“My job is to be the champion of our news directors, our news leaders across the country, and the stress that they are under is different than I’ve ever seen before,” said Ellen Crooke, Tegna’s SVP of news. “So many of the day-to-day conversations that I have with news leaders are about dealing with the stress of the journalists due to the type of stories they face.”

Frequent mass shootings and other dangers have forced TV-station newsrooms to carefully consider every decision to send a news team out to cover an event and even to reduce exposure by choosing not to report from the field when it’s not deemed necessary.

“That’s one of the things I think that’s changed the most,” Crooke said. “When I started, news leaders were in charge of safety and security. It’s too much now.”

Newsrooms today are employing security consultants and teams and holding careful conversations to determine the best course of action before sending teams out in a knee-jerk reaction to breaking news.

“Good leaders will evaluate every story, every assignment, every situation to ensure that when we need more than what we have, we’re providing that,” said Barb Maushard, SVP of news, Hearst Television.

And those conversations aren’t only around news teams, but around all teams going out to cover any event, including the weather.

“A few years ago, we hired a head of security, but we also mandate that security teams go with every single crew that’s out in the field,” said Nora Zimmett, president, news and original series, Allen Media’s The Weather Group.

Weather is another area that’s changed dramatically in recent years, as reporters and producers increasingly face dramatic weather situations.

“I was raised in the business when it was like ‘suck it up,’ but we don’t do that anymore,” Zimmett said. “There is no mandate to go out and cover anything. We have people who are like ‘OK, I’ll do snow and hurricanes, but I no longer do tornadoes,’ or ‘I’ll do tornadoes and snow. I don’t do hurricanes,’ and that’s OK. Because there is nothing worth that level of stress, that level of PTSD.

“It was a shift for myself, my direct reports and our executive leadership team that just because we were taught that you just deal with it, that doesn’t mean it’s right,” she added. “And that also certainly doesn’t mean you’re going to get the best out of your employees. If you have a reputation in your shop for throwing caution to the wind, you’re not going to retain the best talent. That is not a way to lead your team. I think the news industry has to evolve out of this sort of militaristic attitude of ‘it’s our way or the highway.’”

Newsroom leaders also have had to take steps to support employees’ mental health, which can become fragile while performing difficult jobs in stressful situations.

“Back in the day, it was ‘go do this and write this and send it in,’” said Sam Singal, group VP, Charter Communications’ Spectrum News. “Now I find that we spend a lot of time walking through the newsrooms, pulling up a chair and talking to people and understanding what they’re going through.”

Companies also have made mental health services available to employees.

“We’ve made sure that our employees have places to go to seek support for those who want to stay in and want to be able to manage the challenges of the job,” Maushard said.

Of course, part and parcel of these conversations is the issue of pay — journalism has always been a notably low-paying field except for perhaps the biggest names. But companies have recently been forced to increase salaries as it’s become harder to retain employees.

“We are actively and constantly looking at equity and analyzing what are our competitors paying what our colleagues paying just to make sure that we’re up to par with everybody else,” Singal said.

“We have to pay the right amount of money for the jobs, whatever that amount is supposed to be,” Maushard said. “But I think it’s more than that. It’s about the benefits. It’s about the environments we create. It’s about the purpose. It’s about people wanting to do this and then us having to make these into the kind of environments where they’re going to want to be because our communities depend on it. Democracy depends on it.”

Adding to the stress is the cadence of the 24-hour news cycle — including at TV stations where streaming apps and FAST channels have increased the content burden — as well as the pressure to stay connected with audiences through social media. Technology that automates some of those tasks can help, said Joe DiGiovanni, head of North American sales at The Weather Company.

For example, if a station group like Tegna, which owns 64 stations in 51 markets, is covering one weather crisis in one market and a completely different one in another, technology can help stations communicate with and assist one other.

“There may be somebody out West who is an expert in wildfires, while there may be somebody down South who’s an expert in hurricanes. That’s still a news story in other markets, but they may not have that content. So, through our cloud technologies, they can grab that content from those markets and use it in other places,” DiGiovanni said.

In addition, storing content on the cloud in searchable databases means it’s easy to find in crisis situations.

The Weather Company also provides weather forecasting technology that helps meteorologists tell weather stories to viewers in a way that’s comprehensive but also easy to understand. That type of technology has become increasingly essential as climate change has become a central focus of newsrooms’ ongoing coverage.

“Our job at the Weather Channel is to predict the future, and this uncertain future is scary,” Zimmett said. “We view our job now as not just to predict what’s going to happen in terms of extreme weather, but what’s going to happen to your mortgage, what’s going to happen to your insurance? That is something that is now a fabric of our coverage.”

“It’s not about climate change from where we sit. It’s about climate and weather impact,” Maushard said.

