So I’m about to give away some dirty little secrets and (if you listen carefully) some pretty solid tips on how to get a bit of broadcast news coverage. All of the following is pretty much verbatim in answer to a request from a member of my husband’s church. She had a friend who was opening a fitness center. From any angle (except a few of mine) a non-news story. One word. Boring. But here’s what I suggested.

If I knew how to make the media do anything, I would. But there are ways to get to the top of the pile for consideration. Realize that every day every media outlet has hundreds if not thousands of requests to cover events. The trick is to make it topical – current and of interest to a wider audience. Make the media WANT to come.

My first thought was…oh no (remember, I’m a slug) not another fitness center. THEN I saw it was located right next to Donut King and got a chuckle out of that. Also…seeing that one of the classes has already been featured on ABC (nationally or locally????) is a plus. There is interest in anything new and unusual.

So…you need to plan your strategy, remembering even then that it is hit or miss. And even if you do get a call saying they may come to do the story…a breaking news story will cancel any plans.

Do NOT push this as a grand opening. The interest is more in what is new and different. I don’t know the hours for your grand opening or if they would allow media in before (a day or two)…but you might consider aiming at the morning shows. There isn’t a lot of news happening at 5am most days, so if you offer a live crew an opportunity to send the reporter in to sweat it out and learn how to use the new gear or learn a new movement (reporter participation is good), then you may get a crew down. If you contact the Record you should have the same pitch…although they are more likely to cover a class after the fact than a grand opening. The business of news media is to provide information and to some extent entertainment…which is why I recommend selling the story in some way other than “a store is opening up.”

Send your first release out about two weeks before the event (email or snail mail). Follow up a few days later with a short phone call – “Hi, just checking to see if you got the information on the fitness center and their new (equipment) and (whatever the class is). If you’re interested in doing an early live shot, we’d be glad to have your crew test out the (class and/or equpment). Keep it short…and the best times to call are 5:30am-8:30am, then 9:30 to 11am, then 1pm to 4pm. Why? If you call during or near the time a show begins (with the exception of daybreak news) they won’t really be listening to you. If they are abrupt it may mean they are dealing with a lot of pressure due to breaking news or changes in the schedule. Yeah…lotsa stress in a broadcast newsroom.

Whatever you send out – KEEP IT SIMPLE. The “5 Ws.” Who, What, When, Where, Why. Plus a SHORT graph with your pitch.

All it took was a bit of planning…and the daybreak “happy talk” news show in the area bit – hook and line – and her friend’s store was a star for a brief moment in the market.

Lesson to remember: news departments don’t have to come to your event. Their job is to provide a service to a wider community…in the case of TV stations is is generally regional. Their job is to provide news and information that are meaningful to the lives of their audience. Your little store opening or dancing daughter only has meaning to a small group of people. In order to get your story to the top of the food chain you have to provide an angle that will make it more palatable to the assignment editor and of interest to a larger audience. Good luck with that.

Always wondered where the scuffle between brothers began.

(Thanks Amanda Emily.)

Hopping around to various newsie sites, I see a lot of moaning, groaning, and bitching about the state of broadcast journalism today. How the ethics are shot…the stories are more entertainment than news…how Barbie and Ken are running rampant in the studio. Where to lay the blame? Well favorites are consultants. Management. News directors. The new crop of (you name it: reporters, producers, crew).

But we’re leaving out the most critical factor. The elephant in the newsroom discussion: the audience.

THAT my friends is the monster that is forcing change as much as anything. And it IS a MONSTER. It wants entertainment…excitement…it is a voyeur demanding the reality it can never live…but wants to emulate.

OUR audience.

Oh, where to begin? How did this all start? Examine it enough and you end up staring at the lint in your belly button (or the toe-jelly…um, never mind…).

Back in the 90s I worked for a station whose demographic (we used to jokingly say) was “Trailer Trash Barbie.” The only person at home during our noon and early news shows. Um…and the only one who wasn’t watching some of the other stations with well let’s say a little more of what we like to think of as “news”. Little TTB has been very busy pro-creating with lots of “Gangsta Kens” and other unnamed low-lifes, raising up an entire new crop of young ‘uns.

These mini(couch)taters are generally overfed, undereducated (trust me – the students who walked into my classes firmly stating, “I don’t read.”), with little or no motivation to become…anything. They just want their “stuff” and an Idol to clone themselves after.

Our new audience.

They spend more time in front of a screen than any other generation. The virtual world is more real than the couch they kick back in. The stars they watch wallow, not twinkle. They don’t watch news…well, because it’s boring…doesn’t relate to who they are.

