lots of public indecency arrests." (As a package premise, it's pretty thin. You could easily cover it with a graphic unless you've got outraged parents or little league coaches or church picnickers, which they don't.) I'm just saying, sell it out of the gate or lose the viewer. Then remind me how hard you're working for me. And strangely, this element carried no letterbox graphic or banner.
Element B) "Sent to prison for more than a hundred years for tying up and robbing homeowners. Now hear what the State Supreme Court says about that punishment." Just getting to hear from the State Supreme Court isn't particularly a grabber. The banner hinted at what might be a grabber - "Second Chance?" - but the tease script never heads that direction. And really, anyone who's ever seen a tease for a TV news story knows that if the court hadn't done something slightly favorable to the convict's case, we would be watching some other tease right now.
Element C) "An historic church is left in ruins. Now parishoners try to find hope as they sift through the rubble." We've all seen this story before, so it's a tough sell. Luckily, the sound in the package turns out to be good later. Maybe use a short piece of that sound here?
Element D) "And Central Ohio took a pounding from last night's storm. Jym will tell us what's next." Marshall is promoting that Ganahl will be doing the weather as usual.

WBNS: 10 Investigates and Turns Up a Winner

2007-05-14T20:57:00.000-05:00

At 6pm, a really good investigative piece from 10TV. Turns out Columbus School District campuses don't necessarily conduct all the fire drills they're supposed to, often have fire exits blocked or locked and sometimes there are problems with fire extinguishers. See it now at: 10TV.com This story had what the "Unlicensed Teachers in Charter Schools" story did not... actual problems the viewer could care about. (See: WBNS: Underwhelming Investigation) And reporter Lindsey Seavert's walking/talking demonstrations of the problems turned up by the investigation were a welcome relief from the tried-and-true document pulls we're used to seeing. Although, when you watch the story, take a look at her face just before she squeezes the trigger on that fire extinguisher; she's not looking forward to it one bit.
One criticism from "Underwhelming Investigation" still stands. Let the viewers see all of the results by posting them on the Web. The fact that parents can get their school's results on the campus is nice. But you didn't do that story just for the parents at those schools. Let people all over the metro see the reports of violations you found. If nothing else, a complete list would be a real draw to the website.

Too True

2007-05-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

WCMH: One-Stop Shopping

2007-05-11T19:06:00.000-05:00

Sure, the story was in the newspaper, but it sounded like a great 530pm lead: the rehab of Northland Mall. So what happened?
First, the reporter made an error that's all too common. Matt Alvarez wrote a traditional inverted pyramid story and packaged it, but didn't take into account his live lead and the anchor lead in the overall flow. That meant the producer was pretty much forced to cannibalize facts from the track just to give the anchors something to say, and Alvarez had to do the same thing. The lack of planning led to numerous redundancies and a waste of precious time.
Even worse, though... what could have been an interesting, informative story about a solution to a neglected eyesore was just a string of three soundbites from Mayor Michael Coleman, interspersed with facts we'd already heard because of the writing issue mentioned above. (There was one other soundbite, but there was no reporter setup and no identifier for the talking head, so that :09 was just confusing.) Why not get away from the groundbreaking to talk to shop owners in the neighborhood, who could see their own businesses pick up? Why not talk to area homeowners who might applaud the higher property values and the new shopping choices? Why not talk to a developer about how an improvement at Northland could give the whole area a boost? Why not talk to a realtor about the impact on already-available office and retail space?
It doesn't look like Alvarez ever left the tent where the press conference was held, except for the walking/talking live intro by a boarded-up mall entrance.

The Natural Follow

2007-05-11T08:02:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago we talked about stories that get done over and over. They seem to come in two flavors; the "how-to," with predictable lists of tips and the annual or seasonal stories like salt barn visits. (Nobody mentioned the annual trip to the main post office for late IRS filers.)
But I've been thinking about an unrelated category of stories that are just as predictable. I call them the "natural follow." When the shootings took place on the Virginia Tech campus, I wrote down "graduation." I knew the press would head back there at the end of the year. This morning, I saw CNN had done just that, and the graduation story is in papers worldwide. (For example, the British Guardian newspaper is carrying a long AP story.) I suspect there will be more stories on the first day of classes next year, and then again on the anniversary of the tragedy. I understand this is a chance to check back in, see how the students are getting on and get some great emotional sound.
I feel a strange ambivalence about stories that are so predictable, based on deadlines that can be seen months or years ahead. What do you think?

WSYX: Missing a Fact

2007-05-10T21:47:00.000-05:00

Right after an update on yesterday's fatal shooting on Champion Avenue, ABC6 ran this nugget in their 5pm show.
"Police are trying to figure out who's behind a shooting near the state fair grounds early this morning. Someone was shot around three o'clock at the intersection of 4th Street and 11th Avenue. Detectives say they have no suspects or motive in this shooting." That's the whole thing.
Videowise, there was so little to work with the photog had to shoot the 4th Street and 11th Avenue street signs and show them individually, along with a lighted "Don't Walk" sign. But worse, there's a major fact missing. How's the victim doing? Or step back, and take the broader view. Isn't it wise to just pass on airing some stories... even though you shot video? This story just stuck out as vague and trivial in an otherwise interesting block.
A-block highlight: Crystal Davis' tease for the 6pm version of her story on a lockdown at some Marion-area schools. "What should parents do in a lockdown situation?" That's a talker. And it certainly beats the "We'll hear more from..." tease that turns up all too often.