When covering anything from climate change to financial markets, political campaigns or even local traffic, technology remains both a useful tool and a potential threat, especially as newsrooms experiment more and more with artificial intelligence (AI).

“We look at AI in three different ways,” Crooke said. “The first is ethics: How will we as journalists use AI appropriately and transparently? Second: how can we innovate using AI? And third, which is what worries me most: How will we be duped by AI, especially in the 2024 presidential election?”

To avoid the third scenario, Tegna is training all of its journalists in the first quarter of 2024 on how to detect and deflect disinformation propagated with the use of AI.

Because journalism is more stressful and challenging than ever, it’s even more driven by the passion and purpose of those who pursue it, panelists said. That’s the secret sauce that keeps people in the business.

“News really is a calling. You have to have a passion and want to do it because you’re gonna make sacrifices,” Maushard said.

“One of the things that makes people stay in their jobs is feeling that they are part of a purpose, that they are doing work that matters,” Crooke said. “I think we’ve seen so much loss in journalism because there’s not always strong work happening that’s making a difference in our communities. The more we focus on purpose, the better our retention will be.”

Read more coverage of NewsTECHForum 2023 here.

Watch this session and all the NewsTECHForum 2023 videos here.

The post News Leaders Focus On Journalist Protection, Stress In Fraught ’24 appeared first on TV News Check.

The COVID pandemic has forced some of those changes, such as the embrace of remote production technologies and shift toward cloud workflows, panelists said during the Reinventing TV News for a Connected World discussion for TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum conference on Tuesday, Dec 14.

The pandemic coincidentally assisted with authenticity as work from home conditions allowed peeks into broadcaster’s home studios and lives. Journalists are publishing short-form and long-form content to more platforms than ever, even as they maintain a love-hate relationship with social media.

Meredith McGinn, EVP of diginets and original production for NBCUniversal Local, said there has been incredible innovation in the behind-the-scenes technology that increases the speed at which news gets to viewers.

“Light, easy remote production is a game changer,” McGinn said.

Barb Maushard, SVP of news at Hearst Television, said broadcasters had the tools for things like remote newsgathering and production activities but they hadn’t been adopted until the pandemic forced the issue.

“I can interview anybody on Zoom. It works more times than it doesn’t,” she said. “We’ve learned how to do it.”

And the ability to reach sources more easily has made newsgathering nimbler and faster, which makes the storytelling piece of it better, she said. “We have ways to reach the sources and locations and that adoption of that has made us better.”

The cloud has also gotten more buy-in. Stephen Bach, director of sales, news segment for Amagi, said one reason is that it provides a great way to experiment or to create pop-up channels.

“You don’t have to have this heavy metal investment to get a channel up off the ground,” Bach said.

Eric Ludgood, head of Newsy, said that organization is encouraging anchors to “be themselves” because the audience has indicated they want more authenticity. “We want our anchors to be who they are within the boundaries of decorum,” he said.

Brooke Thomas, a host at Fox Soul streaming channel, said there has been a shift toward authenticity that makes it possible for a “regular” hairstyle to be seen as professional. “We’re told to be authentic, but now there’s permission,” she said.

Maushard agreed with the notion of having permission to be authentic. “The pandemic gave people permission,” she said. “Even if they dressed the part they needed to for that role, you might see a toy in the background, and that was awesome.”

Even so, there remains the need for professionalism.

“There is still a level of expectation that people are going to bring their professional best to their job,” Maushard said.

And when it comes to platforms, some are more suitable for certain lengths of content.

“The broadcast format has evolved,” Maushard said. “Content should determine our format.”

Digital offers elasticity, allowing stories to run longer.

“We can do extended live production without upsetting the Wheel of Fortune viewers,” Joanie Vasiliadis, VP of digital content at Tegna, said. “But we have to be careful that we’re not just going long because we can. Storytelling still matters.

Real-time feedback can show if people drop off longer pieces of content, she added.

As McGinn put it, “just because it’s longer doesn’t mean it’s better.” Instead, she said, the journalist should be deliberate about the story and give it the length it warrants while catering to the platform it’s on.

“It’s all about characters in the story and the topic,” McGinn said.

As Ludgood said, “We are storytellers now.”

He said Newsy is still looking for the “sweet spot” on length. He said they are finding that people stay a fairly long time on documentaries.

Digital has another benefit, Vasiliadis said. It allows more experimentation with different types of creative content, she said.

“The nervousness goes away,” Vasiliadis said.

Vasiliadis noted it can be dangerous to push content only on a single social media platform. “Many of us were overly reliant on Facebook 10 years ago,” she said, noting it’s smarter to spread out effort across more platforms.

