Yet even that staple — and its business model — is being challenged like never before. If the situation isn’t terminal, it’s serious.

The latest Pew survey confirms this: local TV news viewership is falling — and fast. Only a fourth of college-educated Americans regularly watch a local TV newscast. For those with a high school degree or less, it’s less than fifty percent.

The patient is not yet on life support. So it’s important that those who run local television stations — and those of us who care about local broadcast news — try radical experiments to to revive the genre now before it’s too late to reverse the continuing and accelerating degradation of the local news ecosystem.

The way we were

At a time when news is everywhere and on every platform, why is preserving the local news important? This was a system that worked well for decades: Strong local stations added pictures to the news that people read in their morning papers and heard on the radio. These stations also provided strong dollops of consumer, investigative and weather coverage. Local newspapers—which were robustly staffed—helped set the agenda for the local market, and local stations to some degree depended on newspaper resources to point them in the right direction. As the executive who oversaw local news for many years for the Post-Newsweek (now Graham Media) stations, almost every morning news meeting that I attended paid some attention to the agenda set by the local paper.

A professional, robust local TV news operation in the ’80s and ’90s could count on a committed, large audience that, to a significant degree, reflected the demographics of the market. The commercials that were sold around these newscasts provided solid budgets for expansion of newscasts and beats.

Few winners, many losers

Now, in 2018, we’re left with a newspaper industry that has a few national winners (The New York Times, The Washington Post) and many local and regional losers. But even the New York Times admits its commitment to local has lessened now, because it sees its neighborhood as the world. When I was a local news director a few years ago at Tribune Media’s New York station, the New York Times website was one of the last places I’d look when local news broke.

Now, digital disruption has fully enflamed the local television scene, where—as the Pew survey reveals—the audience that’s left is poorer, less educated, and older — not a prescription for success. Local television news still feels much like it did when I first joined my first local station in the late 1970s. Sure, the graphics are slicker, and social media is more embedded into the writing and the storytelling, but the conventions are the same: anchor lead-ins to recorded packages, live shots, and newscast teases across the commercial break that has the audience singing along because they’ve memorized all of the hoary conventions of local news.

It’s no wonder that my students at Montclair State University’s School of Communication and Media hardly ever watch local news on television. In fact, for a course I teach on TV news production and writing, one of the assignments is to watch a local newscast—it’s the only way I can assure that they will have seen what it is I’ll be teaching.

One of the reasons we still teach it (along with digital storytelling, documentary, and other disciplines) is that there’s still a need for producers, writers, and reporters to fill thousands of better-paying jobs covering news at local television stations. We used to be aghast at what producers would make in small markets; we’re less aghast when we compare those salaries to folks making less but working more at many digital operations.

News collaborations are one way to strengthen the local news universe. The Center for Cooperative Media here at Montclair State, for example, has done more than any organization in conceptualizing a future of digital collaborations and projects. The Center recently published a collaborative database with information about almost 100 news collaborations from over 800 organizations.

But I worry that these collaborations, though valuable and successful, don’t scale up to a mass audience. TV, though hobbled, is still the way most Americans get their local news. The inescapable truth is that throughout our nation’s history, local news has always been a commercial enterprise, fueled by capitalism and competition, and focused on many demographics.

What can we learn from cable news shows like Fox News Channel’s “Hannity”? Shown here, Tom Brokaw and Sean Hannity on set in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images)

An experiment that just might work

So what can be done? Some large local operators like TEGNA are playing with new formats and ideas—more in-depth storytelling in some cases, hiring comedians to add dash to morning newscasts in others. Sinclair – poised to be the largest operator of local stations once it completes its acquisition of Tribune Media – borrows from Fox News in imposing a right-of-center slant to its newscasts.

As someone who once ran news coverage for both a major group and a major cable news network this is what I would do:

I would prevail upon senior management at the company to let us do full research and development at an underperforming station in a decent-sized market, one without union restrictions that forbid employees from shooting and editing. There would have to be full buy-in and acknowledgement from the corporate level to the station management level that normal benchmarks for success (ratings and revenue at the top of the list) would not be held against the station managers for a period of two to three years. Without that incentive to succeed (or fail) wildly, this experiment would be doomed; we’d end up with some version of the incrementalism that got us into this mess. We would endeavor to emulate companies like Alphabet and Amazon in taking big bets and going all in.

