See here first.

June 30

Here are posts that contain video  See these titles below:

"Social Media Before Breakfast"

"Field Crew:  How It's Done Before the Sun"

"The Dark Side (out)"

"Blackhawk Okies in Muskogee"  (About twenty posts back, the "Blackhawk" story shows how reporter Tony Russell and photographer Brian Anderson rock social media).
........
I'll be adding video to many more posts in the coming days.

..........

Thanks to Griffin Communications, The News On 6, and News 9 for hosting me for the month of June as I explored new media as part of a fellowship sponsored by the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters.

Lee Williams

Promos

We'll see how the promotion/marketing depart sells product and image.

Interview Sandi Cox

Interview:  Diane Ward

Assignments Desk: Friend Us on Facebook

June 30
Assignments editor Matt Bolin relies a lot on Twitter and Facebook for news tips.  Some police departments have encrypted their signals, so news stations can no longer hear police radios.  Matt says Facebook is especially helpful.

>> video to come

Matt helps reporter Allison Harris find online information on a criminal.

Twitter & Facebook

June 30

Houston Hunt presents a seminar on how TV people need to protect themselves on Facebook and Twitter.  For example, don't let a hacker send porn to all your fans, especially if the porn has your name on it.

>>add video<<

Making the Newsday New at 10

June 29

Working with the late crew for the 10 p.m. news.

Photography Philosophy

June 29

Oscar Pea has been working for KOTV for almost a generation and with that experience comes skill and wisdom.

The Journey of Thousand Miles

The Journey of Thousand Miles Begins, well, at the beginning.  So, you might want to step back a couple of dozen posts to understand the progression.  You might even skip back to 2013 to begin.  But, hey, it's a non-linear, random-access world now, one in which we do what we want--when we want.

The subject:   New Media Integrates into Old Media

Social Media Before Breakfast

Reporters and anchors are required to post two to three times per day.  No, you get no extra time, you just have to fit it in the busy day.  Reporter Dave Davis takes it in stride.

https://youtu.be/vN2Tz3VVY8E

Live Before Dawn

On this morning the story is big enough to merit staying outside a Walmart where a smash-n-grab robbery has taken place.  One reason the story merits staying in one place is their overnight photographer has gotten video of the arrest.  Sometimes crews break down and rush to different locations in the morning, something they can do fast because of their cellular units that transmit the video and live signals.

>>  the live shot <<

Field Crew: How It's Done Before the Sun

Video below

The Dejero units have revolutionized live TV and feeding video from the field.  No longer do you need a satellite truck or live truck.  The Dejero and similar units use multiple cellular signals to get video back to the station and even go live (with a slight delay).  Instead of plugging into a live truck, Sam plugs his camera into a unit the size of small backpack, and in minutes they have a live signal back to the station (presuming there are enough cell towers in the area).  The units have the capacity of six cellular signals all at once.  Even split up among different vendors:  ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, the video somehow reassembles into HD quality video (they can feed lower quality-SD- video if there is not enough cellular bandwidth available).

Sam Garforth, photojournalist, and Dave Davis, reporter, explain live magic and battery basics.

https://youtu.be/S3RFhGZ1dLg

The Dark Side (out)

 Show Granddad the iPad.

The Sam and Dave show is a riot of new technology.  This morning they are on the scene of a smash-n-grab robbery at a Walmart.

Sam Garforth is the energetic, talkative photographer and Dave Davis is the enthusiastic engager of new and traditional media. Dave, in the field, enters the producer line-up with his trusty iPad.

Video:  https://youtu.be/HIzZ4L1XlLA

The Dark Side (in)

June 26, 3:45 a.m.

I had the luxury of sleeping in till 2:30 a.m., a luxury the morning crew at KOTV does not have. When I drug in the door at 3:45, they were in high gear.

>>add video morning brief<<

The NewsOn 6 has a producer for each hour, so there are three producers and an executive producer on hand.  Most other station have one producer to cover a highly redundant block from 5 to 7 a.m.  But KOTV has long had the most profitable morning show because they don't air the CBS morning program.  That means more hours, more money and more people.  KOTV now starts at 4:30 and their sister station KWTV starts at 4 a.m.

