Future of Media

Cheap Content: Will Giving Up On Crime Save News?

Andrew Hayward, former head of CBS News, recently suggested Louisville TV journalists reduce crime and murder coverage to provide more relevance for today’s changing audiences.

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Between October fires and November ratings, my days have been filled with a lot of “air” time in my station’s trusty Jet Ranger Sky10. Tonight, police searched for a stabbing suspect at the beach.

He makes good points about the consultant-driven, breaking-news formula that makes most stations look the same. He suggests passing on hiring the latest polished presenter from J-school and picking up a authentic local with knowledge of the market.

One of the benefits of the Digital Correspondent program at 10News is that we have trained reporters, producers, and photographers to shoot and report which has opened up our newscasts to some new perspectives. While reporters often move from market to market, photographers tend to be more local and therefore generate some unique story ideas.

I’ve argued it’s important to cross pollinate with talent outside of television journalism if newsrooms are ever to truly report across platforms.

Hayward is quick to point out with change comes a risk.

“It’s a risk to move in a different direction. It takes courage, because you lose people before you get them,” he said. “You risk losing the viewers you had before.”

When my station experimented with a non-traditional 4 p.m. newscast last year, audiences didn’t take to the new format.

Yoni Greenbaum makes a similar argument regarding crime reporting over at Editor On The Verge but he underestimates the cost of covering crime. Truth is, it costs over seven bills an hour to keep Sky10 hovering over a stabbing suspect and live trucks and ground crews aren’t much cheaper.

Could it be that covering crime helps pay for some of those live reporting methods? After losing 1,500 homes to wildfire last month I’m not sure if I’m ready to sell off our station’s live capabilities quite yet.

Greenbaum points to the New York Times attempt to balance coverage on the front page.

And as long as people continue to tune in and buy papers, many newsrooms will continue to take the easy way out.

It seems to me that both Greenbaum and Hayward are still suggesting solutions based on the top-down design of traditional media.

How can news be more relevant to an audience that can choose what is specifically relevant to them from any of the infinite choices of the Internet?

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