WBNS: Breaking News

2007-05-09T18:56:00.000-05:00

Breaking News at the top of the 5:00... a man shot in a courtyard between two buildings, and Laura Cole was selling her story hard, describing video of an intensive search for a suspect being conducted by police.
"I want to show you video that we took when we first arrived on scene," Cole said. "You can see officers around, trying to figure out exactly what happened... Detectives are here combing the scene for evidence along with crime scene investigators, which will begin to take pictures, which will begin to look for shell casings, anything that will lead them to who did this, and that is the question right now."
If you didn't see this story, you might believe Cole had pictures of all the CSI-type activity she was describing. But there was only one four second shot in this live-to-VO that included police officers. It was an extra-wide chopper shot, with police identifiable by the tiny white dots of their hats in the expanse of the neighborhood. Otherwise, there were lots and lots of shots of parked police cruisers. There was an actual police officer closing the trunk of his car behind her live tag, but that was incidental and unreferenced. I assumed there must have been a rush to get this stuff on air, and somebody just didn't pull the pictures she was referencing.
And then it happpened again at 5:30.
"You can see a number of police cruisers, along with officers going around looking for evidence and trying to grasp anything that they can find that will lead to clues as to who shot and killed this man."
The difference at 5:30 was that at the end of her VO, Cole did have a shot -- one shot -- of two police officers tapping on someone's door.
At 6pm, more parked cars over a script that seemed to be expecting better pictures.
"This is pictures that we first came across, where officers were combing through, looking for scenes, looking for any possible suspects, trying to talk to people to figure out exactly what happened here."
The same two officers were tapping on the door at the end of the VO. And then I realized what Cole had done.
In all three live shots, the same piece of tape. The only difference was that at 5pm she started with two chopper shots, added at the top of her VO back at the station. After that, it was the same piece of tape over and over. Four cruisers, the trunk of a Toyota, police tape, police tape in an alley, police tape with trash cans in the background, two cops at the door. Granted, there wasn't much to show, and she was demonstrating that by showing all the parked cruisers. But is that a reason to feed one piece of tape for three live hits? And we know Cole wasn't rushed. She claims to have arrived at 3:30. Shooting the parked cars can't have taken long.
And that leads me to the writing.
The script segments I've included here are verbatim. All three hits had the meandering feel of adlibs under pressure, but it's hard to say why. This is a simple shooting story, made simpler because so few facts were available. And as Cole demonstrated with pictures, nothing actually happened for at least an hour and a half behind her.

WCMH: Just Rinse This Story and Use It Again

2007-05-08T18:19:00.000-05:00

NBC4 offered up a perennial favorite in its "Working 4 You" segment in the 6pm tonight. If you missed it, don't worry; you've seen it. In fact, I can almost guarantee you've seen it several times on several different stations. I can't count the times I've seen it in five markets. It's the "beware of shady contractors" story.
The lead was purposely vague. "We're only a few weeks into the spring season," Cabot Rea said, "and already complaints are rolling in to authorities about fly-by-night home repairmen." Complaints? How many? Authorities? Who? I'm not saying there aren't unscrupulous contractors out there. I'm certain of it. And after severe weather, they sometimes do prey on the unwary. In fact, after the next hailstorm, I'll be shocked if one or more stations don't dress this pig up again with the same tips. Check with the Better Business Bureau. Make sure the contractor is licensed and insured. Get a written contract.
There's a whole genre of stories like this, pulled out and dusted off every few months... apparently no worse for the wear. "How To Not Get Burglarized." (Outdoor lights, trim shrubs, deadbolts on doors.) "How To Not Get Stuff Stolen From Your Car." (Keep Xmas presents or valuables out of site in the trunk, roll up windows and lock doors, park in a lighted area.) In fact, these stories are so plentiful and predictable one of my favorite producers kept a file of these tips. That way, when the annual winter "How To Lower Your Natural Gas Bill" story got assigned she could lash it together in no time flat. I've heard producers complain that they'd like to save stills for these stories from one year to the next, but graphic treatments were bound to change.
Help me out with this list. Write me with your favorite story in this genre.

WBNS: Underwhelming Investigation

2007-05-07T20:27:00.000-05:00

I don't know what happened to all the shocking revelations that were supposed to be in the "10 Investigates" piece in the 6pm. Jerry Revish's lead-in suggested that viewers would be troubled by his findings... that there are unlicensed teachers in the city's charter schools. But after seeing the story, I can't tell if I'm just hard to shock or if the violations he found seem kind of tame. Actually, I am hard to shock, but it's also true that the violations really are tame.
He profiles three charters schools. At Zenith Academy, he found that one teacher's certificate had lapsed in September. At Crittendon Community School, he found one teacher with an expired license and one with an out-of-state license; both amounted to paperwork issues. At Horizon Science Academy, there wasn't a qualified teacher available for one parent's special needs student, although one has now been hired. Also at Horizon, another parent was dissatisfied that the school wouldn't give straight answers about teacher certification; not that there were necessarily any problems, she just got bad customer relations. And you'll note, neither problem Revish found at Horizon involved the promised unlicensed teachers.
And that's pretty much it. The script suggests that there are lots of other problems that got solved after "10 Investigates" brought them to the state's attention, but if these are the biggies... I don't know. I guess I expected that he'd found ex-cons or undocumented workers or journalists teaching classes. But what he seemed to find were teachers who had been certified, but needed to catch up on some paper shuffling. I don't doubt that Revish did a lot of digging on this story. And I don't doubt that the state was embarrassed by the problems. But was the result worth the time and effort? See what you think. Revish's script as a web story is at:Licensed to Teach?
Here's a thought. If WBNS wanted to get maximum mileage out of all that work, why not make the problems (and the fixes) available on the Web, where it could be accessed by the public? Otherwise all charter school parents have access to are the results for the three schools in the story, not the dozens he investigated.

WSYX: Details and Design

2007-05-04T20:15:00.000-05:00

First the detail. Near the end of the 6pm newscast, ABC6 ran Highway Patrol dashcam video of a high speed chase. The copy read, "Police clocked the 18 year old from Sandusky doing 82 in a 55 mile an hour zone this week." In the upper left corner, as in every dashcam clip, the date: 04/24/2007. Not this week. I don't think anybody was trying to be deceptive, just to make it sound newer; if you want to bury the date on a story like this, you just don't mention it. I hope Mike Rowe just misspoke. Fact-wise, being off by a week isn't what you want to see. From a practical standpoint, though, the story wasn't about what was in the script. It was sheer eye candy, and I understand that. Plus, you have to give the producer credit for putting news in the last block.
Second, a design issue. In sports, a feature called "Buckeye Football Fever" uses a nearly unreadable font for its main "BFF" logo. (See first image below.) There's usually a solid decision behind good design choices, but this logo is stylized beyond any reason. I don't know whether it was farmed out or done in-house, but yikes.

