Newsroom Innovators

A new “executive reporter” position at E.W. Scripps stations provides storytelling tutelage for younger journalists via close daily collaboration, a model the company hopes will strengthen its reporting corps. Pictured, Channing Frampton at the WTXL Tallahassee.

Cox Media Group’s NeighborhoodTV project in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., aims to bring viewers hyperlocal content that harkens back to TV’s earlier, less rigidly structured days.

Hawk+ is a streaming platform brimming with original content produced by students at Montclair State University. They’re hoping it’s a new model for student media to follow.

Northeastern University’s Reinventing Local TV News Project will place fellows at three major-market stations — WCBS New York, WCVB Boston and WLS Chicago — for a year-long effort to build radically new models for digital news storytelling.

Cox-owned WSOC in Charlotte, N.C., dives headlong into homeless, mental health and race in an ever-evolving reporting project that has challenged both its newsroom and its audience. It’s had a transformative effect on both. Read the full report here and/or watch the video above.

Gray-owned WNDU has partnered with the Gannett-owned South Bend Tribune to share content and collaborate on a wide array of reporting projects. The upshot has been a win-win for both outlets and the broader “Michiana” community, says the Tribune’s executive editor. Read a full report here in addition to the video above.

Five Northeast Telemundo stations are collaborating on a weekday evening half-hour show, Edicion Nocturna, that’s yielding new lessons in cooperation while drawing on time-honored methods in newscast production.

Graham Media’s WDIV Detroit launched a “Help Desk” for viewers aiming to improve the station’s responses to viewer inquiries of all stripes. The result has been a wealth of story tips, first-party data and gratified viewers. Read the full story here.

The digitally native Hawaii newscast This Is Now has taken off thanks to production DIY simplicity, giving room for stories to breathe and buy-in from the broadcast side at Gray Television’s KGMB and KHNL Honolulu. Click through to read the full story.

The Desk, a new initiative from KCBS Los Angeles, puts assignment editors on camera to follow breaking stories as information comes into the newsroom. The station says its “transparency and authenticity” are already resonating with viewers. Read the full story.

Nonprofit group Trusting News works with newsrooms to bring more clarity and transparency around their reporting processes, foster more interaction with audiences and enhance greater confidence in their news products.

WKRN Nashville meteorologist Danielle Breezy has an exceptionally close relationship with her viewers and community, where she’s quick on the draw with life-saving information and always looking around the corner to the next impactful weather events.

Eva Sollberger has been producing her video profile series of Vermonters and their stories for Burlington alt weekly Seven Days for the past 15 years. Her empathetic, well-honed storytelling — and ultra-long tail features — have made her one of the state’s most recognized and beloved journalists.

Christian Ocana, a 22-year-old UNC journalism student, won this year’s Hearst Multimedia Innovative Storytelling Competition for a multifaceted explainer on NFTs that shows the way to a Gen Z-tailored news future.

NBCU’s KNTV leveraged king-sized reporting resources into a six-part, digital-native docuseries that elevates a small human-interest story into a large-scale examination of San Francisco’s culture and systems.

In its two years on TikTok, Yahoo News has garnered 1.7 million followers by following a simple maxim: It’s all about engaging with communities rather than uploading videos and leaving.

Hear Me Out, a Los Angeles Times feature that spins letters to the editor into video segments, offers a novel example of user-generated content for broadcasters to emulate.

TVNewsCheck’s Newsroom Innovators series showcased a wide array of new ways to approach and present news content that can inspire fresh thinking heading back to the newsroom in 2022.

Multimedia journalist Joe Little puts cameras in places where they’d never otherwise go. In doing so, he’s become a maestro of finding the magical in the quotidian.

Quicktake is looking to pick up viewers among the business world’s up-and-comers with a dramatically different programming approach than older sibling Bloomberg TV. The result is an OTT offering with content ranging from super-short to long form, interspersed with signature “datagram” visualizations and a soundtrack you can dance or trance to.

Make Ends Meet is Graham-owned WKMG Orlando’s effort to help Floridian viewers navigate state and federal agencies to connect with their COVID-related unemployment benefits. Headed by reporter Mike Holfeld, the practical, utility-minded segments have aided in the delivery of $1.5 million in benefits to Florida residents.

Sometimes news innovation comes in the form of sheer reporting tenacity, as Graham-owned WDIV Detroit has shown through its long-haul coverage of the pandemic. Led by Kim Voet-Potter, a veteran news director, and featuring physician Dr. Frank McGeorge, the WDIV team has pushed itself to new creative heights in relaying critical information to a virus-weary viewership. This is the latest of TVNewsCheck’s “Newsroom Innovators” profiles, a series showcasing people and news organizations evolving the shape and substance of video reporting. Read the others here.

Between Us, a digital-only series from Al Jazeera, aims to generate “more of a human story” from veteran correspondents using animation, illustration and other novel storytelling tools.

CBC News’ five-person animation team is using a graphics-driven approach to amplify some news stories with Adobe After Effects as a key tool. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

ABC Owned Television Stations’ relatively new data journalism unit, headed by John Kelly, has quickly come into its own via the massive twin stories of the election and the pandemic. The team’s work has already impacted equity issues at the polls and made inroads with a younger audience that Kelly says “particularly values evidence, hard facts and data that they can easily consume and share with one another.”

In an election year when voting has never been more important — or more complex — E.W. Scripps has rolled out voter resource pages across its 42 markets aggregating local deadlines, rules and instructions, along with drawing from a well of Scripps and Newsy election coverage. Above, a Scripps voter resource page from Cincinnati, similar to ones found in each of the group’s 42 markets.

Since August, Anderson Cooper has been producing his Full Circle program thrice weekly via smartphones in his Hudson Yards office. The remote production was “quick, simple and cheap,” says CNN’s Jason Holterhaus, and signals that CNN is starting to take its digital-only shows as seriously as its linear broadcast.

InvestigateTV, Gray Television’s national investigative unit, has been producing dozens of in-depth pieces airing across its stations and on an OTT channel dedicated to its work. Fronted by WVUE anchor Lee Zurik in New Orleans (above), its pieces are making an impact even in markets where Gray doesn’t have a station.

Broadcasters, including CBS, E.W. Scripps, Hearst, Tegna and Graham Media, are bolstering their fact-checking operations as the 2020 election looms closer, partnering with outside groups like Politifact, FactCheck.org and First Draft to ensure their own trustworthiness with local viewers.

The 9 Wants to Know investigative team at Tegna-owned KUSA in Denver brings elasticity to local investigative reporting, experimenting with longer pieces, powerfully contextual graphics and unconventional cameras. But passionate reporters and a deft team leader are the real drivers behind its innovation.

Dave Jorgenson produces twice-daily posts geared to young audiences on nascent social video platform TikTok. In 10 months, he’s gained 400,000 subscribers there and tens of millions of views of his witty short videos, including tips on coronavirus hand washing and handshakes.

WFAA’s David Schechter and parent company Tegna are putting ordinary people in Dallas in the role of reporters to tackle divisive issues like climate change, racism and Trump’s border wall. The results, longer-form Verify Road Trip stories on digital and broadcast, are gaining both viewers and trust.