That was the situation for many television news directors this week. Gathered in Las Vegas for the annual RTNDA convention when the news broke, some broke for home to oversee coverage from the newsroom. Others, including some from markets close to the crime scene, decided for a number of reasons to stay at the convention.
Not one news director I talked with Monday took what was once the industry-standard approach of letting the networks handle national news, while devoting local resources to local stories.
For Barry Klaus, news director of WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, N.C., it was a close call — literally and figuratively. His station is only about two hours from Virginia Tech. One of his primary competitors left the convention for home when the shooting story broke.
Klaus found himself with a choice: fly back east to supervise coverage in person, or remain at the convention with colleagues and corporate news staff from Hearst-Argyle, the company that owns his station and 25 others.
“What worked for us today was the Hearst group effort,” he said. Collaborating on coverage proved easier, he said, because so many managers were together in one place. Within hours, satellite trucks from five Hearst stations were on their way to the scene. Crews from other group stations and Hearst’s Washington bureau headed for Blacksburg, too.
“It was more effective for me to stay and remain in contact than to spend five hours on a plane, out of touch,” Klaus said. But Klaus said there was another major consideration:
“I trust my managers,” he said, praising WXII Assistant News Director Kim Ballard and Executive Producer Lisa Fulk. “If you need to be there for every big story, you’re doing it wrong. You hire good people and you trust them.”
One of Klaus’ Hearst colleagues at the convention is Lori Waldon, news director at WISN-TV in Milwaukee. She was in a Las Vegas taxi when her assistant news director called with the first report on the shootings. When it became obvious that multiple victims were involved, she said her management team had no doubts about how to respond.
“We go where news is,” Waldon said. “We want to be there.”
Waldon said her general manager back at the station raised legitimate questions about why it was necessary to send anyone from Milwaukee, rather than leaving coverage to the network. Waldon said, “On a big story, we want our best people there.”
That meant sending not a reporter, but the station’s 6 o’clock anchor, to add what Waldon calls “not only presence but texture.
“Your anchors are your number-one reporters. You don’t hire anchors who don’t report. They live for these things.”
Besides, Waldon said, for viewers, “It’s like a familiar blanket in a strange place. You know us, you trust us.”
Her cross-town competitor agrees, but doesn’t put it in quite such nurturing terms.
Bill Berra, vice president of news at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, said he sent two crews to Blacksburg Monday — without hesitation. “We do that because of our place in the market. People tune to us on any big story,” he said. “We act as more than just a local station.”
In fact, Berra said, “People don’t differentiate between local and national stories anymore. They don’t care on big stories like this.”
Berra’s station extended its usually hour-long 11 a.m. newscast to two hours Monday and began its early-evening news block at 3 instead of 4 p.m. He hinted that, had he been at the station, he might even have replaced more daytime entertainment programming, going “wall to wall” with continuous coverage of the shootings.
At WXYZ-TV in Detroit, coverage was contained to scheduled local newscasts and network special reports during the day, but the Virginia Tech killings did dominate the day’s coverage, and led all newscasts. News Director Andrea Parquet-Taylor sent a crew to Blacksburg to work with colleagues and satellite trucks from Scripps Television Station group newsrooms in Cincinnati and Baltimore.
“Our mantra, our mindset is, if it’s a huge story, we go,” Parquet-Taylor said. And there’s a practical point to her approach. “We can control our own destiny,” rather than relaying on network news services.
“We also want Q-and-A with our reporter,” she said, emphasizing “first-person accounts from reporters you know and trust.”
Monday would have been a huge news day at WABC-TV in New York even without the Virginia Tech killings. As the day began, the obvious big story was the huge nor’easter storm pounding the region. Still, news director Kenny Plotnik said sending a crew to Virginia was an easy call.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that we’re under 20 feet of water, I’d send several crews,” he said. That’s despite the fact that WABC is a network-owned-and-operated station, the biggest local newsroom in the ABC group — or most any other group.
“I don’t count on our network to do anything for us,” Plotnik said. But on the breaking news in Blacksburg, his decisions were driven by more than competitive concerns. Plotnik has one son in college and another in graduate school. He identifies with parents of college students everywhere, and said several students from Virginia Tech had recently interned in the newsroom at WABC-TV.
As of late Monday, Plotnik had been unable to reach any of them.
