Sign of the Times: Local newsrooms forced to adapt in the age of COVID-19
Some temporary changes may soon become permanent solutions to longterm inefficiencies in local news.
TOLEDO, Ohio — Since March 2020, most events, and work, have gone virtual, and local news coverage has been no exception.
Out of concern for the safety of employees, newsrooms had to change the way editorial meetings are conducted and stories are told.
Mel Watson, news director at 13abc, says that since the start of the pandemic, newsroom staff, including reporters, MMJs (multimedia journalists) and photographers have had to shoot most interviews via Zoom, liveshots via phone, and edit packages with laptops that were distributed early in the pandemic.
“Another important tool we had was our cell phones. There is a live shot application that can be downloaded, so the reporters had an app on their phone, that they did — especially those first few months out of the building. They used the live app to do live shots for the newscasts.”
Watson also says that producers have had to produce newscasts from home, while some engineers worked alternate shifts to limit the amount of people within the building. Anchors and meteorologists stayed within the building throughout the pandemic, taking COVID-19 precautions to keep everyone safe.
“We haven’t been doing everything virtually the whole time. But when the state shut down last March, we did, for many months, no two-person live shots, there were no interactive segments,” Watson says.
Watson adds that 13abc had plans to launch a digital streaming center pre-pandemic, with equipment that was shipped and prepared to be set up already available, but those plans had to be put on the back burner, with COVID-19 forcing staff, including engineers, to work remotely.
The same applies to cross town newsroom WTOL 11, where staff was forced to work remotely, and take advantage of digital news technology, which was already available and in use.
“People aren’t just watching it on TV, they’re consuming in their everyday lives on Facebook, and YouTube, so really trying to use those platforms to get the message across, I think, has been great.”
Lauren Weppler, news director at WTOL, says that dis and misinformation presented a challenge to the station, as rumors and speculation regarding the pandemic flourished on social media.
But she says that despite the perplexity that comes with widespread misinformation, the pandemic presented the opportunity for the station to surface as a source of fact-based news coverage regarding the virus, and halt misinformation in its tracks.
“I think local news can do a bigger part in that, ‘let’s just knock it down while we see it’.”
Both news directors say that at the end of the day, no news organization can provide the facts with no slant, hold power to account, and keep communities safe — in superiority local news.
