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21. Decline the reporting

News lives and dies more or less rapidly according to the media broadcasting it. The newsroom might choose to decline the same information by updating it through various bulletins and ensuring it’s follow-up over various broadcasting areas, from the most local to the international. Packages also travel outside of broadcasting time thanks to new platforms : websites, mobile phones. They lengthen their lifespan and broaden their audience. 

Re-use the interviews :

Once broadcast, packages don’t die. They have journalistic potential you can use :

  • The information collected in an interview, like the promises a politicians make can be used to ensure a follow up by treating the same stories a few days, months or even years later. This is like using a “quote” in print.
  • An interview’s doesn’t stand in the 20 seconds you’ve picked for your package. You can put longer segments of the same interview online on you station’s website.

Bulletins declinations.

A package can be completed as the bulletins go. The event might have expected developments but it might also have unexpected ones. A stand might be in contradiction with stories previously treated. Each time the package is declined, the journalist must do a summary of the anterior versions.

Broadcasting areas declinations.

In a TV network, the news is declined between local, regional, national and international bulletins. Taking into account your audience, you need to add information or delete useless tidbits. Such a declination implies rewriting your voiceover, edit the package again or multiply on set explanations to put the package into context.

360° information and the global media.

These days a TV network owns various broadcasting platforms: constantly updated website, live newscasts, breaking news, mobile phones alerts… You need to manage broadcasting of a same event on various platforms : breaking news can be relayed on the network’s website before being put in the newscast… You need to think up bridges for the information to gain depth thanks to these multiple broadcasts.

A newcomer in the newsroom : the media manager.

Nowadays sending the packages or the rushes is a task that belongs to journalists in charge of producing the newscast. Thanks to digitalization and online hosting, it’s a media manager who’s in charge of such transmissions. This manager drives the incoming and outgoing streams on the server. He manages and directs the packages towards the newscast they’re meant to nourish. The media manager therefore decides how the same information is declined in various bulletins. To do his job properly as a media manager (or a switchman !), he must ask himself two questions :

  • Will the package be broadcast in bulletin continuity ? Does the local treatment fit with the audience’s interests ? How can it be improved ?
  • If the package is declined in other bulletins, will it still be understandable ? Which additional info should come with it for it to be broadcast outside of the initial context ?