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I'm Ron Burgundy, go f--- yourself Bismarck

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Bubbler, Dec 2, 2013.

  1. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Really? "Fairly often" you cover a meeting with 7 people in attendance and the resulting story gets 10,000 hits?

    Oz has a newspaper?
     
  2. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    This thread escalated quickly.
     
  3. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    The funny thing is - if this happened in a big market no doubt the weeknight anchor would bigfoot the thing and make sure the weekend anchor gets a night off.
     
  4. Mauve_Avenger

    Mauve_Avenger Member

    That's what I said! :)
     
  5. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    No shots to the face. No pulling of the hair.

    I will say, though, that the Anchorman people do anything to cozy up to local TV newsrooms, such as this North Dakota situation. Both newspapers (or "print") and TV are in the mid to late stages of the death spiral as we all try to figure out how to make a living providing content.

    There are a few safe places still tolerable in TV news. Midwest market (Buick population), a #1 station and if you're not owned by some of the horrible ownership groups, you can still make a decent living in the TV world. Yet, for 80% of the TV newsrooms, it's a frickin' slog.

    Most of the good owners have sold out amid the recession to larger ogres. 15 years ago, New York Times Co, Gannett and Hearst-Argyle (now just 'Hearst' in our world) were considered the best ownership groups in TV news. Only Hearst and Cox remain as companies that are, for the most part, respected throughout the TV industry.

    I wonder if newspaper is still like this. Any places left with a robust bottom line and decent ownership? (I'm not asking to be sarcastic. I'm really curious).
     
  6. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Not always and most of the meetings are just political filler for egotistical city council and county board politicians in their little fiefdoms. TV news, as a whole, is crap and that's largely from the bottom feeding newsrooms trying to do anything to get attention (or, in other words, managers trying not to get fired within 22 months - the usual tenure for a TV news manager). Our business is full of cowardly media, me-too types and everyone is trying to cover their ass while acting like trend setters.

    Some markets also have different thresholds of "news". We have six daily papers throughout the 28 counties that make up our TV market. If it's a city council meeting where 100 people show up and it's somewhat controversial or important, then it's newsworthy.

    Whether in TV or print, we're all on the wrong side of the age demo. Newspapers skew really, really old. Yet TV news is also mocked by anyone under 30 while people in that age demo simply ignore papers.

    Then again, when I was in sports, I had to cover endless athletic contents and act like people cared. The biggest offender? Women's college hockey. Shit. That was the damn worst. Covering a team with 400 fans (and, maybe, 30 actual paid tickets) in a 15,000 seat arena so that they can have the same experience as the men's team. I once said the seniors will have had the honor of having skated in front of 7 million empty seats throughout their four years.
     
  7. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Used to cover one rural water board so small that, by mid-meeting, I was the audience. Once they had to go into executive session in the middle of the meeting and, instead of freeze my ass off waiting outside, I gave the board secretary my phone number and walked two blocks to my apartment. She did call when they exited executive session.
     
  8. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    In my first job, I had to cover this one town board meeting each month in which, like you, I was the whole audience. The funny thing was, one of the board members would always bring a cake and they'd have a ten-minute intermission halfway through the meeting to enjoy it. They'd offer me a piece, and I, being an idealistic young journalist, would be stuck thinking "Can I accept the piece of cake without losing my objectivity?"
     
  9. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    You're smart enough to know that people giving a shit is not a great indicator of a story's newsworthiness.

    Writing about a zoning permit for a new big-box store is mundane, but infinitely more important than the story about a guy getting into a car accident while getting road head.

    But, which one will get more clicks?
     
  10. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    If I cover a lot of stuff no one gives a shit about, no one watches and I'm out of a job.

    And your zoning permit example is true... if I'm working in a small town. In my case, 99.9% of my audience is completely unaffected by the zoning for one big box store. It doesn't have any more impact on their lives than the road head wreck -- but at least the road head wreck is amusing.
     
  11. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    I get that. My point was that people are naturally more interested in the amusing, albeit meaningless, stories, and it's up to us to cover the important, boring stuff and explain why they need to care.
     
  12. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    With all the promotion that Ferrell is doing either he just loves doing this stuff or he owns a big piece of the movie and it sucks and he needs the 1st weekend to be huge.

    He did commentary for women's curling

     
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