In this way, if a platform goes away or changes its algorithm, the broadcaster isn’t dependent on one platform for its core audience, she said.

McGinn said there’s been a debate on her team about what social media platforms to focus on, “but the numbers are with Facebook,” she said. “It’s not smart to just walk away.”

They do, however, use other platforms to highlight the brand differently than they do on Twitter and Facebook, she said.

Maushard said Hearst is constantly assessing the social media platforms. People tend to seek out and respond to breaking news stories such as the tornado tragedy last weekend on social media.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Maushard said. “The goal is to be the trusted source” by providing accurate information. Yet “some go to social media and don’t trust what they’re getting.”

Vasiliadis said social media can be “a toxic place for our journalists who are on these platforms.”

While toxic behavior exists across all platforms, she said, Facebook is a difficult platform. “We’re fighting that battle.”

In the end, though, Thomas said, social media is an incredible tool for her job, allowing her to communicate in ways she wasn’t able to before. “Our jobs have evolved with social media, but social media will make you evolve.”

For more from NewsTECHForum 2021, click here.

The post Connected World Speeds Up News Reinvention appeared first on TV News Check.

Brooke Thomas

Barb Maushard

Barb Maushard, SVP, news, Hearst Television; Brooke Thomas, host, Fox Soul; Joanie Vasiliadis, VP of digital content, Tegna; Eric Ludgood, head, Newsy; and Meredith McGinn, EVP of diginets and original production, NBCUniversal Local will join TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp for the 11 a.m. panel at the New York Hilton.

The group will examine the audience-building opportunities afforded by streaming and mobile and the roles of technology and storytelling innovation of foster a sense of relevance to viewers who’ve grown up in a multiplatform world.

Eric Ludgood

Joanie Vasiliadis

“Younger audiences bring a raft of different expectations to news viewing informed by a highly-fragmented, mistrust-damaged media universe,” Depp said. “Barb, Brooke, Joanie, Eric and Meredith are all inventing new kinds of programming that adapt to that reality, and we’ll mine what it looks like and how they make it in our discussion.”

In-person attendees will be required to show proof of complete vaccination and extensive COVID safety protocols will be in place on site for the event, which will be co-located with Sports Video Group’s annual summit.

Meredith McGinn

Panels will explore a wide range of the industry’s most pressing challenges and exciting technological opportunities. They will include News Operations in a Changed World; The Cloud and the Future of News Production; Reinventing the Live Shot; Remote Production and the Future of News Storytelling; and News Technology and Combatting Disinformation.

Attendees will have access to a Technology Showcase featuring socially distanced exhibits hosted by companies including Grass Valley, Ross Video, TVU and others. Attendees will also have access to sessions at the Sports Video Group Summit, which is co-located with NewsTECHForum.

Register here for NewsTECHForum 2021.

For more stories on NewsTECHForum 2021, click here.

The post Reinventing TV For A Connected World appeared first on TV News Check.

Suddenly months of adapting to remote working conditions and complex coronavirus safety protocols collided with a U.S. population at its boiling point. America took to the streets en masse to demand the end of U.S. racial injustice, and journalists needed to upshift once more to meet them there.

As SVP of news at Hearst Television, Barb Maushard is leading the group’s coverage through uncharted, heavily churning waters. Having worked to protect her stations first from the invisible threat of the coronavirus, now she sees her protest-covering journalists in the crosshairs of danger from local police, rioters and a president whose agitating against the media continues apace.

In an interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp, Maushard says ensuring those journalists’ safety is her top priority. She’s glad groups like NAB and RTDNA have had their back as assaults on the press continue to ratchet up. She says she’s working more closely with local news directors than ever, constantly improving the quality of remote-working conditions and evolving newsrooms’ election coverage playbook as complexities keep emerging.

“There is no manual or handbook for this,” she says, “but together we will continue to adapt and serve the audiences.”

An edited transcript.

Your reporters are suddenly facing danger on a whole new front covering the protests that have erupted across the country. What are your directives to them to keep them as safe as possible reporting on these events?

It is a balance of being in a position to tell these important stories and to be safe. We went from COVID-19 [and now] there’s been flying bottles, rocks or even rubber bullets, so it has been a new challenge. We reinforce that their safety is the most important thing. That is everything from providing extra personnel when they go to an event that could turn out to be volatile or dangerous, to providing elevated spaces where they can be away from the crowds.

Obviously, we still need to witness and be as close as we can be to see what is happening, but we do not have to be right in the middle of it. We use our choppers as much as possible to stay at a distance when we can and also provide the appropriate context and perspective, which is a very important part of covering these news stories. We have hired security in these markets to be with our crews that in those more vulnerable locations.

How does that security work? What’s the protocol?

