Subscribers
Search
Story Database

Campus Television
Links to prime
programs

News Executive Changes
Rick Gevers

TV Awards:
Winners, Rules, and Deadlines

Subscribe to
The Rundown
Successful television today

Collective Talent
TV Jobs database

Web Video Journalist Hired
A photographer has become talent and is producing stories for the Web site of WPRI-TV, Providence. He shoots, writes, and narrates the pieces. News Director Joe Abouzeid and his team explain how it works.

When Help Doesn't Arrive In Time  
Have a serious heart attack on the streets of Cleveland and the chances of being successfully recuscitate are slim.  WJW-TV's Tom Merriman broke this.   Meanwhile, they don't have enough ambulances in Cincinnati.  WCPO-TV's Hagit Limor reported that story.

Financial Fitness Boot Camp   
A major project combining financial information and advice aired on WCNC-TV, Charlotte.   News Director Mary Alvarez and reporter Anna Crowley explained how it was executed.

Rare Interviews, SWAT Team Tapes Give Depth to School Shooting Anniversary Special
A deranged, armed drifter entered a Colorado high school. He took seven students hostage. A special on the hostage drama was produced by KMGH-TV, Denver.
It featured interviews with people who had never talked about it publicly.
"If we were going to do something, we wanted to do something significant and impactful, and that meant we needed to get a lot of players involved," said News Director Byron Grandy.

Columbine: Viewer Sensitivities Were Key
The live images were monitored carefully when two young men killed 12 other students, a teacher and themselves at Columbine.
Patti Dennis, KUSA-TV's News Director, told us, "We had pictures coming in from hospitals that I told them absolutely, positively, I did not want to see on our air. I forbid it!"

Murders At School:
San Diego Shootings
A teenager who perceived himself as picked on killed two students and wounded a dozen more.
Richard Longoria, KUSI-TV's News Director, told us, "We pulled back, not showing the faces of the (wounded) kids. You must think about how much you are willing to show."

Hostage Crises: Do You Let Gunmen Control Your Air?
When an upset, armed individual is threatening to kill someone, news managers face many sensitive decisions. Inmates take over a prison. A madman with a gun invades a bar that's popular with students.
Here's how broadcast executives have dealt with these emergencies.

Stay On Top Of
Security Threats

Chemical plants: Easy targets, poorly guarded
Chemical plants could become weapons of mass destruction. Major weaknesses in the security were exposed by WLS-TV, Chicago.
Investigative reporter Chuck Goudie made an analogy everyone could grasp: "Just as al Qaeda hijackers transformed jetliners into flying bombs on 9-11, federal authorities are alarmed at how easily a terrorist could transform your neighborhood chemical plant into a weapon of mass destruction."  archives/0249.htm

Security hazard: Unguarded small airports
Small airfields have a lack of safeguards. Open gates. No guards. No fences. Airplanes --- including substantial charter craft --- within easy reach. It could be an opportunity for a terrorist disaster. This was investigated by Jim Hoffer at WABC-TV, New York. 
archives/0408.htm

Stolen from the military: bomb ingredients, weapons
The American military is unable to stop the continuing theft of its C-4 explosives, weapons and more. This was explained by WRAL-TV, Raleigh.  archives/9637.htm

Potential terrorists are crossing the border with Mexico
People from countries on the Terror Watch List are entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico, and the government appears to be doing little about it. Waves of people were shown by KVOA-TV, Tucson. archives/0436.htm

Protect Our Children
At School

Weapons Of Worry: Missed By Security
Despite the ongoing effort to improve security in the schools and to prevent terrorist attacks in the public arena, there are weapons that seem to be beyond the current controls. In Miami, WFOR-TV revealed there are many weapons that can be slipped past security.  archives/0427.htm

TV News Investigations:
School Systems Failing and Fraudulent
Help your viewers' children get a better education.
The parents and the taxpayers are paying the bills. Some schools are cheating their students. Education stalls when administrators conceal a dropout problem or take home computers provided for the classrooms. Safety issues range from unqualified, crazed bus drivers to in-school violence.