Tabitha Crouch, an RSU alum, arrives at 1 a.m. to build the show for the 7 to 8 hour.  With three producers, they are able to vary the content more.  In addition, they have two reporters in the field.

To Be or Not To Be. Jobs in News.

June 25

Ed Trauschke is the news director at The News on 6, but he and the is the only news director in America who is not called news director, except for his counterpart at sister station KWTV.  They are both called "directors of P.M. content."

That's because the owner thought the morning show would be better if it had it's own management structure, so there is another director of A.M. content based in Oklahoma City, and morning executive producers at both KOTV and KWTV.

Ed has advice for students who want to work in the field.

>> interview


Ed has a Peabody Award in his background and wrestles with the balance between covering lots of run and gun stories versus stories of higher quality.

Edit for Credit

June 25

Many people don't realize what a great job editing is.  Editing informs practitioners about how to shoot, write and produce stories.  Editing manager Pam Long offers jobs to college graduates if they are ready.  Students make a lot of mistakes in demonstrating required skills and attitudes.

>>interview Pam Long<<

GFXpontential

June 25

Statewide Graphics Manager Greg Richardson and his crew create all the fancy graphics(GFX) you see, both stills and animated for breaking news, new tonight, special report, and more.  They also shoot promos and do the photos and artwork for billbords, marketing and promotions for both stations.  They have a very large staff (6) compared to othe local stations, but they also do a lot more original work..

Richardson says Adobe After Effects and PhotoShop are essential software to master.  Most graphic artists study graphic design in college and have many years of experience.

Statewide Graphic designer Fred Martin creates network caliber 3-D animations.

>>interview Martin<<

>>interview Richardson<<

RSU Student Finds Career

June 24

Garrett Powders is the night web producer, but before that he was a student at Rogers State University.  Garrett has many web and video skills, but for this job he says the most important skill is news writing, both print style and broadcast style.  He often translates reporter broadcast stories to more of a print form for the web.

>>add interviews w Garrett

A River Runs Through It

June 24

As the dams release flood waters, farmer's fields flood.  This is a field day with Tess Maune and Michael Blair. The high water has caused the river to overflow its banks.  The river has actually changed its path and is now eating into a grass--sod farm. I follow as Tess and Michael piece together the information and pictures.

>>add video of story anatomy

Tess finds her Twitter followers favor cut behind the scenes photos.  She changes from heels to boots and takes a photo with a boot on one foot and a stylish shoe on the other.

Completed Story:
http://youtu.be/vkPYv2v6KUM

TBA

Tornado Chaser

6/22

The new storm chase vehicles are a wonder on wheels.

Steve Schroeder-Statewide Director

Griffin Quarterly Meeting & Web Content Manager

June 16

Griffin employee meeting
Quarterly update.  Ratings, demos,

The owner, David Griffin, is an upbeat guy, and he had a lot to be happy about.  Both KOTV and KWTV ruled the ratings in May, largely on the strength of floods and tornadoes.
The ratings were good, but the demos are closer.  Their new arch rival is not traditional powerhouse KTUL but upstart FOX 23.  FOX grabbed almost as many younger demos in May as KOTV did despite having less than half of the overall rating.  Griffin pundits attack the wild swings in Nielsen ratings, but they are looking over their shoulder, too, wondering if younger viewers are digging the fast pace and in-your-face style of the FOX affilate (owned by COX media).  Cox has developed a machine-gun like style with lots of MMJs, multi-media journalists who, not only shoot and edit their own video, they set up their own live shots via cellular signals, too.

Still this was KOTV'S and KWTV's day, and both dominated their competition in May.  KOTV has been dominant in the Tulsa market for almost a decade, but KWTV has waged a see-saw battle with KFOR for decades.  Now it looks like KWTV is pulling away, at least when there are major weather events.


Weather Day, May 6, 365,000 live streams

Web manager
>add interview/<

RSU Student: Editor to Photographer

June 16

Chris McNamara was the first of our RSU graduates, as far as I know,  to break into a Tulsa TV station five years ago.  He started as a video editor, and, after four years, became a photographer. A photographer job is not necessarily better than an editing position.  Some people want to be editors, period.