Then, we’d start from scratch, asking ourselves (and researching) who are our target audiences? What platforms are best to reach these targets? What programming best works on each platform? What kind of skill sets do our journalists need to succeed?

Other questions: What kinds of sales categories and formats (both digital and on-air) are not being served and what kind of products can we create to serve them? What can we learn from Vice Media (up-close, in-your-face passionate reporting) and cable news (up-close, in-your-face passionate discussion) that’s transferable to our new local entity? (Hint: Passion works.) What valuable beats (and advertisers) were lost when the local newspaper slimmed down?

At the risk of jumping ahead without fully researching the above, here’s what I might anticipate:

• A fully developed local news brand — NOT the old call letters or channel number.
• A central, agnostic-to-platform news creation team: producers, reporters, writers, assignment editors.
• For television: a belief that viewers still like interesting personalities. I’d go full-bore here, with emphasis on smart, opinionated, and yes, passionate journalists.
• Digital sites (website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and whatever comes next) that push out the journalism in formats appropriate to the platform). Develop hyper local sites digitally.
• A redefining of what TV newscasts should be: Less focus on run-of-the-mill news, and more focus on the beats that the newspaper used to own. Don’t give up on more attractive demos! Also, question everything: writing style, teases, length of stories, etc. Throw out old research!
• Partnerships and collaborations with existing digital journalism sites where it makes sense.
• Aggressive marketing; on air, on line, on social.

The risks of this approach are many. What if we fail? What if our profit margins decrease? What happens to my career if I’m part of this experiment?

But I maintain the risks are outweighed by the chance to reinvigorate a force for civic engagement and involvement that has helped keep communities informed since local news became profitable back in the ’60s. Anything less is just an inexorable march toward a test pattern.

Mark Effron, a veteran broadcast and digital news executive at companies such as MSNBC and New York Public Radio, is currently a professor of Journalism and TV and Digital Media at Montclair State University’s School of Communication and Media, where he oversees the School’s News Lab.

The post Here’s How We Can Reinvent Local News appeared first on MediaShift.

As a former TV news executive and now professor of journalism at Montclair State University’s School of Communication and Media, I’m especially sensitive to that challenge. I spent my career in the world of broadcasts, deadlines, packages, backtiming and standups. Even when digital changed everything, and we embraced social media, it was just an embrace, not a marriage.

So, how do you approach teaching video journalism? In the lexicon of Ford: must I be thinking about how to turn my students into “visual journalism solutions providers?” Maybe that’s overwrought, but clearly, it’s no longer enough for budding journalists to understand how to use, say, Snapchat and Instagram, because today’s hot thing is yesterday’s Foursquare.

How do I get students ready for a digital future where Facebook and Google (at least today) suck most of the revenue out of the digital news ecosystem, while most of the jobs are still in the mainstream of local television, network television and cable—though the “cool factor” is no longer there?

Going Live on Election Night

I confronted this recently as I organized multi-platform election night coverage of the recent New Jersey gubernatorial race to replace Chris Christie.  At Montclair State, we are blessed with a state-of-the-art open learning facility with the latest Sony 4k equipment.  We have a spanking new News Lab (a simulated multi-platform newsroom) with anchor desk, interview sets in studios, and control rooms that put my old one at MSNBC to shame.

And everything was utilized on election night. Control Room C was busy and buzzy, with students throwing to live shots, cueing talent and rolling pieces. The studio was jamming with professional journalists affiliated with the School’s Center for Cooperative Media, working alongside the student journalists.

Students work in the News Lab at Montclair State University during election night 2017. (Photo: Natalie De La Rosa)

Veteran TV news executive-turned-professor Vern Gantt turned to me at the beginning of the evening, when his charges were still trying to get into the rhythm when the joint is cooking and the news is breaking, and said: “I feel like I’m 20 years younger.” He was recalling the exhilaration of election nights he helped coordinate in the bigshot world of cable news.

I looked at the students he was helping. One looked pale.  “And they,” I said, “look 20 years older.”