Now look at the second image. I don't know who designed that logo, but the graphic came out of Star Project Studios in 2003. Much cleaner.

WCMH: A-Block Disappointing

2007-05-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

The top of the 5pm show didn't feel like a newscast in a ratings book. Strange lead, odd coverage choices and a bad case of anticipointment produced a number of stories that all felt like Plan B.
The lead was a live-to-package wraparound with Lauren Diedrich. It seems an elementary school in Newark had a delayed start this morning because of the arrest of a shooting suspect at a nearby home. The story consisted of talking heads and exteriors.
Next up, Elizabeth Scarborough did a liveshot on a sudden spike in gas prices. I'm not a fan of the "gas-prices-are-up" or "gas-prices-have-dropped-unexpectedly-but-not-for-long" formulas, but given the rest of the block, this should easily have been the lead. I mean, $3.16 a gallon. Holy cow. The presentation was marred, though, by a gas price graphic in the anchor tag that sourced the AAA. Frankly, it looked like the AAA produced the graphic. It was extra busy, like something you'd put together on a spreadsheet. The WCMH art department could have helped out here.
Matt Alvarez batted cleanup with a straight package on the state's smoking ban and the official start of enforcement today. He undercut his own story with the truth right at the top... most businesses began complying with the law months ago, so not much actually changed today.
Following that, a public meeting being held by some Columbus City Council members concerning safety issues on the South Side. The idea of previewing a public meeting was enough of a turnoff, but Patrick Preston covered the story in the least-interesting way possible: a straight live explainer about what was going on inside the building behind him. To his credit, he kept it short.
Finally, anchors led into a Crimewatch story with "Amy Basista explains what a saferoom could mean in the event of an emergency." If that intro made you think you would hear about safe rooms, you certainly suffered anticipointment. It was really a newsroom live-to-VO about home invasion stats, teasing a saferoom story coming up later. It turns out there were 64 home invasions in the first four months of the year, compared to 58 last year. The numbers were presented as a troubling rise. It's roughly a 10-percent change, and with such small real-world numbers I can't tell whether that's worrisome or not.
All in all, I have a hard time believing this was the newscast the News4 crew had in mind when they left the morning editorial meeting.

WBNS: Missing Element Makes All the Difference

2007-05-02T20:28:00.000-05:00

Tanisha Mallett's "Big Story" at 6pm seemed solid enough at first, because it was carried by compelling dashcam video. But by the end of the newsroom liveshot, it was clear there were a couple of major questions left unanswered.
Mallett was reporting on the firing of Muskingum County Sheriff's Deputy Phillip Michel, who stopped a Columbus Fire Department Captain for suspected drunk driving, but then let him go. A few minutes later, the firefighter wrecked his truck and was killed. One question left unresolved in Mallet's piece: What is the Muskingum County Sheriff's Department policy in a case like this? When the deputy sniffed alcohol on the driver, was a breathalyzer test the next mandatory step? Mallett doesn't say. Tiny WHIZ-TV in Zanesville talked to Colonel Bryan Hoover with the Muskingum County Sheriff's Department just like Mallett did, and they got a comment about what the deputy's options were. “He could’ve brought him to the station, had somebody pick him up here, even disable his motor vehicle," Hoover said, "but he should’ve taken steps to prevent him. The way it was left was trusting Phillips and his word to stay right there, but he should’ve ensured in some manner that he wasn’t capable of preceding on." The second unanswered question: Does anybody think Michel let the firefighter go because he was a fellow public safety officer? It was implied, but never stated.
There were graphic issues with this story as well. The wordy banner, "Deputy Fired After Deadly Crash" worked over the two-box for the live toss, but got cut off under the 10 bug on the "Big Story" banner. And let me say this about that banner. The icon in that little circle on the left needs to be just that - an icon. During Mallett's live intro, all I could think was, "What is that thing in the circle?" Then in the live tag, I put my nose to the screen and finally figured it out. The icon was a truck windshield, broken in a crash. I think.

WSYX: Right Lead, No Pix

2007-05-01T21:36:00.000-05:00

Just like WBNS and WCMH at 5pm, WSYX led with the bus crash at Cleveland Avenue and Minerva Park. Unfortunately, anybody with a remote control saw that while 'BNS and 'CMH had pictures, 'SYX had a map. And they continued to have maps until 6pm's lead. To their credit, ABC6 updated the story frequently with new facts, as available. But even on the ground, it can't have taken more than an hour to get there and set up a live truck with a mast cam (or some equivalent). If you have to wait to get the reporter in position, fine. Just get some pictures on TV. It's the May book.

WCMH: New Feature Seems Familiar

2007-04-30T17:32:00.000-05:00

NBC4 is giving a hard push to a new feature called Crimewatch. It's an ongoing series of reports highlighting where different kinds of crimes occur in the Columbus metro, steps you can take to protect yourself and your property, and a mapping feature on the station's website that allows you to see what kinds of crimes are prevalent in your neighborhood. Do not confuse it with CrimeTracker, which airs on WBNS. CrimeTracker is an ongoing series of reports highlighting where different kinds of crimes occur in the Columbus metro, steps you can take to protect yourself and your property, and a mapping feature on the station's website that allows you to see what kinds of crimes are prevalent in your neighborhood. And while there is a surface similarity between the two, the logos are entirely different.
In tonight's 6pm Crimewatch story on auto theft, Patrick Preston tried to put a face to the problem by interviewing a woman whose car has been stolen twice. Unfortunately, the woman didn't want her face used. So, after a couple of sound bites covered by a shot of the woman's arm and patio furniture, Preston dived into statistics provided by the Columbus Police Department. (Interestingly, Angela An used similar police stats last May sweeps in her piece on auto burlaries.) At this point in Preston's story, a strange writing problem occurred: He tried to put two items at the top of a list.
"We broke the data down by police cruiser districts," Preston said, "and we found two districts with the highest number of motor vehicle theft reports this year." This sentence would only make sense if the two districts had the same number of auto thefts. But according to his script, they did not. Showing a graphic that said "District 144: More Than 30 Reports," Preston says, "District number 144 led the list with more than three dozen auto theft reports." And while "more than three dozen" is certainly "more than 30," there's a bigger problem. The next district he highlighted had "nearly 40 reports," and he called it "the other neighborhood at the top." They're not both at the top. Just find the highest number. That's your number one. Just using the actual stats would have made this story a lot easier to understand. They're not five-digit numbers, so no "more than" or "nearly" approximations are necessary.
This piece was clearly in the works for some time, maybe since last May and when An's CrimeTracker auto burglary piece aired. Shouldn't somebody have looked over the script?
And here's something you may want to comment on. You could do this same story with any crime category, at any time of the year (although sweeps months make sense). So are CrimeTracker and Crimewatch stories "news"? Or just interesting?

