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Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism University of Southern California
Producers

Keeping On-Going Coverage Interesting

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You know the type: those stories that have been in the news for weeks and weeks, but you keep covering them, despite your exhaustion, because you feel vaguely obligated.

On-going news coverage is an enormous part of producing -- but in covering these stories, we have to remember to avoid redundancy and to remain current and relevant. This week, we had a number of possible stories that fit this bill: the Malaysia plane search, the Oscar Pistorius trial, and the California drought just to name a few.

The most important question to consider in this situation is always, always the same -- What is NEW?

Of course, we chose not to cover the California drought because no new developments had occurred, and over the past few months we have beaten that story to death. With no new developments, there is no "today" angle. The other two stories, though, had recent developments, so we went with them.

As producers, it's easy for us to assume that everyone is as up-to-date with information as we are, but that is often not the case; what is old news to us may be shocking and valuable news to someone else. For this reason, it is important to remember to provide sufficient background: What led up to today's development?

In the case of Pistorius, we couldn't assume that everyone would be familiar with the trial or the defendant. For example, we saw that an MJ had began the story with the word "Pistorius" -- instead of properly introducing the defendant as "Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius" for those unfamiliar with his title and background.

The same goes for the Malaysia flight story, although I think Los Angelenos are generally more informed about it than Pistorius and perhaps tired of hearing, "STILL no plane found!" Yesterday, though, officials had found more objects in the sea and believed they were closer than ever to finding the location of the plane. Still, keeping in mind the fact that they had been saying this for a month now, we chose to present the information as a quick copy story.

Measuring the relevance and significance of an on-going story's new developments is always the answer when considering these kind of coverage decisions.

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