We bring people there to just be with our crews and to be an extra set of eyes and ears and to help keep people away and to help usher us out if we are in a dangerous situation. Our journalists are incredibly brave and committed. They come back after a night of feeling the effects of tear gas or seeing bottles come at them or guns being brandished around, and they go back out because they know that they are helping to inform the community, raising the issues and exposing what is wrong.

They keep going out, and that is why we keep making sure that we are looking for all these various steps we can take. They all know that if they are in a situation where they are uncomfortable and they need to get out, their first order of business is get out, move or tell us. We are not going to put somebody where they don’t feel like they can be as safe as possible.

Have any of your journalists been injured?

We have had a couple of people who have been mildly hurt — bumped around, knocked down, that type of thing.

This is an extraordinary moment seeing journalists literally under attack, targeted in different instances both by police and some protesters. What do you have to say to that dynamic?

It is extremely troubling. Our journalists have to be free and safe in order to keep our communities free and safe. I am greatly appreciative of the efforts of the RTDNA, the NAB and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press fighting for the rights of our journalists because they are needed now more than ever. It is wrong that our folks are going to be targeted, but they are brave, committed [and] they are going to go out there and expose what is happening with the support of these organizations.

Is the issue underlying this — U.S. racial injustice — going to take a new role in your coverage? How may it impact the way you frame and engage the subject of race in your reporting?

We launched our effort Project CommUNITY a year and a half ago, and the entire purpose of that was for our stations to focus on how we can bridge the divide in our communities. Racial injustice was on the list of things that each of these communities would consider. Each [of the stations] went out and started holding town hall meetings and very targeted coverage on different topics trying to facilitate these crucial, often very difficult conversations. Our point was to continue to bring people together and work towards some solutions.

We recently pivoted a bit from those original intentions because of what COVID was doing to our communities economically. We went out and raised a significant amount of money — nearly $24 million — to help those communities.

We will be doubling down on that original effort and our focus will largely be on what we are watching unfold in front of us with inequality and injustice. It is never easy to talk about these issues, but with the freedoms that we are given as by the First Amendment comes that responsibility to address [them].

The pandemic may rightly be called the story of the century. As the senior news executive at Hearst, what has been your goal in shaping how stations are covering this?

Our goals are to provide the most critical information in an environment that is changing constantly. You start with a premise that let’s just make sure that we can continue to operate and be present for our audiences.

I am incredibly proud of the engineers and the technical folks and their ability to keep us not only operational but expanding coverage in many places in order to make sure we were providing that critical information. It is really to help our communities navigate what is happening right now. We are constantly updating that information. Our communities have never needed it more than they do today.

How have you had to change the way that you and your news directors communicate, collaborate and form strategies?

We are doing it more than ever. We originally were speaking seven days a week. Now, we have the regularly scheduled call at minimum twice a week. We do it by a video conference and I see and talk to them more than ever. That collaboration has never been better. The ability for us to collaborate face-to-face has been a positive byproduct of this terrible situation.

Just a few months ago nobody would have expected such an enormous volume of remote production. How are journalists reacting to all this? Do they have recommendations for the way that their work ought to change out of this?

The journalists have been incredible in terms of their contributions and their ideas on how to make things happen. They have been flexible with finding creative ways to get through it. They are adapting. They are all finding it in some ways rewarding.

I miss having people in a newsroom where you can collaborate because you expect that that is where the best collaboration is going to happen. I still believe that if you can get people face to face and have them collaborate on ideas and editorial content, that is always preferred. But the ability to find ways to make things happen remotely — to cover stories, to find ways to engage experts — has been incredible.

How has Hearst been evolving and improving the way that anchors and reporters are working remotely since this began in March? Are you getting better?

We are getting much better at it. We were able to do it technically and folks got quickly on the air from remote locations, but it doesn’t always look as appealing as you would want it to look. The backgrounds are not always well lit or technical things. We have figured out how to address a lot of those needs.

Everybody has been incredibly receptive to how to work through that. We have seen the value we get from the authenticity we see from our anchors when they are in this type of environment. It’s helpful to our audience to connect. They know us, they trust us, but for them to see us in these sometimes vulnerable positions makes people real and relatable. That helps us to think about how we can continue to bring that authenticity forward.

Viewers appear to like the casualness of reporting and anchoring from home. Do you think this will change the way that talent communicates on air when they are back on the set or reporting from the field once the lockdowns have phased out?

We have people who have been incredible communicators. It doesn’t matter where they are. Some folks will probably come back into a studio environment more at ease than they were before because they found a different style. It will help some people communicate more comfortably.

Are you holding the line against furloughs and salary cuts in newsrooms? Can you say there will not be any in the foreseeable future?

