Really?

My initial reaction — Seriously?  What is this? ...

I was horrified.  That reporter just shot a story about a cardboard bear.  And a man in a bunny suit.  The first thing I did was laugh, but soon the hilarity of it passed.  The next thing I thought: This is every stereotype about bad TV news.  Every single one, wrapped into one story.  Start with a bad standup and shameless staging.  And if it's a farce, it's poorly done — no laugh moments, no crafty camera angles, nothing.  Just pure, grade-A crap.  I have little doubt there are many others who share this.

But then I took a step back, and from my limited time working in a newsroom, I applied some of my own experiences to the reporter's situation.  Let me make a couple of assumptions.  They might not all hold true, but I'm making an informed guess [at least somewhat-informed from my limited time in news]:  (A) It was a weekend.  There was nothing else going on.  (B) He was told by his assignment desk or producer to cover the story and was told to do his best with limited video.  (C) He got to the scene to get some video, and found he couldn't weave a story about a bear around a bear that wasn't there.  But when the source from the Cleveland parks naturalist showed up and said 'Oh, I have a cardboard bear here that we can shoot the interview with,' he, in his desperation, saw an opportunity to insert visuals into his story.  He missed an opportunity, not only for crafty visual storytelling, but for multimedia reporting and a convergence package that would've made the story more relevant.

And here's the point where the reporter got ground up in the gears of the machinery that drives TV news.  Consultants tell TV journalists to create "video gravy trains" to roll during newscasts — we have to have visual opportunities in our stories if we have any prayer to keep audiences engaged.  And we should!  Roll video, graphics, maps, anything that's visual and grabs attention!  But the line between going the extra mile to get storytelling visuals and sloppy theatrics is very clear — a very fine line, yes, but it's clear.  This reporter took a lazy way out.

From that thought, I have two main observations:

First, there were ways around the lack of visuals here for the reporter:  He digs as hard as he can for video of the bear from anyone that will let him take video — from wire services, from National Geographic, from the local zoo.  He does a standup that explains where the homeowner saw the bear, maybe a walkthrough, or something to give dimension and context to the backyard of the space we're talking about.  That, plus clever, crafty writing ought to be enough — I once saw a story from a WFLA-TV reporter sent to cover a fight at a nursing home, but was denied entry to the facility.  The story won awards because of clever writing wrapped around a lengthy standup and some crafty camerawork.

But that leads me to my second observation, which I see as an existential problem in TV news:  Relevant or important news isn't always visual.  The reporter covering the bear story was covering a newsworthy event — bears on the loose may be a public hazard, or a cause of public concern.  Journalists have a duty to relay information about the animals to inform the public about the potential dangers.  But I can see a less-gutsy reporter (or more visual-hungry producer or assignment editor) passing on this story for a lack of visuals.  It's one thing when we're talking about a bear in someone's backyard:  Would that same producer back away from a story about the budget or political corruption because that story doesn't put video on the "video gravy train?"

If television news organizations shy away from non-visual stories, or gravitate towards non-visual stories that are easily staged (like this bear story), they will slide quickly down a slippery slope to irrelevance.  A story about an imploding building, despite all the great visuals and sound that come with it, doesn't tell people in this country how they're going to pay for K-12 education in 10 years.  A story about a bear in someone's backyard doesn't gain relevance with a viewer because they can visually associate the cardboard cutout of Ursa Major with a real bear (they know what the bear looks like).  We can't wait for visuals for stories to become important, and even if we can't find the visuals, it doesn't mean we shouldn't report on them...

We should report on them, not to the detriment of the video gravy train — you can find ways around a lack of visuals.  Maybe it involves changing the angle of your video piece.  And here's where convergence comes in:  You change the angle of your video piece to make a non-visual newsworthy occurrence into a news hook that leads you into an exploration of a broader issue.  Your online text element becomes the nuts and bolts of the news hook itself.  Your non-visual story just became relevant on two platforms:  For example, with this bear piece, the reporter might make their video piece into a discussion about how to stay safe from animals that may wander into your neighborhood, or what to do if you encounter a bear, or whether or not we ought to be concerned about bears in residential areas — and the online text piece can be about the nuts and bolts of the bear scare. 

It's easy to Monday-morning-quarterback this story, and Lord knows I might not be able to deliver on this with this story.  But TV news reporters have to start thinking about stories like this, because it's too easy to look at stories like the bear story and completely write off TV news as a relevant journalistic medium.  I don't believe that — its credibility is not beyond repair.  But we won't be relevant again unless we start approaching news situations in completely different ways.