Where have you gone, Lou Grant?

By now everyone in the world has heard about the colossal screw up last week when KTVU-TV fell victim to a prank and announced fake, racist names of the crew of that crashed Asiana airliner.

While most people are chuckling and asking “How could that happen?” the men and women who run local TV newsrooms should be shaking in their boots. If they have any self-awareness at all, they should be dropping to their knees and praying “Thank God, they didn’t call my station.”

I spent more than 26 years in the  local TV news business most of them as a news director, running local news departments. I have been out of the business for more than ten years, but I stay in touch. Many of the problems I saw when I was there remain today, and have gotten worse.

This may not be exactly what happened, but it is a very plausible scenario. A call or email comes into the newsroom. Some junior staffer, probably fresh out of college takes the call and gets excited and yells “We have the names of the pilots!”

Someone only slightly more experienced responds, “Oh my God, we have to get this on the air, NOW!”

Already someone else has called the promotion department to tell them to start working on a promo hyping the “exclusive breaking news.”

The chyron operator (the person who types the letters that you see on the screen) transcribes what is given to him.

Meanwhile, not until the anchor reads the names on the air does anyone actually look at the names and say them out loud.

Supposedly in the KTVU case, someone at the station called the NTSB where an intern confirmed the names. How this happened, I cannot explain.

So why does something like this slip through?

1. Too many stations overemphasize flash and speed over substance and accuracy.  How many times have you seen or heard “breaking news,” or “this just in,” or even better “live, late breaking.” On the other hand, how many times have you seen a station brag, “We got it right!” Getting it right may be an assumption, but when it isn’t emphasized, it falls by the wayside. It may only be a dumpster fire, but if it’s live and breaking news, we’ll be all over it.

2. The economics of the TV business are such that there just aren’t as many experienced people left in many newsrooms to actually provide a system of checks to catch mistakes before they air. This was a noon newscast in a major market. You would think there would be some senior people around to call the shots at that time of day. However, when you get to a smaller market, especially on weekends or in the early morning, it is just a handful of inexperienced people processing a high volume of news content. The same young producer or reporter who gathers in the information also writes it and approves it for air. There is no one to give it a second look, or if there is, they are frequently as green as the first person.

3. TV newsrooms are not staffed by rocket scientists. This is a dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about. This is not a blanket indictment of everyone who works in TV news, nor am I saying that TV news people are all morons. For the most part, they all have college degrees, so at least in theory they are literate. And clearly, there are some very sharp people working out there.  However, on the average over the past two decades or so, the TV news business has not attracted the cream of the intellectual crop.

It starts in college. If he or she is being honest, a broadcast journalism professor will admit (as many have to me) that the students he/she is teaching are not the best and the brightest. The students who were at the top of their admission class are majoring in subjects that will produce a more lucrative career, like pre-med, pre-law, finance, engineering, and so on. When compared to majors like engineering, chemistry or even nursing,  broadcast journalism is a fairly easy major. It is often a second choice or back-up plan for students who couldn’t hack it in the more demanding majors. (In full disclosure, about a hundred years ago, I was one of those students.) Further, it is not at uncommon for the top graduates in a broadcast journalism program to take a look at the starting salaries in the TV business and say, “Screw this. I’ll go to law school or get an MBA.”

4. It’s very sad that a large number of those students/graduates aren’t really interested in journalism or news in general. They want to be on TV. They might be just as happy, or perhaps more so, being a “spokes-model” or a contestant on “Big Brother,” as covering the city council in small-town USA. For most new, young TV reporters, the job of collecting and presenting news is just a means to an end — a way to get on TV. If the stars align in their favor, maybe they get a shot at their true dream, to get off the street, away from the day-to-day drudgery of actually covering news, and become an anchor. As a result, there is very little emphasis what traditionalists might consider real journalism. “How does my writing look?” is replaced by “How does my hair look?”

5. Back to college for a moment, although the salaries aren’t a lot different, there is a contrast between the broadcast journalism students and their academic cousins across the quad in the print journalism department. It tends to attract a different type of student. In print journalism, it doesn’t really matter what you look or sound like. The most fame you will achieve early in your career is a byline and maybe a thumbnail photo. Strangers won’t come up to you in the grocery store and ask you why you changed your hair style. While still in school, you are actually expected to be able to write something longer and with more depth than a tweet.

I wish I had a good conclusion for this post, but I don’t. I continue to watch local TV news here. Mostly I just want to know if it’s safe to go to bed and what the weather will be in the morning. I really don’t care about the “live, late breaking” dumpster fire.

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Like PSU needs more bad news!

I’m the only one in our family of five siblings without strong ties to Penn State. Three of my four sibs and one brother-in-law are alums and, pretty much bleed blue and white. They have all been shocked and devastated by the events in State College this week.

The students there aren’t helping the university’s image. This video caught my eye because I spent 27 years in the TV news business. Stories of accidents with live microwave news vans are legendary. They usually involve raising the antenna mast into an uninsulated power line. (My last company had an intensive training and certification program to try to avert just that kind of very dangerous accident.)  There are the occasional cases of older vans without a cut-off safety switch where the driver drove off with the mast up and ran under a tree branch or overpass. That is never a good thing.  I don’t think I was ever seriously concerned about one of our vans being “flipped” on a college campus.

That’s pretty ugly.

The Favor Bank

Call them by whatever name you like – favors, good deeds, helping out, or a helping hand – favors have been on my mind lately.

It started last week, when one of the women who work in our office needed a ride home. Her son was home from the Air Force Academy for several weeks, and he was monopolizing their one available car. We live just a mile or two apart, but about 25 miles, or 35 minutes away from work. (That is not a function of us living in the boonies. Rather, it is where we work that is “out there.”)

She was extremely appreciative of the ride offer and even offered to help pay for gas.  I told her not to sweat it; it just wasn’t that big of a deal. Dropping her off at home added maybe five minutes on to my 35-40 minute commute. It may have been a big deal to her as the recipient, but to me, it was a simple, no-brainer.

There are big favors and there are small favors. Giving someone a kidney is a big favor. Giving someone in your own neighborhood a ride home is barely worth mentioning.

Besides, as I told her, I was making deposits in the “favor bank.” I’m sure there will come a time when I will need a ride to or from work, or need some other small assistance. I’ll feel better asking her if  I already have some favors “deposited” in her “favor bank.”

I first heard the term “favor bank” from a friend and fellow news director when I worked in TV news. Our sister station, several hours away, needed a second satellite truck to cover a state election. Since we didn’t have an election that day, I gladly sent our truck and operator to work for them for the day. When I called the next day to see how everything had gone, my friend reported that his election coverage was a tremendous success, partly because of our help.

“Son, you just made a major deposit in the favor bank,” he said. “You just let me know when you want to make a withdrawal.”

The concept works well in business situations. From what we see on TV and in the movies, mobsters have the process of owing and paying off favors down to an exact science.

I have tried to convey this concept to students when I’ve talked with college groups about career issues. They hear a lot about networking to get job opportunities, but they often don’t realize that the networking can go both ways. If they can help a classmate/job seeker find a job-lead, they may make a favor deposit and a friend who might return the favor when they are in need. However, there is also a note of warning; they shouldn’t expect a one-for-one return. It never works that way. That’s all the more reason to keep a strong positive balance.

While a positive balance in the favor bank is convenient when you need a ride home or help moving a refrigerator, it’s not the best reason for helping people. I do believe a kindness extended to another benefits the giver more than the recipient. I just ran across a quote from the late UCLA basketball coach-philosopher, John Wooden.

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

Well said.