That really isn’t within my purview. It hasn’t happened. What I have always loved about this company and its leadership is how thoughtful they are in how we handle our employees. We are a company that really takes a long view as to what is happening right now.

Politics have infused almost every element of the pandemic now. How do you navigate those divisions, which essentially have become unavoidable to at least acknowledge?

We are focusing all of our efforts on the facts, getting our audience the information they need as it changes and making sure that we are doing our best to stay out of any political piece. It really isn’t where our focus is unless you are talking about the election.

That is the political piece we are focused on and finding creative new ways to do that. We recently conducted a couple of debates via Zoom, one for the Baltimore city mayor, another for a congressional race in Albuquerque. In terms of politics, our focus is on how we can help our audiences know what they need to know before they make those critical choices.

But the election has become inextricable from the pandemic in some ways. There are episodes that happen almost every day where there is something inherently political. Surely you have to wrangle politics in some way.

We are covering it from the perspective of what is happening and the facts and the information, and not taking a political stance. We are digging in to find out the facts. But we are doing our best to avoid the political nature of it. You are right: You can’t avoid the fact that so much of the coverage has a political element. But we are doing our best to avoid any sort of political position being taken in any of the coverage.

Hearst has always had a pretty aggressive playbook for covering elections. How is the pandemic changing that playbook?

We have been trying to figure out how to maintain offering up the debates, forums and discussions that we would typically do. We have done dozens of them in every cycle, so we have to figure out how to do that through the video conferencing tools that we have. We have had discussions about how to cover conventions if there are conventions.

We are looking at a project that we launched last year called “These 50 States,” where it was our intention to travel to every one of the states and produce issue-focused pieces and where the candidates would land on those issues. We got to nine of those before the pandemic hit, so now we are looking at how to do that with a combination of boots on the ground and through these new technologies. We are going to continue to be rewriting that playbook along the way.

We knew going into 2020 it was going to be a pivotal news year, but now with the pandemic, the economic crisis, the election and the likelihood of severe weather upon us again this summer, this stretches any news organization thinly. How can Hearst manage with both the volume of news and the complexities of delivering it now?

We manage with the incredible people we have. It is as simple as that. We have smart, dedicated, hardworking people who are going to continue to adapt to make happen what needs to happen. None of this is easy for anybody.

We are a strong company with strong values and people. There is no manual or handbook for this, but together we will continue to adapt and serve the audiences. We will do it. We will get it done because that is who we are and that is what we do.

The post TVN Executive Session | Hearst’s Maushard: ‘We Will Continue To Adapt’ appeared first on TV News Check.

When asked by moderator Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, how news organizations can better grasp what voters are concerned about during the campaign season — after failing to do so four years ago — one panel member summed up the collective’s response best:

“Put more boots on the ground,” said Brian Scanlon, the Associated Press’s global director for U.S. election services.

Scanlon added that the extra reporting manpower should also be deployed to areas that have historically been proven keys to victory in presidential elections.

“If you looked at newsrooms, they were so Washington-driven [and] if you would have told people in 2016, ‘You need to put a lot more resources in Wisconsin’ or ‘You need to put a lot more resources in Michigan,’ they would’ve said, ‘Yeah, maybe.’ ”

Barb Maushard, Hearst Television’s SVP of news, agreed, saying that news organizations need to focus on “what people are talking about, what will cause them to make the decisions they’re going to make, so that we can give them as much information as we possibly can.”

For Hearst’s part, Maushard said her organization will employ a new coverage strategy in 2020, sending reporters to all 50 states.

To stem the tide of misinformation in the ether, and ward off attacks on the integrity of news outlets from certain combative candidates and their supporters, Maushard said that report-worthy information should be given white glove treatment.

“We have to stay true to what those [good journalism] principles are,” Maushard said. “We have to be true to the facts, we have to be clear, and we have to be incredibly careful about the language we choose, the words we put on the screen to describe what’s happening.”

She observed that scrolling banners along the bottom of the screen could easily “send a message you don’t intend to send,” so nothing can be taken for granted.

Shifting gears into the tech side of things, Depp asked the panel about the role social media plays in reporting, and if outlets are concerned about its influence over the public as it increasingly scrutinizes news’ reliability.

Scanlon of the AP recounted an instance where one of his outlet’s reporters in Kentucky had tweeted that the AP had called a local election’s results. It hadn’t.

“It spread like wildfire,” Scanlon said of the tweeted report. “The next thing you know it’s picked up by one of the major cable news networks.”

Scanlon said that in this “hyper-reactive world,” where a single tweet can send shockwaves across the news landscape, reporters and outlets as a whole should “take an extra second to really verify what they’re doing.”

He added with a chuckle: “I think every organization looks at it as a challenge, and says: ‘We’ve got to make sure [our people] don’t do something stupid.’ ”

Therefore, news outlets constantly need to reassess their standards and procedures, especially as social media technology evolves.