The result is broadcast news has changed to meet the demands of a generation who can choose (be it broadcast or streamed on youtube) exactly what they want to see and hear…and it does not seem to fit the traditional definition of news: information that informs and educates people about their community and world.

sigh…end of rant.

Part of patterning is doing stuff in a certain way – a set way. Do it often enough and your body can go through the motions without the brain having to actively participate. Like driving a car – your foot finds the brake without you having to think it through. And eating…the fork finds its way to the mouth without the brain actively telling the hand to grasp the fork, the arm to extend to the plate, etc.

Right now my brain is attempting to break out of more than ten years of patterning created by using Final Cut Pro and Express. And those have been a good ten years…when the brain is freed from the nitty gritty of how to do tasks, it can focus on the story and thinking ahead to the next one or twenty edits.

Enter Adobe Production Pro with Premeire Pro. Just close enough in many ways so that I was able to do basic drag and drop edting on day one. But now I’m trying to play catch-up and do some REAL editing. Motion, fades, superfine detailed stuff. And while my body is aching to follow the old patterns, I’m attempting to teach it some new patterns. For starters, I’ve had to go from touchpad to mouse…needed some way to break loose because the touchpad on the new laptop is smaller and off center and I KEPT MISSING IT WHEN I TRIED TO USE IT. Wow…something as basic as that. My old patterns were aiming at a MacBook touchpad that wasn’t there.

I guess it’s like a phantom limb…when you lose an arm or leg, but still (in your mind) try to use it. Oh well…could be worse. I could be trying to walk through walls…

This next week is dedicated to contacting old co-workers and friends to get their information, gear list, and rates. The purpose is threefold:

1. Want to be able to hand off jobs I cannot take due to scheduling or other constraints.
2. Want subcontractors for any jobs I get that require more than me and my gear.
3. Want folks who are lower and higher on the food chain than me – once again for referrals. Most of the folks I plan to work with are right in my range with rates and gear…a few have more/better gear and a few have less/more prosumer gear. If I get a client I feel I cannot serve due to their needs, I still want to make them happy by referring them to someone who can service their budget and needs.

So far…so good. Seems there is an overabundance of cameramen/editors but (wow) a shortage of talent/narrators. I’ve actually been eyeballing the husband (with his amazing shock of white hair) as talent. ??? Was that the sound of the door slamming and rapid retreat of footsteps???

First stop was the county Registrar’s Office to file for a fictitious business name. Of course I could have used my own moniker at no cost, but hey – I’ve kind of grown to love the “thinknews” label. Twenty-six bucks. Step one of THAT process.

Then off to the Community Development department for the actual license. Had the paperwork all filled out and slapped it down on the counter and pulled out the checkbook. And casually mentioned I might in the future be hiring subcontractors for jobs if I got lucky. BIG mistake. Counter Lady very pointedly said, “Oh you can’t HAVE employees at a home business site.” “But they’re SUBCONTRACTORS” I pointed out to her. Well, you can see where this is heading. She stuck to her guns, so I asked – what’s the difference between a home business and real business license?

Home business. First off – conducted out of your HOME. Both you and the home owner (fortunately one and the same in my case) must sign off on the license. NO clients or employees allowed on site. Well – no employees AT ALL. Unless they are members of the family.

Business license. May have employees and MUST be located in a commercially zoned property. Loads more paperwork. All this for an additional seventy buckeroos. I have to PAY for an office that neither employees or clients will ever see? Hmmmmm…

I hesitated a moment and told her to continue with the home license. Honestly – it will be just me, my gear, and a lot of email and phone connections to clients I may never see. And the little matter of “employees”? Let’s just say that I spoke with a local video production business owner (retired) who said Counter Lady had it all wrong – subcontractors are NOT employees legally. Thank you. Doled out a check for $430 with a promise I’d have the paperwork in a few weeks and be legal.

Step two of Fictitious Name: visit my local newspaper office and pay over $85 to have the notice formally published.

Newspaper friends … understand that I love you dearly, but this is an archaic system. Wouldn’t a notice on a county website more than meet the need and probably for less than half the cost? So WHO reads these notices? (Guess I’m gonna be doing it for the next four weeks.)

Final step…which I’ve been working on all week…is insurance.

Liability to cover my a** should someone decide to get injured (physically or psychically) on whatever job I’m on…or should I inflict damage on persons or property. (Note to self: buy more gaffers tape and possibly a couple of rubber throw mats to go over cable runs.) Protection basically for stuff I have a bit of control over.
Gear – some solace in the event my gear gets heisted.
Errors and ommissions – protection from what is NOT in my control. A failed SDHC card. Acts of God or stuff I can’t foresee that might totally tick off the client, who either wants a reshoot or a piece of my hide.