WSYX: Breaking News - Trial in Progress

2007-04-27T20:37:00.000-05:00

I'm sure the justification for using the "Breaking News" treatment on the 5pm lead was timeliness. Background: Adam Saleh is charged with kidnapping and killing a 20 year old Reynoldsburg woman back in August. Julie Popovich's body was found near Hoover Reservoir, but police don't have any physical evidence linking Saleh to the killing. What they do have is testimony from men who were in jail with Saleh, who say he confessed to the crime. Fast forward to today: After days of testimony from others, Saleh took the stand in his own defense. And that's interesting. But is it "breaking news?" Don't get me wrong. I've stretched the definition of "breaking news" as far as anybody. But I don't think I ever used it with testimony in a courtroom. Now, if there was a shooting in the courtroom, that's breaking news. Or Perry Mason getting somebody to unexpectedly stand up and confess... that could be breaking news. Or, I suppose, if Saleh's attorney had steadfastly refused to put him on the stand, but some unexpected event convinced him to change his mind and have the defendant testify... that would have some drama we could justifiably call breaking news. But the sound in Shannon McCormick's story had Saleh denying he did it. Which is what he's been doing for months.

WBNS: Plenty of Weather, Nothing to Package

2007-04-26T22:31:00.000-05:00

Half a dozen tornado warnings, one after the other, early in the evening -- some with unconfirmed reports of funnels touching down. So 10TV did the right thing, and sent a crew and a satellite truck out to look for damage. You should know, covering severe weather like this is always a crap shoot; in order to get something on TV by 11pm, you have to head out into the boonies pretty early. Often you have to pick a destinatiion by looking at radar images of the -approaching- storm... long before you can really tell whether you'll find any damage after you get there. Reporter Lindsay Seavert's package from Waverly in Pike County was a good example of what can go wrong when you chase weather all night... and don't find much. Her package ran forty seconds. It wouldn't have been that long except for a couple of strangely chosen, badly edited and out-of-context sound bites. The first bite was from a man who sounded as though he'd been asked whether he was concerned. He said he was, "a little." Then, a sound bite from a woman who sounded as though she'd been asked to describe what the weather looked like. "It's all dark and spooky lookin'," she said, then added: "Kinda weird." Seavert talked about sirens wailing and dark clouds with tentacles, and she showed some pictures of heavy rain. The presentation was essentially the same as her liveshot at 10pm on WWHO; same rain, same choppy bites. You'd think someone would have seen that first hit and suggested she just feed in some pictures of rain for the 11pm show. But it is unfortunately true: the longer the drive, the more likely the liveshot.

WBNS: Short on Specifics

2007-04-25T23:01:00.000-05:00

The story that ran as "breaking news" at the top of the 5pm newscast was carried on Dispatch.com with a time-stamp of 1:23pm. (I got it in my email just before 3pm.) But I'm not going to complain about marketing when the script suffered from much more basic problems. First, the anchor lead-in seemed vague and a little disjointed. It also buried the Columbus element: "Threats of shootings, one for each second cheerleaders are shown on TV. That's the message in letters mailed all across the country. And tonight we know the FBI's investigation is turning to Ohio State and the Columbus Dispatch. Both received those letters." Why not just get to the point with something like, "The FBI is trying to figure out who sent bizarre letters to the Columbus Dispatch and OSU... threatening to shoot dozens of people because school's cheerleaders get too much air time during games." Then Andrea Cambern tossed to Tanisha Mallett, who held up a copy of the letter. Strangely, her script was even less specific than the anchor lead-in. "The author complains about game-time coverage of cheerleaders, specifically naming OSU's squad," Mallett said. "And in those letters, the author made a pointed threat." She didn't say what the threat was. She just introduced a sound bite from an FBI agent who wanted the public's help in finding the author of the letters... which were postmarked in Seattle. He was hopeful someone would recognize "verbage that's contained in these letters." The problem is, of course, the only "verbage" viewers heard was this sentence fragment in a graphic: "one for each second shown." Take a look at the Dispatch article. It includes a link to a PDF file of the letter with all those threats. And they are pretty disturbing. They should have been in Mallett's story.

WCMH: Great Story, Not Seen Here

2007-04-24T22:52:00.000-05:00

It happened Saturday, and was being treated as a fairly run-of-the-mill homicide. Police say a pair of teenagers decided to rob a man on his front porch at gunpoint. The homeowner pulled his own gun, though, and killed one of the teens. The other boy ran off. Since all this took place in Cleveland, you could understand the Columbus media not jumping on the story. Except for one thing. What no one knew until the Cleveland Plain Dealer came out today was this -- the man on the porch not only had a gun, he had a concealed-carry permit to go with it. It's only the second time such a permit-holder has shot and killed an attacker since the concealed-carry law went into effect three years ago. The story hit the wires at 4:30 this morning. Now, I can't say what every station carried on their early shows (5-6:30pm). But I can tell you News4 didn't even have a reader on. Was there video available? Hard to say what the Cleveland stations have, but there was a candlelight vigil for the dead 15 year old; some of his relatives are angry, and talking to the press. Gun-rights supporters (and police) say the shooting was justifiable and they're talking, too. With all the emotion the concealed-carry law generated when it was first passed, how do you not mention a shooting like this in your newscast? Read the Cleveland Plain Dealer's web story here.

