To Accept Free Stuff or Not to Accept Free Stuff?

Tickets. T-shirts. Meals. In TV, you get a lots of offers for freebies. Should you take it?

Let me start by saying I have a lot of good friends, good people, who disagree with me, think I'm off my rocker. That said, my feeling is this-- avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I don't like to take anything the general public wouldn't be offered. We know you wouldnt do a segment on the gym just because you got a free membership-- but what if you wanted to get an exercise expert, would you feel like you needed to call that gym? Slippery slope. Lot easier to make those decisions without having accepted stuff. 

Case in point. I did dirty restaurant reports for years. Once a month we did a restaurant that got a 100. Since it was usually lunchtime when we shot there, we'd eat there at our expense. One time I overheard a customer-- who saw us eating-- say oh now I know why they are here, implying we did a shoot for a free lunch. We started eating elsewhere after that. 

The media already has a bad rep. Why make it worse ?

East Coast Hurricane Coverage

Day late and a dollar short but... Someone asked whether I thought the coverage of the Hurricane Irene was overblown. I am ashamed to admit that at the start of the coverage, I remember myself saying something snarky like-- a Cat 1 is like a Cat 5 in terms of news coverage if it hits anywhere near NYC. This is because I work in the middle of the country and so I feel the news that happens here often gets ignored. I whine about it all the time. But in the case of Irene, I was wrong. Really wrong. Dozens of deaths, billions in damage and the worst flooding in Vermont's history can't be over covered.

Police Arrest Photog

You guys see this? What do you think?

http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-20110920-fox6-photojournalist-arrested,0,6130946.story

Journalism Conference

This year's RTNDA/SPJ conference in New Orleans looks like a good one. There are lots of heavy hitters speaking and some interesting pre-conference workshops. It's not cheap though-- $275 for early bird registration. But it's a great place (outside of the newsroom) to refresh your skills, learn new ones as well as mix and mingle. Plus, New Orleans is awesome. The conference website is http://excellenceinjournalism.org/

They trust us. A Little.

New Gallup data shows Americans Regain Some Confidence in Newspapers, TV News. Our ranking among American institutions? #11. The military was #1. For what it's worth, we beat Congress at #16.


Americans Regain Some Confidence in Newspapers, TV News

Preventing Mistakes

I received an email from a producer majorly stressing about catching mistakes, errors and misspellings. Here's my best advice...

It helps to build in layers of prevention. For example, if you're worried about bad fonts... have someone, anyone... else look over your fonts a half hour before the newscast. Any set of eyes other than yours will catch mistakes.

Ditto with scripts-- do you have an EP? They should be looking over all of the scripts of your show. If not, maybe look to an anchor or writer as a second set of eyes.

We're all human. You will make mistakes... so as many systems or extra people you can have looking at things, the better. Also, don't underestimate the power of the final readthrough--- after you've approved all scripts, do one final read through, reading everything out loud. Your ears will catch things your eyes won't. Make sure you are reading and consuming a lot of local news. By reading and listening and watching a lot of stuff, you'll catch nit-noid mistakes (wait-- was that 3 cars in that accident? I thought I read 4 somewhere...) My favorite (horrifying) mistake that made air was back when I was a writer-- I wrote that Easter celebrated the birth of Christ. I wrote it in a rush and two other people read it and didn't catch. I still cringe when I think of it today. We got calls. A lot of them.

To do a lot of these preventative checks.. you have to get your stuff done early. This is good practice anyway and allows everyone else time to do their jobs better. So shoot for generally having most everything done about an hour before the newscast. Then you can do your final checks, write teases and wait for the inevitable spot news to blow up your show. By being generally done by an hour-ish ahead of time... you can be free to respond to whatever crisis that pops up.

Do something non work related to make you better able to meet stress. Walk, run, swim-- whatever floats your boat... do something physical to help combat the inevitable irks that come your way. Also, do like I say and not like I did (as a show producer) and skip the 3 Mountain Dew/cheeseburger days. They do not help you stay calm cool and collected. Finally-- get a life outside of work! Join a club, hit a movie with friends. That gives you a better perspective when you do deal with work craziness.

And lighten up! Remember, it ain't brain surgery. No one dies if you screw up. Still, aim to give your best to your viewers and your co-workers each and every day.

Spoiling Your Appetite

Remember when your mom told to not to fill up on a drink or snack before dinner so that you wouldn't spoil your appetite? Similar fine line with intros. We want enough interesting detail to keep people watching but you don't to end up putting everything in the intro and leaving your reporter nothing to report. On the other hand, your intro sets up the story. I remember having an argument with a reporter about him wanting to "save" a key detail for his pkg. But in my opinion, that detail needed to be in intro.

There's no "right" way to do things. I generally used to have pretty quick intros so we could get to the reporters (for pacing) and save big set-up intros for major stories-- or leads. But maybe there's an abundance of good stuff and you want to juice up your intro. I'd let the story drive it. And be sure to be clear with your reporter (early) about what you're doing. Have an open discussion and hear your reporter out. They might have something great that they couldn't use in their piece that you can toss in intro or even a headline or tease.