Keeping News New
Because of the nature of digital media, news gets stale very quickly.
Stories break and spread like wildfire on Twitter, and updates are often circulated before they're even confirmed. It takes significantly less time to type out a 140-character headline - and even less time to hit the Retweet button - than it does to interview characters on camera, shoot footage of the incident, write a script, edit all the elements together and wait for the story to air on television.
Most viewers have already heard about breaking news stories and looked up all the updates on the Internet by the time they watch it on a television newscast. However, television news still has the upper hand. No other medium allows for live updates - the most updated of all updates - with the same visual power.
Live shots can bring the scene of a developing story straight to your viewer's living room - or mobile device, or office television - in real time, as it is happening. They don't have to troll Twitter for headline-y, editorialized updates that lack visuals, then check the timestamp on the Tweet and wonder what else has happened in the 6 minutes since it was posted. With live shots, they can see and hear for themselves.
Viewers can see different angles of a burning building and decide for themselves if it is a "catastrophic wreck" like another station's anchor said, or a "minor blaze" like the local newspaper reported. They can watch a reporter interviewing somebody live, and lay their questions about framing and bias to rest, knowing the interview wasn't edited into soundbites. They can watch high-quality video footage of ongoing events that grainy photos Tweeted by attendees and pre-taped versions available much later will not compare to.
That said, live shots can be technically challenging to coordinate, and often pose all sorts of unexpected ethical issues. There are situations where you don't necessarily want your viewers to see everything as it's happening.
Fortunately, ATVN has never had to worry about broadcasting a violent crime on live television, or whether to zoom in or out on the end of a car chase. Our live shot dilemmas usually revolve around questions like, "Can we get the teleprompter girl to be a streambox operator tonight?" and "Is there enough WiFi at the live shot location for us to stream a Skype call?"
Team Thursday has yet to attempt a live shot this semester. Had we had the resources (on-location WiFi, working streambox, trained streambox operator, available live shot reporter, proper lighting, etc.) and space in our rundown yesterday, I would have pushed for a live shot from the LAPD's LGBTQ Community Forum.
Because the forum was scheduled to start at 6 p.m., a live interview with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck probably wouldn't have been possible. I saw it as a less visual, reporter-centric live shot that could have opened with the reporter explaining, "I'm here live at LAPD headquarters, where..."; going on to discuss exactly why they were meeting and whether or not this is a regularly held forum; maybe holding up a piece of paper with the official Community Forum agenda printed on it and listing several topics and speakers; then teasing a full-length web story about the forum - this one featuring an interview with Chief Beck and forum speakers - to be published on ATVN.org later in the evening.