WBNS: Lead with Weather, Wait for News

2007-04-23T21:48:00.000-05:00

The anchors warned rain was moving into the state, so 10TV led with weather at 5pm. Chris Bradley didn't try to oversell what he had. "Yeah, well, things are pretty quiet right now," he said, " but as we go though the next couple of hours we'll have to watch our Live Doppler 10 Storm Tracker closely." Then, even though it was "pretty quiet," Bradley offered a tour of the few spots on the radar screen that did show activity. "Let me show you what's happening. There are a couple of areas where showers are starting to form..." He began with rain over Lake Erie. Then, a small patch of rain north of Mt. Vernon (read farmland) and another between Wapakoneta and Lima (also farmland). No warnings about severe weather, just vague assurances that he'd keep an eye on the radar as a front moved through. "We can't rule out an isolated storm," was as concrete as the forecast got. All this, while Kurt Ludlow was standing by for a true Holy Cow liveshot. A toddler had been found wandering the streets, alone, with scrapes and a bloody nose -- having fallen out of a second story window. In the apartment he'd fallen from, another toddler... also alone. Where's mom? Well, odds are she's at work, but what a story. And Ludlow had the money shot, the police officers bundling the kids into the back of a squad car. Putting this behind nearly blank radar screens seems like an extraordinarily odd choice. If Bradley was predicting severe weather, I'd understand, but he wasn't. Maybe it wasn't possible to be more specific about the scattered storms that blew through about five hours later. So why was weather the lead at 5?

WCMH: The Curse of the Recurring Tease

2007-04-19T18:45:00.000-05:00

If you watch any station's early news, you're bound to see it... a series of teases, block after block, for the same story. The viewer is hoping there's actually a story there by the time she arrives. Each producer, in turn, is hoping to find just one more angle... something that hasn't been used in the other four versions.
Case in point: NBC4's teases for a story about a guy stealing change from parking meters. Police actually found shots of the thief in blurry security video shot around downtown buildings. Now, I just told you the whole story, so more than a couple of teases would really be stretching the available material. Turns out the first attempt was the most effective of the lot, building some mystery into one of those grainy photos. Here's the script: "This photo shows a man feeding a meter. But look closely." The shot widens. "There is no car parked on the street. And now police are looking to find him and park him in jail." So the concept is good, but the script starts with a misstatement (he's -not- feeding the meter) and then just goes on too long. Then there's the weak pun at the end. Why not press the mystery angle even harder? Like this: "He -looks- like he's feeding the meter. So where's the car? But there's something -else- missing from this photo, and that's why he's a wanted man."
After that, the teases get relentlessly repetitive. Preshow: "Police want you to take a good look at this man." Cold open: "This man looks like he's sliding quarters into the meter." Tease one: "Police say he's not putting quarters in, but taking them out." Tease two: "Police gave us surveillance video in hopes you can ID a suspect who police say took thousands of dollars."
The story, including the anchor intro, ran 1:33 and contained no facts you haven't heard. Few stories are worth five teases.

WSYX: Missing - One Dissenting Voice

2007-04-18T22:14:00.000-05:00

As part of a series on key state politicians at the 100 day mark in office, Emily Riemer profiled Attorney General Marc Dann at the end of the A-block at 6pm. The story portrayed the Democrat as a crime fighter, a guy who "loves the law." And Dann says, "I give myself an 'A' for effort." Republicans may have a different assessment, but there were zero Republicans in the story. The Ohio Manufacturers' Association, fuming over a lead-paint lawsuit, complains about the "activist" AG. Not in the story. Gambling opponents are worried because Dann's transition committee took contributions from the makers of slot machine-type video consoles. Also, not in the story. In fact, the only sound in the story was from Dann. If you decide to do a "100 Days" piece on one of the state's most powerful politicians, you really need to commit to more than one interview.

WBNS: Team Coverage in VA

2007-04-17T18:42:00.000-05:00

At 6pm, the lead was (what else) the Virginia Tech massacre, and 10TV promoted the fact they are the only Columbus station with crews there. John Fortney and Tanisha Mallett got the assignment. On the plus side, you can control what you get when you send local crews to a huge national story like this. The station has hours of news hole to fill, and will only get a limited amount of produced material to use from the network... maybe a nuts-and-bolts piece and a backgrounder or feature story of some kind. And you can certainly draw on NewsSource, which is the CNN feed service. But having feet on the ground lets you draw from all those network feeds, front them with local faces -and- look for Central Ohioans to feature. On the minus side, -not- having any stories from your Virginia crew that focus on people from the Columbus area (and we know they're there) looks a little odd to the home viewer. In this show, WBNS had no local angles from Virginia. The ex-OSU professor who was killed in the shootings was actually profiled back here by Angela An.
And if you read the fine print under the title of this blog you'll understand why I'm ready to hear about some other news stories. So I was very interested in WCMH's lead, also at 6pm. Breaking news of a car crash that closed I-270 and caused a huge traffic backup, as featured in an impressive chopper shot. What do -you- think of the decision to do the quick breaking news piece off the top? I do think WCMH's breaker went too long, but my point is story choice, not execution. There was certainly plenty of new news today in Virginia. But for the local newscast? I don't know. I think you could make a case either way. Please send your comments.