And as news production technology advances, so does the technology at the hands of those seeking to disrupt the fourth estate’s reliability.

For now, deep fake technology — as convincing as some of the videos may look — is in its infancy. But it’s only going to get better, and, fortunately, tech companies like Microsoft are on the frontlines, building diagnostic tools that can better identify authentic versus phony videos.

For years, Microsoft has been able to look at altered digital photographs and identify metadata code that varies from the original. The same type of process is being employed now with deep fake videos.

“There is some level of editing that goes on [in deep fake videos],” said Jamie Burgess, Microsoft News Labs’ AI innovation lead. “Color treatment, saturation, all these kind of things that will alter the [code] of that video.… We’re looking at ways we can go all the way back to the camera, to generate a certificate from the camera — this was shot in this place, at this time, by this person, by this organization.”

Once the original has been verified it can be compared to suspected fakes, which, when discovered, can be discarded or, if it they’d already been posted somewhere, removed.

In guarding against content tampering, Scanlon said the AP hires independent companies that purposefully try to hack into the organization’s networks to see where holes in protective infrastructure might exist.

All these steps and others can help preserve the integrity of reporting, ensure that consumers are getting correct information, and make claims of “fake news” be rendered as, well, fake news.

But is all this enough to keep sabotage at bay?

“Unfortunately, there’s no surefire way to stop it,” said Cameryn Beck, senior director of content strategy at the E.W. Scripps Co. “There’s a human element in it that we need to be reminded of on a daily basis. So I think we need to continue to be a bit cynical. We need to continue to be asking questions, again, taking a moment to be thoughtful and looking at what’s out there.”

Watch the full video of the session here.

The post NewsTECHForum | News Orgs Set Goals For Election Coverage appeared first on TV News Check.

Hearst’s Barb Maushard

Barb Maushard, SVP news at Hearst Television; Brian Scanlon, global director, U.S. election services at the Associated Press; and Cameryn Beck, senior director of content strategy at The E.W. Scripps Co., will unpack the latest broadcast and digital tools they’re bringing to bear on covering what is shaping up to be the most contentious election season in memory.

The panel, set to take place at 1 p.m. on Dec. 16 at the New York Hilton, will be moderated by TVNewsCheck Special Projects Editor Michael Depp.

AP’s Brian Scanlon

“The 2020 election looms above all else in next year’s news landscape, and the stakes couldn’t be higher for getting the journalism done right,” Depp said. “Barb, Brian and Cameryn will break down their coverage imperatives and the technologies and reporting strategies they’re using to avoid deep fake videos and get the pulse of the electorate.”

Set for Dec. 16-17 at the New York Hilton, NewsTECHForum will bring together engineering, news, production and digital leaders to discuss excellence in news storytelling and news workflow. Veteran broadcaster Greta Van Susteren and Black News Channel’s VP of News Gary Wordlaw are this year’s keynote interviews.

Panels and presentations will tackle Cybersecurity in the Newsroom and the Field; New Frontiers in News Storytelling and Multiplatform Production Without the Pain; OTT News Content, Technology and Monetization Strategies; and Top Technologists on Tomorrow’s Challenges, among other sessions.

Scripps’ Cameryn Beck

NewsTECHForum is co-located with the 14th Annual SVG Summit, which gathers more than 1,000 sports video professionals and their technology partners to talk about production excellence in sports television. The SVG Summit is produced by the Sports Video Group and features a technology showcase of more than 75 companies that is open to all NewsTECHForum attendees.

This year’s NewsTECHForum will also feature the second annual Social Media Excellence Awards, recognizing extraordinary engagement and innovation by local TV brands and talent.

To register for NewsTECHForum, click here.

The post Technology’s Role In Covering 2020 Elections appeared first on TV News Check.

Barbara Maushard

Local broadcast news isn’t broken, but it needs to reaffirm its core values of trust and transparency, says Barb Maushard, Hearst Television’s SVP of news.

Maushard says that much is still working in the broadcast paradigm, though if local news wants to find its next generation of viewers, it needs to do so in a voice they can relate to and to be on the platforms – including social and OTT — where those audiences have moved.

Since rising to her position in 2017, Maushard has led Hearst Television to a number of honors for its coverage, including three National Murrow Awards, four National Headliner Awards and in 2019, 26 Regional Murrow Awards and the NAB Service to America Award for its election coverage.

Maushard has worked at four Hearst stations since 1997, serving as news director at three of them: KHBS-KHOG Fort Smith-Fayetteville, Ark.; WISN Milwaukee; and WESH Orlando, Fla. She began her career at WHOI in her hometown of Peoria, Ill., later working at WCMH Columbus, Ohio, and WMAR Baltimore.

