What's New about "Old" News
With any news story, the most important aspect is identifying the “today” angle. In other words, what's the news? With a story that's breaking, or one that's just happening, or one that's been happening for consecutive days, the lead always comes down to what's new about the story today.
This Wednesday, I served as the CNN/Graphics Teammate. Many of the stories I was overseeing today involved stories that had been happening for a while or even happened yesterday (and now required an update). One story that occurred yesterday that we gave a follow-up on was the Virginia State Senator getting stabbed by his son; so for today's lead, we started with “Virginia Senator Creigh Deeds is in good condition, one day after being stabbed by his son.” This lead updates the audience on his condition while also reminding them briefly about why he's been hospitalized.
A local story we've been covering for over a week now is the Bell corruption trial involving former City Administrator Angela Spaccia. With today's story, we kept it “fresh” with the angle that the closing arguments will occur Thursday. Other examples of stories ATVN has been covering for a while are the LAX Shooting, Typhoon Haiyan and the Affordable Care Act. Our Affordable Care Act story today was not on the latest updates in Washington DC, but instead on what California is doing as an alternative for residents to sign up under the Affordable Care Act; the package focused on Covered California and people now being able to do in-person sign-ups. Another example of a story that's been reported daily for the past week is the controversy surrounding Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Today, we made the editorial choice not to run a story because we couldn't find any information that had changed since yesterday.
When covering ongoing stories, it's important to find a balance between including the most current information and mentioning background information to remind viewers of the story. There is only so much time allotted and you do not want to bore the viewers with old facts, or else they will tune out. The facts are not the only concern, but also video. We, producers, try to use the most current video as a way to keep coverage interesting, unless the video is just that compelling.