Photographers generally make more money, and for those who love to shoot video and be in the field, this is the way to go.  It is more likely today than five years ago that an editor can become a photographer. Editors learn most of the techniques of shooting wide, medium and close shots, sequencing, and match-action by cutting the video of photographers.  If a photographer doesn't shoot the right combination of shots, the story becomes hell to edit.

Chris was started as a photographer on the overnight shift using a camera much like the Panasonic AG-AC 30 now used at RSU.  Chris was promoted to afternoons and evenings.


 McNamara
>add interview<

Hard Start Monday

June 15

It's always hard to crank up the newsroom on Monday both because the staff is sluggish from the weekend and because the workweek is just beginning for government offices and business.  My story prospects this morning are, race bicyclist suffers heart attack and road washed out due to floods.  I'm hoping for the outdoor flood story.

Photographer Ty Lewis and reporter Tony Russell rescue me for a trip to the floods in Nowata, Oklahoma.  When we get there, a country commissioner makes us realize the flooding is worse than we thought.

>add photos & video<

Crushing Twitter

June 11

Kristi Cheek has worked in Little Rock, Orlando and Dallas, but lives in Twitterville.  When she needs original content for the 10 p.m. news at KOTV, she finds it on Twitter.

"I use it like they do police scanners (on the assignments desk).  It's not just crime.  It's not just fire.  It's the world."

Kristi follows 1,222, mostly news sources, including reporters and producers in Oklahoma and all over the country.  She also follows the Tulsa County Sheriff's Department and Midtown Tulsa Neighborhood Association.

She ran across video of a little black bear and called KDFW in Dallas to get the video put on the CBS newsfeed.  She found out the bear had been caught in a trap in Oklahoma and taken to Dallas as a pet. Crazy cute video drove viewers into her cast, and she bingoed with the discovery of the state angle. An Oklahoma baby bear had been kidnapped.

Kristi also follows a group of Twitter producers, #AMnewser, friends she made across the country when she worked overnights producing the morning news. She also follows the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and EMSA (ambulance), and they Tweet often.

We also took a look at "Banjo" that aggregates stories from all over the country.

Kristi figures she averages two stories a day from Twitter, mostly stories the competition does not have.

Cameras: Run and Gun

June 11, 2015

Oscar Pea, longtime Chief Photographer at The News on 6 has seen a lot of changes in camera equipment.  He fights hard to keep the quality of his photographers equipment professional, as does his counterpart in Oklahoma City.  The lens of their cameras alone might run $19,000, and it is the glass that is most important.

Chief photographers lament when they see MMJs (multimedia journalists) run and gun with cameras that cost half or sometimes even a fourth of what truly professional ENG cameras cost.  The MMJ cameras used by the FOX station are certainly of lesser quality (and cost), and the reporter shoots his or her own story, edits it on a laptop and ftp's it back to the station, never leaving the field.

Can most viewers see the difference, and, if they do, do they care?  On this question rests the future of TV news gathering, I think.  Will reporters of the future be mostly MMJs or will they enjoy sharing ideas and the workload with a professional photographer?  Will viewers appreciate the quality of better images and higher craft, or are most viewers satisfied with product from run and gun MMJ's knocking out more product faster?  (We'll revisit this discussion).

Webberriffic

June 11. Web producers.

My next stop was with the web producers.  Content is a little different in OKC vs Tulsa. The KWTV and KOTV web producer post a lot more content that you see on the air.  They are tasked with finding news stories off the wires, social media and other sources.  Actually the other content makes up more of the stories than their station-produced content.  KWTV has two sports web producers, where KOTV has one.  KWTV has about four dayside news content producers,  depending on the time of day

>insert interviews with web producers video here.

KOTV in Tulsa has six web producers producers spread across the week from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., substantially more than their competition.  KOTV is by far the most used website in Tulsa and northeast Oklahoma.  KWTV in Oklahoma City has a different history because, at first, they partnered with the newspaper The Daily Oklahoman, and that is still the top website in Central Oklahoma.  However, since breaking away three years ago, KWTV has become the number two website in the region and the top website during severe weather.