Checked out a couple of agencies and am going with one recommended by a number of folks over on b-roll.net. Brad at Buell Insurance was helpful and direct. Waiting for the request to pay…and I’m covered as of 1/1/12. Cost? Well, you’re gonna hafta get your own quote. It all depends on YOUR gear, location, estimated income, travel expectations…let’s just say that it was a bit more than the biz license and let it go at that.

My little end-of-year adventure is (nearly) over. The loose ends?

1. Pay insurance
2. Wait for arrival of (approved) home business license
3. Fictitious business name/the final step. Once the legal publishing requirement is met, the paper will send me some official paperwork which I must then forward to the Recorder’s office along with a(nother) check for $7.00. THEN I’m finally and totally legal.

Is it worth all of this trouble? In my case, yes. While this is a part time retirement gig, I do want to bid on local and state contracts and other opportunities I can’t even consider without flying above the legal radar. Besides, when folks ask what I do, now I can say I’m businesswoman!

Did a (fairly basic) lighting workshop yesterday for Voices of the Earth, a Bay area non-profit. They’re a bit out of the ordinary…a small group of passionate folks who have taught themselves an awful lot about video production and who want to move on to what they call “the next level.” For them, this meant learning how to use light properly, plus a bit about audio and sundry other items.

I say they are out of the ordinary because they learned and gave themselves feedback properly…before we even met up they knew to use a tripod, frame properly, and (wow!!!) get good solid audio with shotgun and clip-on mikes. Made my job awfully easy.

The end result is that their inspiration has now re-inspired me to write the occasional blog posting. So this will become an on-again/off-again thought-of-the-moment series of postings with tips. Until I’m enticed away to the next bright and shiny vision.

Today’s tip is tripods.

I noticed that both of VotE’s shooters had tripods – a good thing. What they need to do now is move up to video tripods that can handle the weight of their gear and allow them to do smooth camera movements. “V” was using a Canon Vixia and his tripod was okay for the weight of the camera…but for shooting video it was too light and shaky. “J’s” tripod was definitely way too light to hold her Panasonic three-chipper. Great little camera, but we had one near-disaster when it tipped forward due to weight.

Lesson #1 – there are two main parts to all tripods. The legs/sticks and the head. The latter would be the part you attach your camera to. Most low end tripods come with the two attached as one unit. As you move up the food chain you can purchase the legs and head separately, allowing you to choose specific qualities you want. (see this old posting for more details)

Lesson #2 – make sure your camera is rated for what you plan to load on it. And that would be more than just the camera. If you ever plan to add an on-camera light, shotgun mike or other accessories, the tripod has to bear that weight too.

Lesson #3 – there IS a difference between still and video tripods. A still tripod is mean to hold the camera steady while you take ONE shot or a series of shots. It is a platform to hold your gear and let you keep your hands free.
A video camera should have a fluid head…meaning you should be able to pan side to side and up and down evenly without any jerkiness. It should be heavy/solid enough so it doesn’t shake when someone walks by or if you’re out in the weather. AND if you can spring for the money, a ball head would be nice…allows you to level your camera without having to fiddle with the legs.

Thanks again VotE.

As I watch the coverage of events unfolding in the world today on our traditional American Media outlets and compare it to the raw truth of citizen journalists with their hand held cameras and their instant blogs, tweets and facebook posts I’m reminded of what it was like to leave the news bubble and experience the real world.

I spent 18 years in TV News. I was a video tape editor, a reporter, an assignment editor, a producer, and executive producer and a news director. I learned to be able to watch raw footage of car accidents, murder scenes, and even horrific plane crashes and not have nightmares. I developed a dark sense of humor to get through and detached myself enough from my own hummanity to put a microphone in the face of a grieving parent and ask them how they felt.

I learned through experiene the power of fear to build ratings and keep people tuned in. If I told you, you might die tomorrow, you might watch the rest of my newscast. I had noble intent. I set out to inform a public, expose the problems so we could create a better world. I believed in giving voice to those who had no representation and challenging authority by questioning those in power. I believed in not only showing what was wrong with the world but what was right, what was working, reporting on solutions as well as problems.

There was something very noble about this work and in order to keep doing the job as salaries fell I inspired my staff with a sense that we were using the power of media for good. But through the years things started to really change. As I moved into management I became more and more aware of the need for our newscast to turn a profit. The cost of covering a story became more and more of a factor in what we aired. We no longer sent reporters beyond a certain distance, our satelite truck sat in disrepair for months because the money to fix it would have come from laying more people off.

