Several weeks ago a local TV morning anchor, Tolly Carr, was arrested and charged with drunk driving and allegedly hitting and killing a pedestrian in Winston-Salem. Carr is employed by Winston-Salem based WXII 12 and the day after the accident the station released a video statement from GM Hank Price and covered it as a straight news item. This past weekend an entertainment reporter for WKRN in Nashville, TN was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving and WKRN’s GM, Mike Sechrist, announced it on his blog.
To me these two cases offer an interesting juxtaposition of two local news outlets that are using online media in fairly different ways. The video statement from WXII is old school, one way information flow. WKRN’s blog allows for comments which means that you have the new school "dialogue" happening. If you read the comments on the WKRN post, and there are lots of them, you see a pretty strong debate break out about drunk driving in general, and even accusations that the station is giving their man special treatment by not putting his mugshot on the air. Because that debate is happening on his site Sechrist can address those comments directly. Even though WXII did put Carr’s mugshot on the air they (and the rest of the local media) were accused of favoritism in their handling of Carr’s story, but since it was on local blogs and not on their site and WXII was absent from the debate.
In a strange twist to the Carr story a rumor started floating around that he had commited suicide. The managing editor of the Winston-Salem Journal wrote about it on his blog from the perspective of a newsroom that was inundated with calls asking if the rumors were true. Again, nary a word from WXII to be found. I have the feeling that if similar rumors were to crop up in Nashville you’d hear about it directly from the GM on his blog.
WXII is putting its toe in the water by hosting three or four blogs, but some of them don’t allow comments and with the exception of the sports blog they aren’t updated very often. More importantly the blogs are merely an extension of their on-air personalities (anchor, weather, sports) and don’t give the audience a look behind the camera at the station. I personally think that the power of blogs and of most new media lies in the ability to draw an audience in and make its members feel like part of the "family." While GMs, managing editors, and publishers traditionally view themselves as behind the scenes bosses they are in fact the true representative of the organization. They represent the entire organization and are in the best position to articulate the goals, concerns and direction of the station, paper, magazine, etc. By communicating consistently with their audience they draw them into their world, make them feel like they have a stake in the station/newspaper/magazine’s future and ultimately keep them as a viewer/reader. And when bad things happen they have a line of communication directly with the audience, which means they can deal with the fallout without having to go through intermediaries and they can nip rumors in the bud.
The bottom line is that all media organizations are businesses, and the GM is kind of like a CEO. That’s why a recent article in Wired titled "The See Through CEO" is applicable to them. In the article the author cites cases where companies have benefited from their leaders communicating directly with their customers, writing openly about all things related to the company including the good, the bad and the ugly. In each of those cases the companies have grown and prospered and the CEOs attribute that growth to their openness.
Because media companies are already so visible, and because local TV news folks are uniquely intimate to their audience (more than a few people think of local news anchors as a part of their extended family), then it stands to reason that more openness could be particularly effective for them. They put food on the table by selling advertising. Advertisers are interested in audience size and demographics, and if by embracing online tools that encourage dialogue they also increase loyalty, then GMs are doing what they’re paid to do: increasing their bottom line.
In defense of Mr. Price at WXII there aren’t many media types who are doing this yet. If he needs a first hand account of a blog’s utility he need only walk down the street to talk to Ken Otterbourg at the Winston-Salem Journal or pick of the phone and call John Robinson over at the Greensboro News & Record. While I doubt they would be able to give him quantifiable numbers showing that their blogs have contributed directly to the bottom line, I’m fairly certain they would tell him that their guts tell them they’re doing the right thing and that their efforts will pay off in the near future. And of course that’s the other thing GMs are paid for: their gut instincts.
