Civic Journalism Is… True Stories from America’s Newsrooms
Civic Journalism Is…
About creating compelling TV news.
Ramon Escobar
Executive Producer, MSNBC
Former News Director, WTVJ-TV, Miami
We have embraced the concept that our community is expecting us to be smarter. We’re not a headline service. We’re here to give our community the information it needs to make important decisions.
With that concept of civic journalism leading us, we’ve tackled some stories that others might find too difficult. We dedicated 11 minutes on our 11 p.m. newscast to a story on foster care. We explained to viewers that the state-funded agency that is supposed to protect kids who’ve been taken from their homes was actually putting those kids at risk. There was no accounting, no system of inspections, no record keeping on the homes in which the children were being placed. And some of those children were being abused. That story led to a shake-up in the Broward County foster care department.
TV newsrooms are often told to keep stories short and that it’s about pacing, pacing, pacing. But if we’re going to tackle these issues, we need depth. That makes sense to viewers. It’s not about boring TV news, it’s about compelling TV news that demonstrates the impact of stories on viewers. Those are the stories that are going to set us apart. It’s going to drive viewership up because the issues are so intensely local and of such impact and relevance to viewers, they are going to say, “There’s a reason to watch this station.”