..............
About the blog.  My blog started out as my personal "onward through the fog" journey through new media.  If you want to get more of a sense of that, skip down about a dozen posts.  "Master of My Domain" is a good place to start.  As my time progressed at KWTV and KOTV, my blog has evolved to tell more of their new media stories.  Either way, we are all finding our way through the new media challenges that descend upon us every day.

Hello RSU Students from KWTV

June 12, my second day at KWTV in Oklahoma City

I ask each group I observe to say the same thing, "Hello RSU students."  I thought it would be cool if students knew I was thinking about them, so maybe they'd rate me higher on their class evaluations. Always thinking of others, I am.

We started off with the morning editorial meeting which is much like KOTV, which is much like morning story idea meetings everywhere.

>insert video here<

Morning meetings are like making good stories rise from the mud.  Sometimes, someone will fall in the mud and everyone will get a laugh.  Within 45 minutes, everyone decides on the best story ideas, and reporters and photographers try to make steak, potatoes and blueberry pies out of mud pies. Sometimes they succeed.

Newsforce

June 10, Wednesday

KWTV, Oklahoma City.

Only 90 minutes apart, KOTV in Tulsa and KWTV in Oklahoma City combine to make a powerful newsforce. They can share staff, stories, satellite trucks and helicopters.  KOTV is the only station in the Tulsa market with a chopper, plus a short flight can add KWTV's helicopter.

My first interview at KWTV was Joyce Reed, who used to be the news director at KWTV.  Now she is over the news and web operations of both stations.  She has a lot of knowledge about how to get ahead and how to manage people.

>insert interview with Joyce Reed<


Todd Spessard, the news director.  Todd and I worked together at KTUL in Tulsa in 1997-1999.  So, it was good to see him doing so well as the leader of the #1 newscast in OKC.  They had had a great May book, a month with record rain, along with floods and tornadoes.

Selling the Whole Pizza

June 8, Monday

SELLING NEW MEDIA: WEB, MOBILE AND APPS-

The News On 6 has five times the web traffic of its nearest competitor, according to local sales manager Derek Criss and interactive sales manager Jill Millaway. The nearest competitor is the Tulsa World newspaper.

I asked how they keep from cannibalizing themselves with web sales people selling against TV sales people. Criss has a simple answer, "We don't." He says they sell as a package with TV, web and mobile offerings together. Millaway, Digital Sales Manager helps the sales people with all aspects of digital media.

PROFIT

Criss says KOTV has the lion’s share of new media sales for television stations in the Tulsa market. They don't share profit figures, but Criss says the website and mobile media are making money.

With more page views than all other media competitors combined, The News On 6 sells a lot of ads and commercials. Millaway and Criss say they are sold out for desktop "prerolls" for the year. A preroll is the commercial that runs before a news video. Criss says the cost of a preroll commercial is $65 per thousand views (CPM).  Note we are just talking about desktop computer page views. The apps and mobile views are sold separately. 

Millaway sets new media sales goals for the sales force and trains them. Sales men and women sell most of the new media inventory themselves. Millaway says they also use  3^rd party for audience extension programs, but there is not much left over for this outside sales agency to sell.  With 43 million page views during the severe weather month of May, the News On 6 sales team is in the enviable position of being able to sell most of their ads themselves--and keep all the money.

Wade Deaver, the Vice-President of Sales for Griffin Communications, says the gross revenue for new media was 2.1 million dollars last year.  That includes the website, thenewson6.com, mobile and apps, local and national sales.

Blackhawk Okie in Muskogee

June 8, Monday

Oklahoma Army Air National Guard is training on air traffic control of Blackhawk helicopters.         Reporter Tony Russell and photographer Brian Anderson capture the story. Brian is the overnight guy, but managers called him in early because they are short photographers.  Erick Pays (right) is an intern from OU.

Air traffic control "tower" on wheels at Muskogee Airport

Brian Anderson worked for free capturing his own overnight videos before KOTV hired him.
Tony(sunglasses) started his love of news as a ham radio operator in his early teens.  Tony says
many students don't realize how hard you have to work to make it.                                              

Lunch with Brian and Tony feeding new media:
Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfJ3Uz9eHf8

Brian Anderson attracted thousand of followers to social media first, then asked for a job at The News On 6.  Brian didn't listen to people who said he'd never become a photographer for a local news station.  He created his own future. Brian has more than 5,000 followers on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook and hundreds of thousands of video views.

