Beat reporters...

[ASchinella <ASchinella@aol.com>]

Very good comments Dan. I have realized by being on both sides of the
reporting; trying to get the story and trying to be covered that the only
successful outlets who get the story well are those who make a commitment to
have a beat reporter on the job. If times are tough for a station, which on
the smaller ones it is, figure out ways of balancing the features so that
reporters still make the relationship with the newsmakers and the story gets
told to the viewers or listerners who want to watch or hear it. 

In a message dated 5/13/98 5:56:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Dib9@aol.com
writes:

<< Much of the problem with poor news coverage is management putting
"reporters"
 in positions that they should not be in.  The Portland TV stations do a
 horrible job covering state government because, for the most part, they do
not
 assign a reporter to the State House as a beat, they just send whoever is
 available to cover a story.  Any State House is a complicated place and if
you
 do not know the people and the process, you can not do a good job covering
it.
 This year WCSH had a reporter doing a live shot at 6 before the Governor's
 State of the State address and a loud bell went off.  The reporter, not
 knowing that the bell was a bell that goes off any time there is a Roll Call
 vote, said "There must be a fire drill."  She obviously had never been at the
 State House when the Legislature was in session, but there she was doing a
 live stand up covering the State House.
 
 As a political junkie and someone who has been involved in the process for
 years, I get much more upset by factual errors and simple misreporting of how
 the process works than I do about mispronunciations.  In my time in radio, I
 have certainly screwed up more than my share of pronunciations, sometimes
even
 when I know the correct pronunciation.  
 
 Dan Billings
 Bowdoinham, Maine >>

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