2005 Annual Report - Local TV Content Analysis

Two questions stand out in considering the content of local news heading into 2005:

If, as some hope, local newsrooms are poised to get at least some additional resources, what does the content of local news tell us about how those resources might be put to use?

And how did local TV news do in covering the elections?

The Project did not conduct new content analysis of its own for local television this year, but there are three sources we can draw on for insight.

One is our sister group, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, which has had a training program inside local newsrooms since 2002. It includes surveys and small-group sessions with hundreds of local news professionals that offer clues into the thinking and concerns inside newsrooms. Second, Ken Goldstein at the University of Wisconsin, in consort with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, conducted a major study of local TV coverage of political campaigns in 2004. And we can compare the findings of both those efforts with the five-year database on local TV news content compiled by the Project between 1998 and 2002.¹

The Culture of Local TV News Content

Over the last decade, local TV newsrooms have had to contend with growing ownership consolidation and an expanding workload, often without expanding resources.² The role of the local TV news reporter declined.³ The percentage of stories without reporters increased, as did the use of so-called feed material. There was even greater reliance on "daybook" stories (that is, stories about pre-scheduled events such as hearings, trials, and press conferences, usually kept in a file known as the daybook).⁴ Against this background, many newsrooms gradually converged on a style that might be called the "hook and hold" approach.

The approach, which is reinforced by the tendency of local TV news personnel to shuffle from market to market for career reasons, has led to a style of news that is predictable from one market to the next and even from one station to the next, and may defy even the desire of station managers and news executives to change. It has also caused some viewers to give up on local TV news altogether.⁵

One interesting sign is that newsroom consultants, who have frequently been blamed for homogenizing local TV news, are among those advancing the idea that the industry now needs to be willing to change its approach. "There has to be a total rethinking of what news departments are doing," Dick Haynes, vice president of research at the consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates, suggested in a 2004 interview.⁶