Video:  https://twitter.com/hashtag/tulsatrafficjams

YouTube Brian23xxx  365,000 views of this
 Video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ7224ZTaOI

Here's the completed story, minus the reporter stand ups.

http://youtu.be/xlbq7t4q0-4 

Edit the 1937 Cord Phaeton

June 7, Sunday

In progress

Write (choose sound) for NAT PACK.  Script bites.

Home trying to make audio work.
-Switches witches, which position?
-Many tests  Input 1, Input 2 etc

Hurry to station for editing.

Mark Pinkerton saves the day.

Video won't download.  Finally it does.  Teamwork.  Don't notice the shaky video.  Good job.

Travis Hensley the producer helps me get my script into the iNews line-up. It was a lot simpler in my day.  Jib moves and viz pics.

Shoot the1937 Cord Phaeton

June 6, 2015

Story in progress.............

Studying the new camera.
-Why isn't camera working?
-Switch cameras.
-Why isn't mic working.
-Switch mics.
-Mic still doesn't work.
-Try to get away with build in camera mic.

-Car auction rush.
-No tripod
-No mic

Sneak in to see if I have video.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

June 5, 2015

Photographer Michael Blair lights up most when talking about sharing story decisions with a reporter to make a superior story.

Michael has the same lament as every photographer I've ever talked with. Stories in recent years have become shorter, harder with less time for features or orchestrating images. The days when you might sneak a three-minute piece into a cast are over. Here, the standard PKG time is 1:30, but sometimes producers will squeeze out an extra :15 seconds for them.

The Fox station has fewer photographers and relies on MMJ (multimedia journalists) who shoot their own video. Then they pull the SD card out of their camera, ingest the video onto their laptops, edit the video on their laptops, and then ftp the video to the station via the internet.

Michael says it's faster and cheaper, but he believes his station gets substantially more quality both in look and content by having the photographer look after the visuals, while the reporter looks after the story information and then collaborate.

KOTV crews edit in the field, too. But they have to take a couple more steps to get their video back to the station. KOTV shoots with higher quality cameras that use P2 cards to store the video. After they have finished editing, they export the video back onto a P2 card through a card reader. Then, the P2 card is put back in the camera. It is then fed out of the camera through a "Dejero" unit to the station. The Dejero unit is like a giant cellphone with the signal capacity of six cellphones. So, while the FOX station usually ftp's their video to the station, KOTV typically sends its video back by cell pack. Of course, you can still send video back by microwave live truck. But the live trucks aren't used much anymore because the video can be sent via cell or internet.

The Dejero units have another advantage. The bandwidth is big enough and stable enough that you can go live. That was a surprise to me, that the cell packs are replacing live vans for live shots.

So Much More

June 4, 2015

For main anchor Scott Thompson, it has been an uphill fight for the past decade for the long feature stories that made him the most popular reporter in the market and won him his anchor chair.  Scott is so mild mannered that he might not work in most other markets, but because his "Oklahoma Traveler" stories were so loved by viewers, management tried him out as anchor.  People liked him there, too. He's the top male anchor in the market.

Scott says he argued for years for longer, deeper stories, and seems to have found a sweet spot in his So Much More queries.  They are not eight minutes, but some are close to four, almost three times the length of a typical daily reporter package.  Thompson had the nagging questions of why Oklahoma languishes at or near the bottom in categories like health and education. 

"How do we do better?  Why do we stand for that?" Thompson asks.  

Scott's wife came up with the title.  The idea is that Oklahoma can be "so much more."  In other words, we can do better.  But it also has another meaning.  "We have the potential to be so much more," Scott says.  

Scott says it was a tough sell because it seemed so critical, too negative.  He argued his mission is an earnest search for answers.  

Scott has sought out the best minds in the state to grapple with the greatest issues. Accolades poured in and Thompson got something he says he and anchor Terry Hood never had before, a billboard. 

The words on the billboard, So Much More.

