Performing the News

It's not (always) about You

Note to subscribers - From time to time I write insider pieces focused mostly on the worlds I know best, local television news and Christian higher education. I hope the principles still relate to media literacy concerns all of you will understand. This week, I offer a piece I first posted to LinkedIn🔹Pro with the hope you can get through a little insider jargon on the way to the bigger issues:

Young TV reporters.
It's not about you.
Except, when it is.

I have tried to teach this in 30+ years of guiding young ones into the news biz. Yes, you have to appear on camera - stand ups, live shots and a chance at anchoring - but move past the ego and make it about the story, the people you are covering and the people watching.

A recent rabbit trail in a media literacy class (they happen more often in your later prof years) reminded me how often the principles I try to teach were challenged as a youngling.

From the rather silly but true story of buying rain ponchos to get the perfect hurricane standup (on a sunny day):

To being the guy who said "...(anchor person) has the night off" at the top of every broadcast (or when management had just fired an anchor person) to filling in on sports and weather so much I actually got bored, I was once again reminded - this has always been a performance medium.

We call it a SHOW, for goodness sakes.

But the ground is shifting. Those little "stars" at the little TV station aren't so much anymore. You're lucky if anyone even thinks they recognize you in public, much less knows your name.

And I don't need to tell any news manager reading this what that next generation sitting in my classroom is doing with its eyeballs, but let's just say it's not getting the habit of waiting for your 6 p.m. show.

I don't know what it all means, but my inner, idealistic Prof. Quixote says stories matter more than stars - more than ever.

Counter arguments say to make local news more like YouTube or TikTok - turn reporters into influencers who appear on camera throughout most of the news package. I'm skeptical of the medium and the mode.

What I do know is a 21 year old kid who was always looking for his next standup got wise somewhere during those 3 years in a too-small market, partly through some humbling ego checks and partly through more senior voices in his ear telling him on-air wasn't all-that.

In fact, most of the news and the fun was not on the desk - but out there, in the field.

Appearing on-camera became one more role to play in a team sport, important but never more important than the teamwork behind the performance.

Today, the ego checks come from the industry itself, the audience that is leaving us and the sheer ubiquity of SELF-ie media in everyone's hands.

We're not special anymore because we're on TV, if we ever were. We're special when we tell better stories in a better way than the rest.

Use your presentation skills as just one more tool...not to connect the audience to you but to stories that matter.

If you don't learn that early, you will find out soon enough. The fame of the camera is about as fleeting as a rain poncho on a sunny day at the beach. And blows away just as soon.

“When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around all high and mighty, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.” - Luke 14: 10-11 (The Message)