They soon proved me wrong. The pale one quickly regained her color, found her voice, her stance and along with her co-executive producers, guided the multi-hour affair steadily along.  Her name is Georgia Salvaryn, a senior: “I learned a lot about myself that night; I learned that I like to be in these high-stress situations where I’m under pressure to get things done and to work with others in that situation and to stay both cool and authoritative in getting done what needs to get done.”

A Cultural, Generational Shift in Coverage

Part of what made this teaching-cum-professional experience so vivid and occasionally unnerving was that many of these students were participating in an American ritual—election night on television—without being familiar with the genre.  I had wondered how they would adjust to the insanity of live news on an election night. Think of playing baseball if you never saw the game. Most of these students are fully weaned off of television news. They get their news from links in their Facebook feed and from Twitter.  The news they consume is disaggregated and de-branded.

We didn’t have a broadcast signal, nor were we carried on cable. Facebook Live was our carrier (revenue-suck or not), and we streamed our programming on multiple university websites and Facebook pages.  We did live shots throughout the state, but without those expensive satellite trucks of yesteryear. Skype (mostly) worked just fine.

Adjunct Professor Jaime Bedrin stays up to date on the election results in New Jersey as part of the university’s election night coverage. (Photo: Natalie De La Rosa)

But I worried: Were we teaching them a skill and a genre that was yesterday’s model? How do you take a forward-looking approach to teaching journalism when nobody has the answer as to what that is?

Another of my colleagues, Tara George, a former New York Daily News reporter and now coordinator of the Television and Digital Media and Journalism programs, gave some perspective: “Staying relevant in journalism education is a constantly moving target. We have to be careful to make sure we are teaching students skills and giving them experiences which will be valuable to them and make them marketable in a hyper-competitive media environment. What students learned the other night was how exciting journalism can be, how important the work is, how to work with colleagues, and how to be unafraid to try new things and make mistakes and learn from them.”

Reflection After a Successful Election 2017

At the post-broadcast celebration, you could feel the excitement and you could see in the eyes of the students that look: Whew, that was something. Maybe not my thing, exactly, but whew.  This was not an epoch-defining race; there was no Donald Trump at the top of this ticket. Chris Christie’s shadow was a big one, and neither candidate for his replacement inspired much passion among the students.  They had to go out and do their research, ask their questions and learn to be journalists. This was not a race they talked about in the dorms at night.

Madison Glassman, a senior, covered the winner, Phil Murphy, whose headquarters were in Asbury Park.

“I had never done a live shot before,” she said. “I was surrounded by reporters from CNN and the Philadelphia stations with all of their fancy equipment. My producer was holding two cellphones, one on top of the other: One was shooting me on Skype, the other had the flashlight app on, so I could be seen. The night drove home to me: This is what I want to do in my career. It makes me happy.”

I was happy for Madison because I understood that feeling. But I also felt ambivalence. I want her and her peers to think beyond the TV box, literal and figurative. I want them to understand that the lessons of the night transcend the format and the delivery system. I want them to be exhilarated by innovation, even if it’s using that flashlight app.  What will never go away is the need for good and timely decision making, collaboration, understanding of “tools”—and of course solid journalism.

Coverage during election night meant using a variety of tools and platforms to tell the story. (Photo: Natalie De La Rosa)

As for the future, I envision a world that continues on its hybrid path: CNN, for example, will continue to hire show producers and digital journalists. Some of them will migrate from one area to another, and more will seamlessly jump back and forth between television and digital realms, like Brian Stelter. My former NBC colleague Lester Holt tells students that each has to be a Swiss army knife. I take that one step further. I think the journalists and media professionals of the future will be like a Swiss army knife with new snap-on attachments, as the formats and technologies evolve.

I think of my niece, who recently became a Snapchat Discover channel designer for Self, which earlier this year shuttered its print magazine. She’s untethered to print and doesn’t miss it.

I want my students to take the forms and structures of my generation, subvert them, morph them, stretch them, and create something new. Somewhere in that post-celebratory bacchanal, I hope one of those students was thinking: “This was interesting…but it could be way better. I have an idea…”

Mark Effron is a veteran broadcast news executive with such companies as The Washington Post, MSNBC, and New York Public Radio. He’s currently a professor of Journalism at the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where he coordinates the News Lab.

Photo Gallery Images by Natalie De La Rosa

The post How to Rethink Teaching Broadcast Journalism in a Digital Age appeared first on MediaShift.