on reporting local news
I put up 2 stories on Church Hill People’s News last weekend that ended up being picked up by 2 of the local TV stations this weekend. Last Sunday’s Sunny Market now even more gross and Monday’s neighbor vs neighbor became nb12’s City responds to online complaints and wric’s Eyesore Is Piece Of Richmond History, […]
I put up 2 stories on Church Hill People’s News last weekend that ended up being picked up by 2 of the local TV stations this weekend. Last Sunday’s Sunny Market now even more gross and Monday’s neighbor vs neighbor became nb12’s City responds to online complaints and wric’s Eyesore Is Piece Of Richmond History, respectively. Having the “real media” pick up one of my stories was kind of exciting the first time that it happened and has continued to be a thrill: this means that I am doing something right and that I am adding original info into the RVA mediasphere.
The thing that continues to grate is that the TV stations do not indicate from where they got the story. As a blogger/journalist, I’m very comfortable and familiar with taking a piece of someone else’s work and crafting it into something new. Etiquette in this case is to link back to the original story. Neither of the TV broadcasts gives any credit for the original source for the story, though, aside from nbc12’s clumsy-or-ignorant (you decide!) throwaway line “some Church Hill residents even wrote about it on their blogs on Sunday”.
In my mind, I have a list of local news sources that “get the internet” and those that don’t. Print publications like Style and Richmond Magazine have been the most willing to run with it and have crafted an online presence that reflects and augments their print publications. The RTD is making the transition and has been doing breaking news better and better. Sometimes it seems like nbc12 is trying, but none of the TV stations are more than tentatively engaged with having an online presence. Many weekends the local TV stations won’t update their sites at all. None appear to offer all of their news stories online or allow comments. None make their video embeddable by other sites. In the time of YouTube and the iPhone, wric8‘s video is Windows-only.
I don’t think that the local stations are really spurning CHPN when they don’t give a mention for the source of the stories. It is worse than that — I don’t think that they understand the internet and what this means for the future of local news. Not being owned by corporation and not employing all sorts of reporters and editors best boys and chairpersons or whomever, in their mind CHPN isn’t in any way their equal. If they were biting an RTD story they’d give credit, but not to some grotty blogger. The readers/viewers are making that distinction less and less, though.
With local community news sites still popping up and folks like the Project for Excellence in Journalism saying good things about what we are doing, this is just the beginning of the experiment.
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John Murden
John Murden covers Church Hill, the Fan, Carytown/Museum District , Northside, and random Richmond stuff for RVA News.
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NBC12’s line sounded condescending to me, but that is just me.
I wonder if they will report on this story. I would call 6 and 9 and see if they are interested.
I’ve noticed quite a bit of activity from NBC 12 on Hills & Heights the last couple of months. I think it’s understood that we’re all going to pull stories from each other here and there, but, like John says, it’s the lack of credit that kills me. The NBC12 story on the Sunny Supermarket deal really pissed me off; specifically, the “Some Church Hill residents even wrote about it on their blogs on Sunday” line. Even the f’n T-D acknowledged the hoodblogs’ existence (via “Barticles”), so you’d think that what passes for the leader in local TV news could do the same.
First of all, I live in Church Hill and regularly read the blog. I get more information about my community from that blog than anywhere else – RTD, news channels, even the CH newsletter which is usually delivered later to my doorstep than some of the happening events. Secondly, I wholeheartedly agree with the comment about Channel 12 not updating their website on the weekends. News happens 24-7 and the TV is the place I get my daily news – it is usually on the internet. RTD does a great job of updating their site during the day (if you can get past those annoying pop-ups) but Channel 12 just takes the weekend off.
ooops – that should say that the TV is NOT the place I get my daily news!
When college and high school students are taught to include web pages in their footnotes and bibliographies, it is not acceptable for mainstream media to lift stories without proper acknowledgment. It’s just rather lazy and crooked.
I agree with some of your other readers,John, I go to CHPN and the like if I need relevant information about my community.
It seems some who toil in broadcast news departments and other corporate newsy entities are seeing what the Church Hill People’s News is doing as a threat. The same goes for West of the Boulevard News, North Richmond News, etc.
That, instead of recognizing what is an interesting development/story about citizen journalism. It may not be cool, or smart, but it is understandable.
To the TV stations: If the local news isn’t digital, we don’t get it. Zero TV in our household. And happy about it. Now if you posted and archived your stories online, making them available for free indefinitely, your advertisers would have a chance finding our eyeballs. (Yeah, we’re a sample size of one, but are we really on the tail of the curve? Don’t think so.)
Re: the fear factor that Rea raises, there is another way for the mainstream folks to look at things. The blogs can send traffic to their content. I mean, radio and TV and print newspapers managed to find a way to happily coexist, blogs are just another delivery to add to the mix.
Is anyone surprised by this? Have we ever depended upon Richmond news print/TV sources to really have their finger on the ol’ pulse?
I’ve made a point of sending friends, city officials, RPS board members, and reporters links to various community online news sites. I’m amazed at the hot topics and debates the TD and local TV news have chosen to ignore. Some officials like to say that bloggers are not real people.
Local TV news and the TD are losing viewers and readers in droves deservedly so. At best mainstream media is kin to lite lit and muzak.
Kudos to your efforts and contributions as citizen journalists; as this story points out, you help point out problems and raise enough attention to get the issues looked at. That said, I find it a bit over the top that you’re looking for direct attribution from local news affiliates for this story. You don’t own local events or facts. If one TV station misses a developing story at 5pm that a producer sees on a competing station, do you expect them to mention their competitor at 6pm when they call their own sources and confirm the story?
Through the video, you can see that NBC12 sent a crew out to the story and shot their own interviews. It doesn’t matter if they got the story lead from the newspaper, a concerned neighbor that called in, another TV station, a local blog or noticed it while driving to another story the day before; they are not required to highlight where they got the idea for the story if they do their own legwork.
Now, if producers simply had this as an anchor reader or ripped direct lines or quotes from your blog without attributing it, that’s a whole other story, but since they sent a crew out and did their own homework, in no way are they required to credit you. You should be glad that they even mentioned your blog in the NBC12 package.
Unfortunately, Franko is right. Blog etiquette says you give credit but, otherwise in the media no credit is given unless it is a really big deal story that you’ve uncovered single-handedly — think Watergate.
On the other hand, if channel 12 is going as far as to say, “some Church Hill residents even wrote about it on their blogs on Sunday”….they certainly could have taken the time to give you the proper respect and attribute the story to your newsblog.
It’s a simple professional courtesy.
See how CBS6 handled the Wilder paying back the city story…attributes the Free Press for breaking the story…
http://www.wtvr.com/Global/story.asp?S=8223491
Then again, the Times Dispatch was silent on attribution on the “Preachers supporting Wilder” despite Style breaking the story on Tuesday. I wonder if there is some rule of thumb or AP policy around this sort of thing….Perhaps, media in non-competing areas should cite their sources (ie, TV citing paper or BLOGS! but TV citing competing TV is a “no-no”
http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=16854
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-04-26-0190.html