Newspaper coverage of television

[sctvhound 27]

In my city, Charleston, SC, the newspapers have cut down on their amount of coverage of the local TV beat. As recently as three or four years ago, there was at least one article a week, on Saturday or Sunday, talking about what happened with the local news scene (i.e. new hirings), and in the mid-90s, there was a TV article almost every day (by Frank Wooten, now associate editor of the paper)

 

Now, they barely ever mention local TV, except when there is a major story (like the time when Nina Sossamon, former news anchor at WCIV, ran over her co-anchor's 11 month old son). New hirings are buried on page 15 of the business section, among every other hire in town at every office.

 

How is it like in other cities?

[Ntropolis 596]

Virginian-Pilot columnist Larry Bonko wrote a TV column in the paper for years, but he retired last year. There are actually some of his archived columns online dating back to 1990 (example). The Pilot hasn't bothered to bring it back. Now, they'll cover an event in local TV if it's big enough (popular anchor leaves, new main talent arrives, etc... they covered Tom Schaad's arrival) but not like Bonko did.

[WXmanTim 88]

Cutting loose television beat writers, scaling back their colums, reassigning them or not filling the position as it comes open, has more or less been the industry trend for the last several years.

 

The latest casualty, as far as I can recall, was David Bianculli at the NY Daily News, who was let go in the latter half of last year. Some of larger metro papers still have a tv writer (I'm thinking the Robert Feder at the Chicago Sun-Times, Gail Shister at The Philadelphia Inquirer and Lisa de Moraes and Tom Shales at The Washington Post as a few examples) but once they retire I don't expect the positions to be filled.

 

I think its more a casualty, especially in smaller markets, of less loyalty by local newsgathering staff who see smaller markets as a stepping stone to bigger ones. Once, it would be big news if the 6:00pm anchor left for another market or the network or whatever...but now, when the anchor has only been there one contract-period (2-3 years) its not that big of a deal. So why spend time covering it?

[lazynetjunkie 34]

Some of larger metro papers still have a tv writer (I'm thinking the Robert Feder at the Chicago Sun-Times, Gail Shister at The Philadelphia Inquirer and Lisa de Moraes and Tom Shales at The Washington Post as a few examples) but once they retire I don't expect the positions to be filled.

 

 

That's if the Chicago Sun-Times is still around by the time Robert Feder retires.. The Sun-Times is in so much financial trouble right now and is laying off columnists and cutting everything left and right. Feder would probably be one of the last columnists that they would lay off but if it did come to that point, I really don't see any other paper in town picking him up.

[first on fox 18]

Gail Shister doesn't cover TV anymore at Philly Inquirer. But, Rob Owen does a decent, albeit bitchy, job here in Pittsburgh (Post-Gazette).

[WXmanTim 88]

Gail Shister doesn't cover TV anymore at Philly Inquirer. But' date=' Rob Owen does a decent, albeit bitchy, job here in Pittsburgh (Post-Gazette).[/quote']

 

Thanks, didn't know that.

 

I knew that the company that owns the Sun-Times has been hit with a number of scandals the last couple years of (okay, well the person who controls the paper's hold company, Conrad Black) but hadn't heard that the Sun-Times was in such dire straits.

 

And yeah, I don't see the Tribune picking Feder up being that they moved Phil Rosenthal from a daily television column to a thrice-weekly business-page media column a few years back.

 

The St. Pete Times is a bit of an anomoly anyway, being that it is owned by the main mainstream media training/ethics watchdog outfit, the Poynter Institute, so it makes a bit more sense that they would keep a full-time television writer on board.