The (Notorious) B.I.G. Story
It's tough to ever categorize a day in the news business as normal. Everything is changing, updating and evolving so quickly it's hard to determine a routine. Content controls the day.
It keeps you on your toes, that's for sure. But you rarely leave the newsroom saying, "Well, that was a pretty average day." For better or worse, news tends to come in waves. Either it's a slow news day or a big news day. Tuesday was a capital B-I-G day.
So when you have multiple lead-worthy stories, how do you determine which goes first? Who's to say that sports is more important than politics?
But seriously... it's your job.
The key is to know your audience. What does your audience care about?
At the end of the day, television news is still a business and your job is to sell content. What will keep your audience watching? What can you say that your viewers can't get on a dozen other network stations?
At a student-produced outlet, you're probably not catering to the Baby Boom generation. You're not making television for rocket scientists (unless you go to M.I.T.), you don't have feet on the ground in the Middle East like CNN, and you don't attract the guests that CBS 60 Minutes brings in.
So take advantage of what you do have. What do students want to hear? What will keep them watching even when they have midterms to study for and drinking games to play?
Campus stories are in your wheelhouse. If there's something going on around school, every other station has to send a truck. You only have to walk 50 yards from the newsroom.
But even if you made the courageous decision to drop the national news to the middle of the A Block so you can lead with the big story on campus, what comes next? How do you make sure you do the lead story justice?
Respect your lead story. Do multiple segments. It deserves more than a SOTVO. It deserves more than a package. Give it something snazzy like SOTVO-PKG-ANCG-SOTVO-SOT-ANCG-VO-SOTVO.
Be amitious with your acronyms.