The conservative owners of the last station I work for let all the news directors know that they wanted the Republicans to win. Republican control of the country was essential for growing their business and as a result we were ordered to air interviews with Republican leaders and air a conservative commentary.

My boss hated the directive and allowed me to put the interviews and the commentary in our least watched programs or only air what was newsworthy during our higher rated shows.

More and more the sales department would stop by the newsroom concerned about our potential coverage of issues that would impact advertisers. It’s common knowledge in every local market newsroom that you don’t do negative stories on auto dealerships. They are the largest of local advertisers and losing their business is suicide for a local television station.

I left TV news in 2001. I can only assume that the trend toward more sales influence in news, the erosion of the hard line between the two departments has continued. From the coverage I see these days and the influence of pharmacutical companies on newscasts I can only guess that this is now happening at a network level.

There always existed something we called “Newsroom bias” that we knew had us seeing the outside world with a warped vision. The problem with Newsroom bias is that you know it is there but you can’t see it. My friends in TV news can’t see their own bias. When one network reports a bunch of aimless college kids are running around not really sure of what it is they are protesting the other reporters start to see the same thing. First they just write off the gathering all together and ignore it for weeks, then because they didn’t feel it as newsworthy to begin with they begin to deride and discount the gathering in the coverage.

Meanwhile foreign news outlets that are government controlled begin covering the protests through their own bias. Tune into Russia Today and you’ll learn about the new American Revolution and the distablization of a US Government that has lost it’s moral authority to govern by what’s been exposed in these protests. It’s a different bias and not exaclty the truth. Fox tells you the groups are anarchists and one conservative commentator says they are neo nazis pushing for totalitairanism. Again they’re missing the truth.

If you listen to the protestors themselves and start to read the reports of citizen journalists and see the often live cell phone camera coverage of what’s happening there the various bias becomes very evident.

In the middle east much of the media has been controlled by the governments and for decades this kept people from taking to the streets to demand justice. They didn’t know things could be any different. Then along came the internet and social media and a generation of young people began to wake up to the possiblity of how their life could be.

In this country the media either intentionally or through newsroom bias is under the influence of corporate money and power. With the rise of the internet and social media a generation is seeing how their lives could be much different. These people are speaking out.

I urge my friends who stayed behind working in corporate media and living in this newsroom bias bubble to take some time off. Go out into the real world. Talk to more people who are not in the business. Read some of the posts, view some of the citizen journalist coverage. No these are not the traditional sources you’ve been trained to view as reliable but if you start to investigate with that curiosity that got you into the business you may discover some truth that you’ve been missing.

I remember two years after being in TV news I went out with friends for the first time to raft down the American River. For two years the only time I had ever been to the river was to cover a drowning and watch body after body pulled from the water. I honestly thought we were crazy for going in the water. In my mind it was among the deadliest places in Sacramento. But that was because I had only been there to see it at its worst. I had never done a story on the fun of rafting down the river and the thousands of people who safely experience the river every day.

Covering news can warp your perceptions of the world. I must tell you all, that the world is a much better place than you likely suspect it to be. You’d be surprised how much safer the world feels when you stop having to know about every homocide, shooting or child molestation within 100 miles. Every day people are unbeleivable kind and loving to each other in this world. It’s not news so you’l have to get out of the business for a few minutes to experiene it.

Not all protests are angry mobs. It’s possible for some protestors to be angry at corruption and Wall Street and at the same time love Steve Jobs, use Facebook, and be proud to be an American. Watch the live citizen journalists and you’ll see more celebration, joy and happiness than raw anger. The protestors in New York and elsewhere are showing by example what sort of world they would like to create. Take the time to explore it for yourself. Don’t trust the work of now under paid over worked on deadline journalists whose paychecks come from corporate giants. They’re only seeing a portion of the story through their own bias.

October 16, 2011

So for a time…I’m stepping away and focusing on areas of interest other than this blog. There’s a book to be completed…stories to be told…and sunrises and sunsets to enjoy…

And while I seem to have stepped back from this blog, I have not stepped away from visual storytelling. It’s in my genes, just as it is in every child who wants to talk about their day or curl up in grandpa’s lap to hear about his childhood. We all want to hear and tell stories. And I want to break it down so that others can understand the steps to creating a solid story that communicates a thought…a timeline.

So see me not as gone…just hovering in the background, pondering…

(re-written 9/12/11)

TV News Storytellers on facebook has daily posts from cameramen all around the country soliciting input on how to become better or posts from experts in the field demonstrating best practices.

So hop on over and take a look…and enjoy.