School security: Gaps are common
Children and their classrooms can be targets for anyone from an estranged parent to a sexual predator to even a person with some sort of terrorist agenda. A document purportedly written by Osama bin Laden encouraged his supporters to go after all Americans, especially women and children. In Detroit, WDIV-TV indicated areas for improvements.  archives/0309.htm

Emergency Preparedness: Make Sure Systems Don't Fail
Here is how  broadcasters prepared for the big earthquake in San Francisco, and what they learned when the building shook and the power went off.  archives/9844.htm

Seattle Earthquake:
TV Newsrooms Were Ready
A mid-morning earthquake surprised the Seattle area.  The shaking was captured on videotape several places as photographers or fixed cameras were rolling when it began.   Station executives had planned for such an emergency, and the planning worked well.   archives/0110.htm

Room 104:
The Overcrowding Crisis
By focusing on students and teachers, an initially boring subject was brought to life. Viewers could see how children are shortchanged when the instructor is simply lucky to keep control, never mind teaching and helping individuals having problems. This was a duPont winner for WABC-TV, New York.

 Teacher Poll Reveals An Inside View of Classrooms
A survey allowed teachers to talk anonymously about how they really felt about what was going on in their schools. Response was excellent from both the teachers and the viewers when this project was executed by WESH-TV, Orlando.

 Students Cheated By School Officials
Schools in Detroit were funded, but failing.  WXYZ-TV's investigative reporter exposed an enormous waste of taxpayers' money and "loss" of equipment. The youngsters were being shortchanged by some of the people hired to help them.

 Officials concealed the dropout rate
In Houston, KHOU-TV staffers found a troubled high school with "no" dropouts.  It was a fraud, and concealed the failures of the officials.

Juvenile sexual offenders attending schools
Not only are juvenile sexual offenders attending schools, often the school officials don't know it.   The offender changes schools, but his record may not follow him. In St. Louis, KSDK-TV investigated.  

 Schoolhouse Outrage: Filthy Bathrooms
Schools in Southern California were checked to see how sanitary --- or unsanitary --- the bathrooms were.  KCBS-TV   investigators  spent three months and visited more than 50 buildings, some of them more than once.  Many bathrooms were locked or unavailable to students.   Many were missing essential supplies.

Roughed Up At Recess: Violence On The Playground
Teachers stood by doing nothing while bullies beat up other children on the school playgrounds.  News team members at WITI-TV, Milwaukee were surprised that it was so blatant and out of control. They followed up with a project that offered solutions for parents and educators.

Broken School Buses
Kept Rolling

Safety violations in the Indianapolis school bus fleet were so severe that the state police began an immediate investigation after they were contacted by WTHR-TV. The officers pulled many of buses out of service right away when they confirmed the station's findings.

The story began with a tip about a situation that turned out to be far worse than anyone imagined.
"It was very alarming. Almost everyone who saw the video said, 'I would not want my children on that bus.' 'I wouldn't drive my own car that way,'" says News Director Carolyn Williams.

Sixty percent of the 65 buses the station investigators checked during one weekend had serious safety issues, including problems involving brakes, tires, exhaust pipes and leaking fluids.

Investigative reporter Bob Segall and photojournalist Bill Ditton had been working on a story for May on school bus safety, when they got the tip about the buses on this lot.
They went out that weekend to check it out, and sure enough, it was true.
"We found that the largest bus contractor serving Indianapolis public schools had buses that were in absolutely horrible condition," says Segall.
They showed their tape to state police the next morning, and began airing stories right away, which happened to be during the last week of the February book.

Please continue in our archives. Thank you.

Investigative Units Garner
Top Peabody Honors

Prestigious Peabody Awards went to stations where managers committed to expanded projects and investigative reporters persisted in the face of official opposition --- until they got their stories.
Here are the details of two of the winning investigations.

Two reporters, four stories, one big award

The judges awarded a Peabody to the investigative unit of WFAA-TV, Dallas, for the overall quality of its work.
The station won for four separate stories submitted by investigative reporters Brett Shipp and Byron Harris.

The Peabodys do not recognize categories, nor are there a set number of awards given each year.
Although the WFAA entries were submitted separately, Executive News Director Michael Valentine says it was the caliber of the work by the unit as a whole that made it a winner.
"It is probably hard to differentiate which story had a greater impact or which was a better story. In their best judgment, all four reports were of Peabody quality, which is great," he says.

executives have maintained a commitment to in-depth investigative reporting, allowing the unit to work stories until they are ready to bring to air.

Please continue here for more from Michael Valentine and Bob Longo, News Director of WTAE-TV, Pittsburgh.

Lead Discovered In
Dental Devices Made In China

Lead in your mouth
WBNS-TV, Columbus

Some dental crowns ordered by dentists in the U.S., for use by their U.S. patients, are actually made in China --- and some of these crowns contain lead!

When the investigative team at WBNS-TV, Columbus, tested crowns purchased from four Chinese companies, one of the crowns had lead in it.