WBNS: Rock 'Em Sock 'Em A-Block

2007-04-11T20:27:00.000-05:00

The top block of the 5pm newscast was what you want a newscast to be, with only a few minor speed bumps. (Maybe it was a little crime and courts heavy, but hey, that's what happened today, and it was compelling stuff.) The lead was breaking news, a missing 12 year old. But then, speed bump one: the anchors insisted on naming themselves after they'd already been on the air for two minutes. I suspect that was largely because that element was still in the rundown from before the breaker was shoved in at the top. By that time, an introduction just seemed to get in the way. But they got back on track with a First Student bus driver accused of having sex with one of the teenage girls who rides his bus. (Kudos to Kurt Ludlow or the assignment desk for getting hold of the 911 tape with the girl's irate father. Priceless.) Whoa! There was rain a-comin' in, and another one of those speed bumps. Chris Bradley did what you would have wanted, put up the Storm Tracker to give you an ETA on the rain headed to individual burbs, but then we were treated to a visit to several towns in the giant yellow splotch on the radar. It's raining in London. How about Springfield? Yup, Springfield too. South Charleston is in yellow; does that mean it's raining there, too? Chris says yes. What about Waverly? If Waverly is in yellow, that means rain, right? Yup, raining in Waverly, and Bradley promised a forecast later. Eve Meuller was next with a great story about a two year old killed by a pharmacist's mistake. Speed bump three. On the plus side, she had photos of the dead toddler and an emotional interview with the little girl's mother. But while she led with the photos (which was great), she buried the sound bite with Mom. That forced us to look at tape of unreferenced faces in the Pharmacy Board hearing room, waiting through an overly-detailed description of the chain of events that led to the mistake and the death. She could have summed it up with the pharmacist admitting he signed off on a technician's work... a prescription for the little girl's chemotherapy that was 23 times the proper strength. Bang, go to the bite from Mom. She explains the day the little girl was supposed to come home from her treatment for a curable cancer was the day she went to the morgue, instead. Mueller finished off with an enticing tease about the parents working to change state law (details at 6), and we were off to the races again, with a robbery caught on tape, courtroom apologies from a teenager sentenced for a robbery/murder, and the Duke lacrosse players formally cleared of rape accusations. Whew.

WSYX: Drive-By Journalism

2007-04-10T20:43:00.000-05:00

The ABC6 lead at 6pm -looked- like news; it had a politician, video from Iraq and a reporter in a newsroom. But it certainly wasn't treated like a lead story. Almost no actual reporting was done. Governor Ted Strickland had written an open letter to the President, concerned that Ohio National Guard troops might be deployed later in the year without proper weapons and body armor. He was also worried about the strain of cutting short the down time that Guard members were expecting. It's not an unexpected response from a Democratic governor to the Pentagon's announcement of a potential mobilization. But if you're going to lead with it, there -are- some interesting angles to explore... troop fatigue, Humvees with inferior armor, etc. Sadly, Shannon McCormick had a little b-roll of Strickland, a sound bite outlining his worries, a graphic of the letter he wrote and more b-roll of street skirmishes somewhere in Iraq. No interviews with families or employers who will deal with the issues Strickland was raising. No interviews with any of the men and women who might have to go back. It wasn't treated like a lead at all. It could have been a VO-SOT read by an anchor and nobody would have thought twice. A comparison is revealing: From anchor lead-in to McCormick tag is about 2:00. The letter itself runs six paragraphs and only takes about 1:40 to read the whole thing. If the story lasts longer than the document it's based on, it should also include other facts gathered in reporting. Otherwise, just hold up the letter to the camera and move on.

WCMH: A-Block Killed by Content

2007-04-09T22:35:00.000-05:00

The lead at 6pm was Marshall McPeek with a very important, yet completely non-compelling story. ODOT is holding public meetings on dozens of projects worth grillions of dollars, and they want my input. Yours too, apparently, on plans for ramps, bridges, noise barriers, bike paths... pretty much anything being built with blacktop or reinforced concrete between now and 2011. It's important, and McPeek ran through the whole list. The -whole- list. It took 1:25 on tape, plus the live standups on both ends from Highway 315, plus the anchor tag. Did I mention it was important? All I could guess was Candice Lee suffered another busted live shot from Union County on her suicide-in-a-burning house story, and the producer had to float McPeek up from much lower down in the show. (Lee never came up at 5pm, so the anchors tossed straight to her insert, which desperately needed the reporter setup... but didn't get it.) So for the 6pm, sure, you hate to lead with a suicide, but this guy had called police ahead of time to report a pending "murder," and they found the house ablaze when they arrived. Not Murrow material, but it beats an ODOT meeting advancer. Anyway, Lee's piece followed McPeek's and was fairly solid, but next in line was Lauren Diedrich who had a "crime alert" follow-up on the weekend robbbery/rape of a woman at a university-area ATM. All right, police are issuing a warning, it's a reasonable premise. But what do you cover it with, video-wise? The b-roll over her track was, in this order: 1) people walking, 2) people walking, 3) a guy walking, out of focus, 4) an ATM, 5) an ATM from really close up, 6) shrubbery, 7) a homeless guy on a bike, 8) a sidewalk with a person in the distance, 9) a wall, 10) parking meters, 11) parking meters, 12) trees, and 13) trees with an artsy rack-focus. I'm not making up this series of shots. And except for the ATM, there was no relationship between the pictures and the facts in the track. That's why it's derisively called "wallpaper." And that's why I have no idea what was in the rest of the show.

WBNS: Catching Up

2007-04-08T23:55:00.000-05:00

It's not the coverage the story deserves, but at least 10TV caught up on the Victoria Eilerman story at 11pm. (See: WBNS: Yesterday's News, Today) Saturday's reporting snafu had searchers still looking for the 84 year old woman's body, a day after it had been found by police and then fully reported in the Dayton Daily News. Tonight's script included the six words that bury the mistake with the newest fact: "Her body has since been recovered." It's what producers do to to rectify an error in a previous newscast. I've done it. Every producer's done it. It's about all you -can- do, short of a correction. How often do you see those? But here's something interesting I just found on the WBNS website. A story time-stamped 10:18pm Satuday, indicating the body had been found -- that's 40 minutes before the show that included a reference to the missing body. Who posted that item? When I was there, Associate Producers were entering those stories. If they're still doing that, it would mean -somebody- had the right set of facts... but they didn't make it to the newscast. Someone fill us in.