Among other industry roles, Maushard serves on the boards of NBC News Channel, the Kneeland Project for Responsible Journalism and the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation. She has also been vice chair of the ABC News Directors Advisory Board and is a member of the Radio Television Digital News Association.

In this exclusive interview with TVNewsCheck Special Projects Editor Michael Depp, Maushard discusses Hearst’s forays into new territory like Facebook Watch, how the company deals with the growing problem of newsmaking but graphic social videos and how its investigative and political coverage is expanding.

An edited transcript.

Recently, newsrooms around the globe grappled with whether or how they should use graphic video footage from the Christchurch, New Zealand, mass shooting. How did Hearst respond to that, and how have you developed ethical guidelines around that kind of scenario?

When it comes to video, we want to make sure we’re doing it right. We want to be responsible and careful and do the right thing, so any time there’s a piece of graphic or risky video, we have put into policy in our group that there should be a second set of eyes. Some newsrooms will say there has got to be a third set of eyes. It slows down the process, but I’d rather we be correct and responsible. Everything is going to be a local decision at some level because some markets are more accepting of different things.

So this is decentralized and you let the newsrooms make those decisions?

When it comes to digital platforms, generally we have some centralized operations that can push content out, but the stations can make decisions as to whether or not they want to use that. Stations will make decisions, but we will provide guidance.

When you look at the structure and format of a local newscast, what most needs to be shaken up or reimagined? How are you doing that at Hearst?

One of the things that doesn’t need to be shaken up is the quality journalism that we’re providing in our markets. There’s a lot of talk about being innovative and creative, and we have to be smart about responding to our audiences. We need to be sure that we’re getting to them with information that is valuable, reliable and accurate. We have to be interesting and compelling, but I don’t think those things should stand in the way of the quality, trusted journalism that is expected.

In a recent study that we conducted with SmithGeiger, it reinforced the notion that local news is still the most trusted. We understand what’s happening there and we work from a position of non-bias. We have to stay in that lane and still find an opportunity to relate to the audience.

Let’s drill down into something tangible on the relatability front, then. What does that look like that’s different from today?

It’s about content choice. It’s about style and tone. We want to have people who are still anchoring, reporting and hosting for us that are relatable. That in large part comes from knowing what the community wants.

We launched a big effort, Project CommUNITY, which is a year-long initiative drilling down into some of the issues that divide us in these communities and what’s being done to unite [them]. That makes us more relatable.

I don’t know that we need to take the newscast and turn it upside down. We need to make sure as we’re doing our jobs as journalists, we’re identifying what really matters and finding unique ways to communicate that.

Do you foresee a time when the local newscast might look radically different than right now — say doing away with anchors, for instance?

I don’t. There’s great value in knowing and trusting those people in the local markets. We have a connection because we’re part of those communities.

What are the steps you have to take across the group to connect with younger audiences?

Young people, while they aren’t watching local news on television every day, there are still a large number of them that will see a local newscast on TV every week and there’s an even larger number that will see local news somewhere on a digital platform. We’re working to reach those people on the various social platforms where they’re spending their time.

There are a couple of initiatives we’ve embarked on from a primarily social effort. The Facebook Watch program we have, Dispatches from the Middle, is in its second season. It’s an opportunity for us to take interesting stories from local markets produced for social — including interviews with our reporters, who give background on how the story was covered — and build [them] out a bit.

There’s a Stitch product that’s basically a national footprint for heartwarming stories. Through our digital teams we identify stories from our stations across the group that can be repurposed and reproduced to reach various audiences.

Is it ultimately going to be necessary to have a strong OTT presence to find future audiences? If so, what steps will Hearst take to realize that for its newscasts?

It’s going to be important to have a strong OTT presence. It’s important for us to continue to explore and identify the best approach.

In your view, is it the case that you can’t just take a newscast and transport it to another platform? Do you have to be bespoke for each individual platform?

We’re all still figuring that out. At one point, we took content and tried to make it super different for the digital platforms, and what we found is we don’t have to. It’s all about good storytelling and important information. It’s a constant exploration and evolution.

How are your newsrooms and workflows coping with the endless proliferation of platforms? Is that sustainable?

It’s a challenge every single day and it is a constant discussion. It’s tough. We ask our leadership to do good quality journalism and we’ve expanded our number of hours of news on television in the last several years rather than retract it. We’re still putting a ton of local broadcast out and a ton of social content and we’re looking at OTT.

What are you learning from your experience of producing Dispatches from the Middle on Facebook Watch?

One of the takeaways is there is an audience, people are interested in these stories. We’re identifying stories that are interesting and giving them a little more, the sort of inside look we don’t do as much on television. Giving a little more insight and more of a personal touch really has helped that program.