This practice of outsourcing production to foreign countries is often hidden from the patients.

This is a potential health hazard that has gone largely unnoticed until now.

An estimated seven million foreign-made crowns are imported each year. This represents about one-fifth of the crowns implanted in the mouths of Americans.

This largely unregulated industry was probed by reporter Lindsey Seavert and investigative producer Joel Chow.

Subscribers: To get the full story please go to our archives.  Thank you.

On-Board Video Reveals
Shocking Behavior By Bus Drivers

KGO-TV, San Francisco, has won its ongoing legal battle with the municipal bus system and the drivers union over passenger complaints about bus drivers.
Just-released video from on-board cameras is being aired this month during a series of reports on the system's worst bus drivers.

The Muni Vault:
Rude, dangerous behavior on tape

San Francisco viewers are getting a rare behind-the-scenes look at the city's 25 worst bus drivers as they injure, insult and threaten passengers who are unlucky enough to be on their routes.
It was a long haul for KGO to get the videos, but an important fight on behalf of the residents of the Bay Area who depend on mass transit. "We had to sue to get the videos, and we are glad we prevailed," says News Director Kevin Keeshan.

The transit system and the union had tried to keep the complaint reports and videos off limits to the station, and hence the riding public.
"It's great to finally get what we were going after, and now we have opened the door for every other member of the public, or another journalist, to pull the complaint records of Muni drivers, and the attached video evidence that might corroborate the complaint," he says.

The station spent thousands of dollars on their court battle, much of which will be recouped since they won the case.
Keeshan believes it was well worth it.
"From the phone calls and emails I have been getting, it's clear the public really appreciates us being willing to fight for access to these records. It is the viewers' right to see these records. It is their bus system," he stresses.
"It all boils down to: What's our role? What is our job? Why are we here? Part of the reason is to be a watchdog on local government and to hold them accountable," he says.

Investigative reporter Dan Noyes and producer Steve Fyffe have worked diligently to break this, and to obtain the dramatic video evidence that shows how bad some drivers are.
Viewers had complained to the I-Team about drivers who were abusive, who were always late, and who had done things like park a bus full of passengers while a girlfriend went to a McDonald's.
It's not just a question of rudeness --- which there was plenty of. Some of the drivers appear to be a real danger to passengers.

Sweeps began with two reports of outrageous behavior by the same driver.
He is the second worst driver, with 95 complaints filed against him in three years, 14 of which were from disabled passengers.
"He's only the second worst. Imagine what number one is going to look like," says Keeshan.

The first story showed the driver refusing to stop as children fell out of the back door of his bus.
In the second report, he wouldn't allow access to a woman in a wheelchair. "He drove off without taking her, when he was fully capable of taking her on the bus," says Keeshan.
"The story began over a year ago with a tip from inside Muni. The source said they keep getting complaints about the same drivers, who are not treating the disabled passengers well," says Noyes.
While Muni executives try to do the right thing in some cases, the drivers' union is so powerful that discipline is usually fairly minor.
Noyes wanted to take a close look at the records of the 25 worst drivers and examine the discipline process.

For more, please continue in our archives.  Thank you.

New book
Reinventing Local Media:
Ideas For Thriving In A Postmodern World

Here are real solutions to the real problems facing contemporary media companies, many lie outside the comfort zone of media boardrooms. 
This 500-page book brings together the writings and analysis of Terry Heaton.  He is currently a Senior Vice President of Audience Research and Development. After 28 years in local television news, Heaton has been reporting on new media and the impact on television news for several years.

Book is a valuable tool for staff development

Don't Get Distracted:
Stay Focused on Your Core Product

An updated edition of a valuable newsroom resource has just been published.
Delivering viewer- centered information is the focus of The Producing Strategy, Version 2.0, by veteran consultant Larry Rickel and longtime successful anchor Ed Sardella.

Their premise: everyone in the newsroom is a producer. We must all be involved in strong storytelling and making the newscast a special experience for the viewer.

Don't abandon your power base while upgrading your new media, says Rickel.

As broadcasters move onto new platforms, it is more important than ever to stay focused on the role the TV newscast plays in your four-screen strategy.
Please continue here, Rickel and Sardella explain their theories, and the value of their book.

Learn Successful Television Reporting
A top reporter explains how to produce memorable stories.   KGO-TV's Wayne Freedman has won 44 Emmys.
We feel that this book is a must buy for reporters or students who are serious about their careers.

Latest edition of Investigative Reporters Handbook is available
The newest version of  this indispensable reference includes examples investigative reporting and  easy to find Internet address lists to help in computer-assisted investigations.

