Slugfest for the Future of Local News: TV and Print, Battling Online

Those pesky newspapers just won’t go and die, despite the overconfident predictions of tv newsers, who see newsprint as something akin to the cigarette-and-typewriter filled newsroom, essentially, a dinosaur.  But local tv types have seen the new breed:  print reporters who carry DV cams and stick their mics into those gangbang interviews.  Some may laugh at their gear and inexperience.  LostRemote argues you’d better watch out, or they’re going to eat your lunch.

“This is the time for bold, online-focused leadership.  Opportunities like these rarely present themselves,” writes LR’s Cory Bergman.  “Many newspaper folks don’t believe local TV can step up and become a real competitor, let alone fill their shoes. The next 18 months will define the new leaders in local news, which will pay dividends when the economy rebounds.  Will it be you?This is the time for bold, online-focused leadership.  Opportunities like these rarely present themselves.  Many newspaper folks don’t believe local TV can step up and become a real competitor, let alone fill their shoes. The next 18 months will define the new leaders in local news, which will pay dividends when the economy rebounds.  Will it be you?”

WPLG/Miami's Site: No Call Letters, Just News (and Twitter)

LR lays out a plan to beat papers, from ditching the attachment to call letters and on-air promotional pics, and get down and dirty:  beating papers at the basic game:  getting local news in a customer-friendly form:  “Rise above the fray and provide your users with the most comprehensive local news experience in the market,” Bergman says, and that may mean spending money, re-educating die hard tv newsers to become multi-platformers, and yes, it may mean using one-man-bands to get unique video content on your site.

But it’s the future, whether you like it or not, and losing a battle now is no recipe for financial survival in the future.  Read the fantastic LR post (and the lively debate that follows in comments) here.

Laid Off? At Least You Get Severance Pay, Right? Uh, Right?

Longtime WPIX/NY reporter Glenn Thompson, laid off by Channel 11 last December, now says the company won’t budge on the severance pay he believes he’s owed.  Thompson tells the New York Post’s Michael Starr:  “They were supposed to pay my severance immedi ately on Jan. 6, the day my contract officially expired,” he says. “No one’s given me any answers at all.”

The Old School WPIX Logo

Thompson, who spent twenty years at PIX, now insists he can’t even get a returned phone call from the station.  “It’s pretty outrageous to me,” he says. “They’re con tractually bound to pay me. I said to them, ‘I’m gonna have to sue.’ I want my severance.” Ch. 11 officials had no com ment yesterday.

Starr reports part of the problem may be PIX owner Tribune’s bankruptcy filing, which has much of its business dealings tied up in the courts.  Still, c’mon people.  Two decades?  Can we get a call back?  The speed with which beloved members of the station’s “family” become nonentities–if it happens faster and with more ice-cold shoulderiness in any other business, I’d love to know.