LocalNewser dispatches from the frontlines of local news

Winging It? Are You Kidding Me?

The headline of the RTNDA (they're the Association of Electronic Journalists now--please make a note of it) report is notable and irritating:  "Many Stations Struggle with Working Across Multiple Platforms."

Oh, for God's sake.  Seriously?

I could handle that a lot more if the study had been done in 2001.  But no, this is a 2009 study focusing on local television and radio websites and multiplatforming.  And hey, good news?  Plenty of you are still working like it's 1999.  Not good, folks.

Bob Papper writes, "Only 38 percent of news directors say they're comfortable that their stations are really on top of new technology and where they're headed."  Oh, man.  38 percent?  That's the kind of number that gets an incumbent politician put on the endangered list.

According to the RTNDA/Hofstra report, "many news directors still do not" know web traffic. Wow.  That's basically like saying you don't really know the way out of your burning building. "Web traffic?  Who has time to focus on minutiae like web traffic?  Don't we have a web team or something for that?"

And yes, in this business that dragged its feet on HD is clearly in no rush to stay on top of technology, even as technology threatens to turn local television's longtime business model into something akin to Vaudeville.  As the report puts it, "Most commonly, the responsibility for staying up to date on new technology falls to the news director, but it's also clear that there are a lot of fingers crossed and winging it going on out there."

Fingers crossed and winging it.

When asked what percentage of the TV newsroom staff was trained, educated and interested in producing news across multiple platforms, 38.2 percent responded "on top of it."  48 percent said they had a "long way to go."  And 13.7 percent confessed they were "mostly winging it."

Way to stay ahead of the curve.