WBNS: Yesterday's News, Today

2007-04-07T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'm beside myself. The most underplayed story of the week got twenty seconds on Saturday's 11pm. But that's not the problem. It's what was in those twenty seconds that has me scratching my head. The story: the horrifying abduction/rape/murder of an 84 year old woman in Ft. Loramie, Ohio. When Victoria Eilerman surprised a burglar in her home Thursday, she wound up stuffed into the trunk of a car, driven to a wooded area and beaten to death. Did I mention the three cell phone calls this brave woman made from the trunk of the car, vainly trying to contact the police? Holy cow, why aren't there satellite trucks all over Ft. Loramie? All right, I'll calm down about this shocking story being tragically underplayed. But here's the real problem... tonight's story was out of date by 24 hours. Kurt Ludlow read: "The search continues tonight for the body of an 84 year old woman abducted from her home." It goes on like that for another fifteen seconds, ending with "Deputies tonight are still trying to find Eilerman's body." So, for the second day in a row, I'm left with all these unanswered questions. Like, if police have the suspect (they do), and if he's confessed (he has), how come they can't find the body? Well, it turns out they have. In Saturday's Dayton Daily News, I discovered the body was found Friday night at 10:30pm. Sunday's edition puts the discovery at 10pm, but still Friday night. OK, it wasn't in the Dispatch. I don't know why. And OK, it's two hours away from downtown Columbus. But jeez, make the drive! The Shelby County Sheriff was talking, the neighbors were talking, even the family was talking. One of her seven children is the mayor of Ft. Loramie. And I understand it's Saturday. Resources are limited. If you don't think it's as good a story as I do, fine... don't commit a reporter. But don't leave your viewers with so many questions they go looking for facts themselves... and discover -your- facts are 25 hours old. Make a phone call. Newsheimer's readers, find complete coverage at: Dayton Daily News

WCMH: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2007-04-06T20:30:00.000-05:00

The tease going into the first break at five had so much promise, and then just broke my heart. First element: car into motel room. That's the kind of video you want in a tease. OK, it was taken late, partly because the interstitial graphic ate up so much time, but "This wasn't the wakeup call that a guest at a local motel was expecting this morning" isn't bad. You -could- tighten it up a bit and get rid of the clunky "a guest at a local motel" by using the actual room number, something like "This wasn't the kind of wake up call room 110 was expecting this morning." But still, not bad. Second element: new rules for young drivers. Pretty wide appeal, but the anchor stumbled all over the read... and the script wasn't that compelling to begin with. "And new restrictions for Ohio teen drivers. We'll explain why your child may be breaking the law if you're not in the car." The main problem here is that the anchor apparently just told us why my child may be breaking the law under the new restrictions. It's because I'm not in the car. There are a lot more interesting angles to tease in the new regulations, including the numbers of minors who can be in a car with a teen driver without an adult. Tease one of those. But don't ask -and- answer your own question in the same tease. Element three: "Police say this stuffed bunny was no Easter present. What they found inside." What was inside was drugs, which despite the static bunny picture makes this a great story to tease. I mean come on, drugs in a stuffed bunny? Great stuff. But videowise, we're shown the bunny, then the unreferenced mug shot of the hapless bad guy. How about dropping the mug shot and doing a slow push into the bunny to give it a little movement. Then say, "Usually, easter bunnies like this are fire-retardant. But police say, what this bunny was stuffed with was meant to be set on fire. And smoked." Element four: weather again. In order to do this, the producer cuts out of the tease graphics to the three shot with Jym Ganahl on the set. They all have a chuckle over the fact that, in Marysville, it's 34 degrees right now. And the wind is blowing 13 miles an hour! The point of this seems to be to sell the Chevrolet ad in the top left of the weather graphic. What it actually does is take all the steam out of the tease.

WSYX: One Story, Two Problems

2007-04-05T19:27:00.000-05:00

When I heard the first words of the six pm, I thought I had the subject for this post. "A woman thought she was getting a car she bought on the internet," Yolanda Harris said. The vague "a woman" is an extraordinarily weak way to head into a newscast. But then Harris continued, "Instead, she was beat up inside her apartment." That's right, she was not "beaten," she was "beat up." I'm not sure if the producer was purposely going for "young demo" with this weirdly informal construction or just didn't know the difference. But whoever wrote that apparently also wrote the banner: "Woman Beat Up at Home." As far as the story itself goes, it was missing an important ingredient: Why? Why would somebody go to all this trouble to beat someone up? The victim was clearly choked, shoved, beaten... but what was the motive? Was she robbed? Sexually assaulted? Even if those answers aren't known yet, say so. I don't know what was more upsetting, the middle-school grammar or the big hole in the story.

WBNS: Where in the World is Eve Mueller?

2007-03-30T21:14:00.000-05:00

At 6pm, reporter Eve Mueller was on breaking news... a suspicious package found at an East Columbus strip mall. Chopper shots. Ground shots. The Money Shot of the bomb robot coming back from blowing up the package. Great work. But no locator banner, no map and no mention in the copy about WHERE THIS IS! Let's see, East Columbus... there's a Lane Bryant in the background, a Pier One and an Old Navy. Hmm. Wait, I know -- that combination of stores can be found on Brice, just south of I-70, right? Now, what's the story about? I don't know, because I was busy trying to ascertain one of the central facts... where is this strip center?

WCMH: No-News Story Placement a Mystery

2007-03-28T23:40:00.000-05:00

The 11pm led tonight with a breaker about a robbery-shooting at a drive-through liquor store, but then followed up with a story that looked like it had been plucked from another block in another show -- some newscast that doesn't require news stories to include news. It was a story about the problems created when kids in the custody of Franklin County Children Services run away from group homes. I imagine this is a serious issue. The anchor lead is certainly promising -- "Tacoma Newsome tells us how police and Children Services are now working to solve the problem." And Newsome's lead restates "It's a problem for both police and Franklin County Children Services." (And yes, those sentences were actually back to back.) But the story a) has no news peg and b) never goes anywhere. There's no evidence of anything new to report, and there's no solution offered other than a vague bite about working on kids' coping skills. How did this land second in the newscast? It was surrounded by other stories containing actual news. It's a mystery. I'm just hoping the original rundown didn't have this as a lead, with the breaking news pushing everything down one slot.

