Having been the Vice President of Journalism at the Knight Foundation, Jim Brady knows something about “The Daily Habit Gap: Why Streamers Need Local News.” That will be the panel topic he’ll join at Cynopsis ScreenShift in New York on October 14th. In the meantime, he shared his candid perspectives about the state of TV journalism and what media companies can do to retain audience and interest in this essential service.
What do you consider to be the biggest challenge in retaining local TV news?
Clearly, the major issue is the shift away from linear to streaming and the revenue and attention fragmentation that comes with that. Like with newspapers, the large majority of TV revenue is connected to legacy systems. So a major shift is underway, and local TV has to navigate it very skillfully in order to thrive.
On the bright side, local TV does remain popular with many consumers, its visual forms remain paramount and its personality-driven style is built for this era. So there’s more than a little hope, but the same forces that came for newspapers and magazines are now at TV’s front door (if not already into the house). So this is a perilous time.
What strategies are usually most effective in communicating the value of local news?
Two things, one obvious and maybe one less so. First, just doing the work. Reliable information and strong journalism that have an impact are essential if a news organization is to have any community value.
But we also have to do a better job of bragging about the impact we’re having. Newspapers are traditionally terrible at this, and I think that hurt them with readers. Local TV news has done this right for a long time: When they break something, they brag about it to the audience. All media needs to emulate that.
We also need to be more transparent, and not just about the journalism. When a news organization needs to raise money – whether its to cover a specific topic or merely to stay alive – we need to tell the audience that. News organizations have largely failed to show the kind of transparency we expect from many of the people we cover. That has to stop.
What are your hoped-for takeaways from this panel?
A better understanding among the audience of the need to rethink how content is produced for streaming. We sometimes get too focused on the need to create content for new platforms and forget about that every platform is different and requires a different type of content. That’s how we ended up with newspaper web sites that looked like newspapers. It didn’t work for them, and it won’t work for local TV.