Snipes

June 3, 2015

How do you fight the TiVo?  When you can zip through commercials, how can TV stations survive? That is one of many jobs assigned to marketing and idea man Jonathan Ferrante, the sales promotion manager for The News on 6, a title I had never heard of before.

Something Old. Thank God

Rick Wells is the oldest reporter in the market and gets the feature stories usually.  It is a shame that the feature has been beaten out of most newscasts as consultants clamor for ever harder news and higher story count.  I think it's a mistake because that gee-whiz story is often the only story remembered the next day and adds heart to the newscasts.  That's a brand worth having.

This afternoon I was able to catch up with Rick and photographer Ty Lewis for a wonderful story on a 1937 Cord Phaeton, maybe the most gorgeous of all American classic cars.  The son Doug Pray found his father's Cord after it had disappeared for almost fifty years.  Doug's father, a modest mechanic in the 1950s, had somehow saved the Cord legacy.  And this very Cord was his father's favorite, winning many first-place awards. Doug's father had to sell his prize possession to keep the Cord franchise afloat.

His prize-winning Cord had been in a barn near Detroit for 45 years.
The owner called Doug Pray when he saw his story on "The Pickers" cable TV show.   Doug paid the farmer what he asked and the beautiful Cord returned to Broken Arrow.

News Injection

June 2, 2015
..........
6 p.m. producer Shawn Wittrock let me put my fingers on the keyboard and enter content into his line up.  Now this is something familiar, yet it was different.  What's that strange number under the heading tape ID?  Shawn explained that that was the software automatically assigning a number to the video.  Now they could always find the video on the server. In my day the video was on the video tape.  Now the video was on a computer hard drive and easy to find.  When I was in the newsroom ten years ago, we could search for the missing tape for hours.  Those were the good old days.  Thanks Shawn for your patience in letting me build you line-up, accomplishing in two hours what you do in 20 minutes.
.......
More challenging was input into the website.  Garrett Powders was one of my students at RSU but not in new media.  Garrett taught new media to himself.  Garrett was always one of our most tech savvy students,and it paid off in a big way when, just a month after graduation, he landed his current job as a web content producer.  So, Garrett led me through the maze of boxes and drop down menus to enter text, pics and videos.  It was like the maze in The Shining movie.  Jack Nicholson never found his way out.  Garrett guided, "Click here, now there, now here, now there, there, there.....there."  Eventually the story popped up at www.newson6.com.  Garrett says it took him about a month to remember how to do everything without looking at notes.  I would still have been in the maze, the matrix.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

June 1, 2015

Last week we observed the men and women behind the curtain entering content during severe weather coverage.  There is yet another curtain behind the first curtain. And you don't pull the curtain to reveal the wizards, you walk downstairs. You should pay attention.

Richard Cox is the director of new media operations over the people who design and build the websites for KOTV in Tulsa and KWTV in Oklahoma City.  So, the web producers upstairs enter content about daily news, weather and sports.  The web tech people downstairs build the functionality, interface and appearance.

First we talked about science fiction books because Richard has had three syfy books published to good reviews but no riches, yet.  I've written a screenplay about the world's most famous UFO scientist, not published, not a dime.

After squandering time for about fifteen minutes, we got down to what we were actually here for.

Richard said their websites had doubled page views since last May. Doubled.  Another manager told me that the NewsOn6 website had more page views than all the other Tulsa TV websites together. All the other TV news websites plus the Tulsa World newspaper. What?  I greatly admire the newspaper's website for having a vast number of stories present and past.  But the Tulsa World is not known for video, even though they have quite a bit, and they are not known for severe weather or breaking news coverage.  TV has a giant advantage in these areas.

Richard Cox next clicked into Google analytics which track every interaction viewers have with every part of the web page every minute.  Remember the severe weather in Tulsa last Friday?  KOTV had more than 400-thousand page views.  News9 in Oklhahoma City had had a much bigger weather event a couple of weeks before with tornadoes and severe flooding in the OKC metro. KWTV had more than a million pages views.

Everyone credits owner David Griffin for his vision years ago when the web was losing money. Griffin put his money where his vision was.  He believed the web would make money if he invested in the infrastructure and hired enough people to keep it constantly updated with new content.  Other stations are lucky to have half the web staff in this building, and I'm just talking the web producers upstairs, not the web designers downstairs.  I don't know what to think of that kind of resources in- house.  So, everyone says the investment in new media is paying off.  I don't know if the number$ will be shared with me, but I'm going to ask how much money web and new media make.