WBNS: Flash! High Crime in Chicago

2007-03-27T21:34:00.000-05:00

The news nugget for this 530pm CrimeTracker 10 story was the new AAA list of Ohioans' favorite vacation spots. From one to five: Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Chicago. Then the CrimeTracker 10 angle... how safe are you on vacation in these cities? To find out, Angela An seems to have used simple crime stats from the destination city, not crimes against tourists. I'm suggesting the safety of tourists is probably very different from the safety of people who actually live in a city. This is never addressed in the piece, so all I'm left with is the sense that unless I do something to make myself a target, I could be something like 1/52 as likely to be a crime victim during my vacation week as someone who lives in my destination city. (Certainly, if I hang around the squares in Rome with a fanny pack full of cash waiting to be snatched, I'm probably increasing my chances of being a crime victim above the average Roman.) But back to the story. Raise you hand if you're surprised to find out Chicago is at the top of the list for robberies; but robberies against tourists? Who knows? CrimeTracker 10 also advises against driving to Phoenix. Turns out there are lots of car thefts there, but they didn't tell you why. As a long-time Texas resident, I can tell you border states supply thousands of stolen cars a year to buyers in Mexico. If you go to Myrtle Beach, you could get ripped off, CrimeTracker 10 warns, if you leave stuff in you car while at the beach. That's the "don't be stupid" advice for any beach isn't it? Oh, yeah, Orlando has the least crime of the five. A little surprising to me that it beat out Myrtle Beach, and maybe interesting to you if incremental differences in crime rates are how you pick a vacation spot. But if only I didn't have to wade through all these questionable stats to get there.

WSYX: Smith Story Badly Teased and Underplayed

2007-03-26T23:26:00.000-05:00

"...Plus Anna Nicole Smith's official cause of death!" Now, I don't have any problem with this story at all (I know reasonable minds may differ on this point), but I do have a problem with the angle. By the 10:50 promo, if you -care- what killed Anna Nicole Smith, you already -know- what killed Anna Nicole Smith. Hook me with some fresher angle, people. Turns out they weren't using a fresher angle, just something that could be covered with the two-word "Accidental Overdose" that had been on OTS graphics for 13 hours and a little file b-roll. There were plenty of new angles to take, good sound to be had, but no. My sense of anticipointment was aggravated, as well, by the fact that the story wound up being 22 seconds long in the last block. This, after being teased at least twice. Good grief, it takes longer than that just to read the list of drugs in Smith's system - everything from human growth hormone to Nicorette. Actually, just reading that list out loud would have been more interesting than the aging story they ran. The full list really gives you a sense of what Smith's day must have been like. Listen, I say Smith is news, but every time it's covered like this... two facts and VO of a buxom blonde... you prove the critics right.

WCMH: Allegedly, It's a Habit

2007-03-22T23:45:00.000-05:00

At 11pm the lead was crime, so you -have- to have "allegedly" in there somewhere, don't you? "The man allegedly was willing to pay hundreds of dollars," John Ivanic said, "for the chance to have sex with the pre-teen." Ivanic had a copy of the complaint attached to the arrest report; he could quote that. He could quote the girl's mom. He could quote a police officer. But in any event, there's no reason to use a flabby, needlessly vague cop-speak word like "allegedly." If you need details on this story, by the way, check the Newark Advocate. The March 15th edition. They use allegedly in their lead sentence, too. Oh, and my Mervin Block language-Nazi usage tip of the day comes from this same story. As he went to a mug shot of the bad guy, Ivanic said, "The case centers around this man," and of course, it doesn't. The case can either CENTER ON this man or REVOLVE AROUND this man.

WBNS: Short Story, Long List of Bad Choices

2007-03-21T20:21:00.000-05:00

I'm no language Nazi like Mervin Block, but there were almost too many bad choices to count in Laura Cole's 5pm live hit. It was a story about what are often called "kick buglaries." The bad guy knocks on the suburban door in the middle of the day, and if nobody answers, the door is smashed in... often with a swift kick. The peg for Cole's story was a series of "burglary alerts" in neighborhoods across the metro. Cole was in one of them, Genoa Township. Here's the first sentence of her live, walking-talking intro: "At least a six different law enforcement agencies - if not more - are involved in trying to figure out who is causing at least a dozen burglaries around Central Ohio." First, is the number of jurisdictions the most interesting thing about this story? Second, if it's "at least a dozen," adding "if not more" makes no sense. Third, are burglaries "caused" by criminals, or committed? All that in just the first sentence, and presumably, this story was the result of several hours work. No shots of a home where a burglary had actually taken place, just wallpaper of the neighborhood around the liveshot. No sound from victims, just one distractingly-framed sound bite from a woman who says she's keeping an eye on strangers in the neighborhood. Whoever put out the "burglary alerts" must know the addresses of the crime scenes. Show me one, unless you're trying to protect a homeowner. But even if -that's- the case, there are ways to shoot the house without giving away the location. Boil it down, this was a press release, B-roll and a sound bite.

WBNS: More Cowbell

2007-03-20T00:06:00.000-05:00

A satisfyingly skeptical update at 6pm on the mysteriously transported toddler in Muskingum County; thanks for staying on top of that, Kurt Ludlow. And later, there was great tape from the woman who admitted killing all those stray pets. But in between, some sort of minor update in the Emily Rimel murder case. No fair. OK, back to back, the teleporting toddler and the cat-killer might have looked like a promo for Maury. And OK, Lindsey Bruce is accused of a horrible crime: killing a five year old girl. (He's already been convicted in her kidnapping.) Here's what happens. You put a crew at the courthouse because you want to follow the case intelligently and report major developments. And as long as you have a reporter there for eight hours, it's easy to feel like there ought to be a package, whether something really happened or not. But I'm saying, just say no. Feed in some sound if it's good and some VO and move on. When it comes to Maureen McLaughlin talking about killing hundreds of animals, I say "I got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!"