Network TV Newsroom Investment

Another measure of newsgathering resources is the number of bureaus, particularly abroad, since the networks can, in effect, use their affiliates’ newsrooms as a domestic bureau when the need arises — as when Katrina struck New Orleans or when wildfires struck Texas . As noted in past years, the number of overseas bureaus at the networks has been roughly cut in half since their peak in the 1980s, about the time that network news divisions began to feel the impact of cable and began to be viewed by owners as profit centers.

According to accounting by American Journalism Review, ABC had gone from 13 foreign bureaus to 6 by the summer of 2003. NBC had done the same. CBS had gone from 10 to 6.4

In 2005, CBS reported 11 foreign bureaus, with operations in Amman, Baghdad, Beijing, Bonn, Johannesburg, London, Moscow, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv and Tokyo. ABC failed to respond to repeated requests by the Project for numbers for 2005. As of 2004, ABC was operating six bureaus — Baghdad, London, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Nairobi and Beijing .

And NBC reported that it was operating bureaus in 11 foreign cities: Amman, Baghdad, Beijing, Cairo, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Tel Aviv and Tokyo.

Network correspondents have frequently argued that the number of bureaus by itself can be an incomplete measure. Some bureaus today are staffed by producers without correspondents, which was less often the case two decades ago when networks controlled a much larger share of the TV audience.

It is not clear, however, how many of the current bureaus have correspondents and crews and how many are places that have a producer or just a part-time stringer, in some cases working from home.

This difference arguably influences coverage. Traditionalists argue that a producer in-country does not have the same leverage to get stories on the air as would a producer and correspondent together, or even the same leverage to go out and produce enterprise pieces on their own. Nor, perhaps, would the knowledge of the country, particularly top-echelon officials, be the same without a correspondent on the scene full time.

Others, however, argue that the nature of foreign coverage has changed. Globalization, cultural and economic, has moved some news organizations to the idea that most news items depend less on strong familiarity with a foreign culture and more on knowledge of the topic itself. So, for example, a news division is more likely to send a medical reporter to cover the bird flu outbreak in China or a business reporter to do a story on service outsourcing to India . Some also argue that it can add to the quality of foreign reporting to recruit strong foreign producers and off-air reporters (who speak the language and know the culture) to make certain the story is told accurately. That is not to say that traditional foreign bureaus couldn’t work, but the cost of maintaining a skilled overseas bureau is something the networks have often decided they can no longer afford. Yet the alternative approach, its proponents contend, is not without its advantages.

The question is whether the networks are adopting the approach of hiring skilled local journalists or merely local logistical fixers who know how to arrange hotels and cars when a correspondent team parachutes in.

In the inaugural 2004 edition of this report we included a full discussion of the implications of the cutbacks, and we refer anyone who wants to examine this issue in depth to that. In brief, however, some network news professionals we have consulted with argue that counting people does not tell the whole story. The networks in the 1980s, they suggest, were bloated. New technologies have also allowed more productivity. And if one were to compare a network story today to one 20 years ago, the number of elements and video sources that can be assembled into a piece is notably higher today, even with fewer correspondents.

Network veterans who tend to see the cutbacks differently argue that the scale of the cuts exceeds what might be justified by efficiency, that what has been lost is often the institutional memory and skills of veteran correspondents, and that forcing fewer people to do more stories has an unavoidable impact on the time put into stories. Reporters are forced to rely more on releases and talking points without being able to do original reporting and newsgathering. It limits the ability to go to where the news is being made and to research, verify, edit and write reports — in addition to the ability to do enterprise stories off the beaten path, to break news or blaze new trails. The networks' political teams used to consist of five or six correspondents; more recently the number has been two or three.

The embrace of new media and the cross-media portfolios of many networks’ parent companies are forcing reporters to operate in an environment that, because they are now producing for multiple platforms, virtually exceeds the 24-hour news cycle.

There is merit, we think, to both arguments. A viewer can be dazzled by the quality of a nightly newscast, on a heavy news day in particular. It is on the days when the obvious news is not so heavy, and in the ability of the newscasts to sustain coverage over an extended period of time on a major story without fatigue, that network insiders say and our own viewing affirms that the differences become clear.

Andrew Tyndall, a collaborator on this report, says he finds that the cutbacks do not affect the major stories but the middle-tier ones. Iraq and campaign 2004 were both covered as heavily as they would have been 20 years ago. What gets cut is the middle-rank story, which requires assignment expense to dispatch a correspondent. That is more likely to become a read-only or voiceover video nowadays.