...............

Note:  My thousand-mile ascent through new media is best understood if you start with earlier posts. I suggest starting with post titled:  "First Revelation:  Smartphone Video."

Severe Weather Slam Dunk

Friday, May 26, 2015

The morning started with the grind typical of all morning news meetings.  We were still in flood conditions as the rains continued to fall in a record month for rainfall, giving us too much of what we had prayed for during three years of drought.  It seemed a straightforward day ahead covering the high water.

At about 2  p.m., that all changed when we got a severe weather warning. What followed was an impressive display of new media muscle.  The TV-broadcast weather team was already in continuous coverage as were all their competitors. The web producers were right on the heels of the on-air team, maybe five minutes behind.  One of them, Garrett Powders, is an RSU alum.  Garrett and another web producer knew to start feeding the website, while web manager, Richard Clark, instantly stared feeding social media.

It was more than regurgitation.  Each of them pulled media from multiple sources, weather radar, helicopter video, and photos and video from the field to create a product different from the on-air broadcast. Each producer made her or his own decision about what material to plug into the website, Facebook and Twitter in a product that can be described as new arrival in the royal pantheon of news coverage.  Which form is now dominant?  It depends on where the customer is.  If you're watching at home, the TV is king.  But most people are somewhere else, especially in the middle of the afternoon. Through alerts from weather apps, robust coverage on computers at work, smartphones and tablets, everyone, everywhere could know if tornado, hail or lighting was headed their way.  Also, the TV broadcast was being streamed on the web.

For a traditional media guy, it was magic.  No, I'm not so old that I don't access the new world, young whippersnappers. I, too, often hit the radar online and have a weather app on my iPhone.  Thank you. But to see it as the producers are entering this content click by click, picture by picture, was exciting and enlightening.

The question is, how does any station get these new media users over to their newscasts or sell to them in the ten seconds they are checking radar.  The reality is many young people will never become regular viewers of TV newscasts?  As I heard one student express, "If the news is important, it will find me?"

Interning in My Sixth Decade

I've been taken on at my former arch rival as a geezer intern.  It's been almost ten years since I was at KTUL, the ABC affilate in Tulsa.  Now, May 26, 2015, at KOTV, I'm at the CBS affiliate, wondering if they would welcome me or string me up, and the ceilings are high in their beautiful state-of-the-art new media megaplex.

I find myself doing a fellowship sponsored by the Oklahoma Associaiton of Broadcasters to help prevent college professors like me from becoming obsolete, you know, like teaching Morse code instead of Tweeting. Have I been left in the dust of a new media stampede? 

Hey, wait a minute, now.  All good stories still have at their foundations good writing and good video.  I'd go so far as saying those two fundamentals are not only the foundation, they are the walls and roof of the house, too.  But the wiring has changed, and the windows have changed.  Now, you can look out all of the windows at once and the news will come to you. News will find you wherever you are, and it must be fed every minute.

News Director Ed Trauschke could not have been nicer.  Tuesday was the mega-meeting day when many of the mid and upper managers from the slightly bigger KWTV in Oklahoma City travel 90 miles to the co-owned KOTV in Tulsa to share plans and build teams across the markets.  Such is the design of owner David Griffin, who has build a statewide media powerhouse centered in the two largest cities in the state.

Ed let me hear secret campaigns they were about to spring on the competition, including my old station.  It was four meetings in one day, and all I could think of is how nice and trussting they were to include me, and, also, how much I hate meetings.  Insert chuckle here, please.

 I was happy that I had contributed to the morning story meeting with new information about a firefighter who had lost his life by being sucked down a drainage pipe in nearby Claremore, Oklahoma, after rescuing six children from their flooded home. I had worked the story for NBC News as a freelance field producer, and ended up sharing inforation with Tony Russell, the KOTV reporter on the scene Sunday. 

In my first day at KOTV, I met a lot of new people and ran into two of my students who now had good jobs at KOTV.  I let them know we at Rogers State University were proud of them.