Online talent service opens to non-represented talent

Collective Talent, the online talent resource by Michaels Media, has opened its service to non-represented talent.

When the service was first unveiled, it was designed to be supported primarily by talent agents.
That approach made sense because the majority of talent in larger markets are represented by agents. The biggest agencies can represent several hundred people.

Copyright 2008, Standish Publishing Company.  This material is for your personal use as a subscriber, and may not be reproduced or transmitted to other parties of any kind.   

Sign Up Today!

The Rundown has reported weekly on local television news, programming, and community service projects since 1981. This material now fills a massive hard copy archive of 7,000 pages --- easily the largest record of hometown television's activities.  Key articles are available in our online archives.

Important Investigations

When A Flooding Disaster Strikes:  Who's in Charge?
In Sacramento,  KCRA-TV news documented serious weaknesses in the emergency response system in the state. Here's how they executed this major project.

Public Safety Workers Face On The Job Hazards
Many people who keep the public safe have been injured or sickened because of workplace accidents or exposure to harmful substances.

Prisoners: Escaping and Not Pursued, Inmates Housed at Secret Locations
Two investigations showed how important it is keep track of how corrections officials are --- or are not --- doing their jobs.

Intelligence Report Breaks News Every Day
WLS-TV, Chicago showcases investigative stories on a daily basis. Many news executives have been working to get their investigative units on air more frequently.

Into Child Porn? No Problem, Have A Nice Day
Most men who are arrested in Wisconsin for Internet sex crimes do not go to prison. Three years of cases were analyzed by WITI-TV, Milwaukee.

Airport Restaurants:
What's on the Plate?
For your airport meal: Spoiled food and big rats. There was a lot to reveal when restaurants were visited by investigators from WAGA-TV, Atlanta.

It's Hard To File A Complaint Against Police In South Florida
Only 3 of 38 departments had complaint forms available when undercover checks were run by investigators at WFOR-TV, Miami.

Don't Count On A Siren To Warn You Of A Tornado
Serious problems with tornado warning sirens were revealed by investigators at WTHR-TV, Indianapolis.

Teachers With Records Are In The Classroom
The backgrounds of more than 50,000 school employees were checked by news investigators at WOAI-TV, San Antonio.

Help May Not Arrive In Time: Enhanced 911 and Fire Response Lapses
Investigators at two Ohio stations looked at problems in the emergency response systems that could delay first responders from reaching the scene quickly.

Airport Security Breaches: Stolen Credentials, Marshals At Risk
ID badges and uniform items belonging to Transportation Security Administration employees have vanished. The No Fly list is flawed. Air marshals say they are placed at risk by official procedures. 

DUI Investigations Reveal A Stubborn, Dangerous Problem
Two major projects examined where the system is breaking down in Cleveland.

Investigations: Gun Rights, FEMA Checks, Dirty Rags, Good Pictures
Several locally originated investigations connected with viewers.

Toxic Trains: Dangerous Cargo Moves Everywhere
Hazardous materials are being shipped by railroad through cities. A terrorist attack on a single car carrying chlorine could kill as many as 100,000 people.

Air Marshals Say System Must Be Fixed
Policies and procedures put the marshals and the flying public at risk.

Safety Concern For Travellers: Beware Of Airport Floors
There is potentially harmful bacteria on the floors where travellers remove their shoes as they go through airport security. Investigators at KGTV-TV, San Diego, took samples, sent them to a lab, and found an unhealthy situation.

Target Chicago: How Drugs Drive Destruction
A major project at WMAQ-TV included a DEA partnership, young addicts on camera, and a tie-in to a museum exhibit.

Interactive Political Web Site Launched By ABC O&Os
KGO-TV created a site that included five-minute candidate video statements, campaign finances, and answers to voter questions.

High School Project Attracts Teens and Their Parents
Armed with video cameras and permission to tell it all, ten seniors explain what really goes on in a yearlong project for WCAU-TV, Philadelphia.

Exposing Outrageous Perks: Workers Take Cuts, Execs Fly High
Auto industry chiefs are travelling in company jets while jobs are slashed and pay and benefits are reduced. WXYZ-TV, Detroit.

Free 45-page Report

Hostage Crises:
Do You Let Gunmen Control Your Air?

When an upset, armed individual is threatening to kill someone, the police commanders supervising the emergency response and the news executives in charge of covering the confrontation have many sensitive decisions.  
Here's how broadcast executives have dealt with these dangerous emergencies.