Local TV news brands hold an edge over their national counterparts in terms of audience trust, but the drumbeat of “fake news” has hardly quieted down in the background. What have you substantively had to do to reaffirm trust with your own viewers across your markets?

It’s important for us to always remember to be transparent and honest. We want to make sure people understand how we’re getting to the information. We take our time to ensure we’re not making mistakes, and if we make mistakes, we come clean about it. Those anchors and reporters — some of whom spend 20 or 30 years in those markets — are trusted because they’re part of the community and they have proven their trust by the work that they do.

Just under a year ago you launched a national investigative unit within your D.C. bureau under Mark Albert. How big is that unit, and what has been its output?

I’ve got three people specific to that unit. I have an entire D.C. bureau that contributes to the unit, and I have an entire company that’s contributing content and support.

How does the investigative unit work with local newsrooms?

It’s a combination of things. We have a taskforce of individuals around the company who meet monthly on a call to communicate ideas. The unit will talk about a story that they’re working on and seek assistance from stations that are also working on it or are able to help.

The investigative unit, and Mark in particular, is a machine and really amazing at digging in and gathering information that can then be spread out to local markets to help support the bigger story. He’ll do something from a national perspective, generally with local elements, and then provide a lot of material to the local stations.

The stakes for media can hardly be higher than the next presidential election. How are you preparing to cover that on both your newscasts and other platforms in a way that is different from previous elections?

We’re still formulating the plan for what Commitment 2020 will look like. We expanded our D.C. bureau last year [and] brought in another correspondent. And we’re continuing to explore whether there should be additional resources.  Our Washington bureau will continue to lead the way in a lot of coverage as it has done. You’re right: the stakes couldn’t be higher. We’re going to be aggressively covering this, seeking out more debates and more opportunities to get with the candidates.

President Trump’s Twitter habit hasn’t abated at all and that has created stress in newsrooms with its middle-of-the-night tweetstorms. How much does having to keep up with that effect your newsrooms at the local level?

The endless barrage of news, period, causes stress on the newsrooms. We have to stay on top of everything like we never had. But our newsrooms’ focus is really about the issues that are important in those local markets. It’s never been harder to stay on top of everything, but it has never been more important.

Looking ahead, what are your biggest concerns or worries about the news ecosystem overall?

My concerns are making sure our viewers are able to identify trusted sources. It’s important that folks who are looking for quality, real journalism are able to find it. My hope is that we can all be part of ensuring that audiences can find it and get what they need and can benefit from that great journalism that’s being done.

The post Hearst Aims For News Transparency, Relatability appeared first on TV News Check.

Presented by TVNewsCheck and the Sports Video Group (SVG), the NewsTECHForum will feature news management, production and technology professionals discussing the latest developments in ENG acquisition and transmission; how cloud-based workflows are changing the way news is produced and distributed; and how best to prepare for disaster coverage.

Maushard, named a vice president at Hearst in 2008, serves as part of a team supervising news management at the company’s 29 television stations. The group’s WCVB Boston was in the thick of covering one of 2013’s biggest stories — the Boston Marathon bombings.

Set for Dec. 16-17 at the New York Hilton, the NewsTECHForum will gather news, technology and news operations managers to talk about the challenges they face at the intersection of technology and news storytelling. Maushard is scheduled to speak on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 9:30 a.m.

Fox Television Stations CEO Jack Abernethy is the featured speaker on Monday.

Other confirmed speakers at the event include Mel Olinsky, vice president of broadcast distribution at CBS; Brian Kennedy, executive director of newsgathering operations at ABC; Bowen Dou, project leader of cross-platform news at ESPN; Eric Carvin, social media editor at The Associated Press; Marcy Lefkovitz, director of news production at ABC; Keith Barbaria, director of technology and engineering at WVIT Hartford, Conn.; and Katy Richman, director of social media strategy and social products at X Games and espnW.

“NewsTECHForum is the first conference to bring together front-line managers and executives working every day in news and news-technology,” said Harry A. Jessell, editor and co-founder of TVNewsCheck. “Our goal is to foster excellence in news production.”

NewsTECHForum will be co-located with the SVG Summit, making it possible for attendees at the two conferences to intermingle, added Ken Kerschbaumer, executive director of editorial at SVG. “There is significant crossover between the concerns of a CNN or a BBC with those at an ESPN,” he said. “NewsTECHForum and the Summit can tackle them together.”

The event has attracted sponsorships from JVC, Bitcentral, Volicon, Teradek, Mosart, TVU, Masstech, Vislink, Canon, LiveU, Vislink, AP/ENPS and Boxx TV.

The post Maushard To Speak At NewsTECHForum appeared first on TV News Check.