CNN's Candy Crowley, speaking to an audience of Florida college students on Monday, said that TV news is sacrificing substance for speed. From The St Augustine Record via Shoptalk (a daily TV news industry email):
"There are so many avenues where we put our journalism radio, TV, podcasts and blogs (that) what suffers is reporting," Crowley said to an overflow audience of Flagler students celebrating Communications Week 2008. "You almost don't have time to figure (a story) out before you're on the air with it. What we're actually missing is substance or context."I could not agree more. A typical "Situation Online" segment on "The Situation Room" was :45. I had to water a story down to the bare basics in order to get it on in the time allotted. Sometimes :45 was the high end of the spectrum. It was not unusual for a producer to get in my ear right before I hit air and say, "Can you do it in :30?" We actually got down to :15 more than a handful of times.
At that point, it becomes a good old-fashioned showdown. Do it in what we've got or don't do it at all. And if you opt for integrity and scrap the story altogether, you catch grief from the noodle-in-charge who swears you should never surrender airtime. It's a lose-lose. For me and for you.
Main & gay blog