WFLD appoints Tom Doerr as new News Director

[CircleSeven 1955]

TVNewsCheck stated within the hour that WFLD has appointed KRIV's news director Tom Doerr will become the new VP and News Director. The article states that he will be "responsible for overseeing all editorial, business and administrative functions for WFLD".

 

Hmm I guess the editorial part comes after new main VP Dennis Welsh eliminated separated Facebook pages last week including Bob Sirott's One More Thing page, and redirected all into the MyFoxChicago main Facebook page.

[Jase 1047]

TVNewsCheck stated within the hour that WFLD has appointed KRIV's news director Tom Doerr will become the new VP and News Director. The article states that he will be "responsible for overseeing all editorial, business and administrative functions for WFLD".

 

Hmm I guess the editorial part comes after new main VP Dennis Welsh eliminated separated Facebook pages last week including Bob Sirott's One More Thing page, and redirected all into the MyFoxChicago main Facebook page.

He will have the same responsibilities as his predecessors. Hopefully, he will be better at executing them.

[AnonymousNewsie 0]

I hope Chicago has some strong leaders in the other news management positions (EPs, aND, Managing Editor, whatever), because they're going to need to pick up the slack. I've never seen a more disengaged news director than Mr. Doerr. Aside from sitting in on the morning & afternoon meetings and 5pm post-mortem, he's virtually invisible in the newsroom.

 

And get ready for a flood of enterprise (i.e. social media-oriented "talker") stories, because that's what's coming in to replace a lot of spot/breaking news coverage - He *hates* going-live for the sake of live reports. When told well with a good subject at it's center, the "talker" stories work...but to often they end up being fluff feature pieces instead of hard news.

[MorningNews 1448]

I hope Chicago has some strong leaders in the other news management positions (EPs, aND, Managing Editor, whatever), because they're going to need to pick up the slack. I've never seen a more disengaged news director than Mr. Doerr. Aside from sitting in on the morning & afternoon meetings and 5pm post-mortem, he's virtually invisible in the newsroom.

 

And get ready for a flood of enterprise (i.e. social media-oriented "talker") stories, because that's what's coming in to replace a lot of spot/breaking news coverage - He *hates* going-live for the sake of live reports. When told well with a good subject at it's center, the "talker" stories work...but to often they end up being fluff feature pieces instead of hard news.

Just take a look at Fox 26 Houston, terrible production.

[Jase 1047]

I hope Chicago has some strong leaders in the other news management positions (EPs, aND, Managing Editor, whatever), because they're going to need to pick up the slack. I've never seen a more disengaged news director than Mr. Doerr. Aside from sitting in on the morning & afternoon meetings and 5pm post-mortem, he's virtually invisible in the newsroom.

 

And get ready for a flood of enterprise (i.e. social media-oriented "talker") stories, because that's what's coming in to replace a lot of spot/breaking news coverage - He *hates* going-live for the sake of live reports. When told well with a good subject at it's center, the "talker" stories work...but to often they end up being fluff feature pieces instead of hard news.

They don't have any strong newsroom leaders which is part of the problem there. If this guy is as disengage as you say, things are just going to get worse. They already have a 'Talker' segment within the newscast and adding more of that will only be detrimental imo. Having the few reporters they have focus on enterprise stories could work if done well, but I don't think that's possible.