Feedback May 2002 (Vol 43 No 2)

RECORDSOLVING THE “PRODUCER PROBLEM”PART IIChris Tuohey, Syracuse Universitycptuohey@syr.eduThe last part of this article was unintentionally omitted from last issue.Of course there are a lot of potential stumbling blocks to adding producer specificcourses. There’s always the question of resources and accreditation credit limits just toname a couple. Plus I’m told at some schools this issue has been pushed to the backburner by the preoccupation with the who, what, when, where and how of teachingnew media. There is also a danger, I believe, that when instructors feel the pressure toadd convergence components to broadcast classes, even less time will be spent onnewscast production.I’m not suggesting we ignore the unknown future. Every journalism student(broadcast or otherwise) should learn how to prepare web content. But let’s keep inmind where the TV news jobs are now. According to a RTNDA/Ball State UniversitySurvey, TV stations that provide news content on the web employ an average of 1.2 fulltime employees on their web staffs. I don’t have any figures to back this up, but I’mwilling to bet the average number of newscast producers at these stations is at leastthree. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t get a call or an email from somebody lookingfor a producer. The demand is always for someone with solid broadcast news writing,organizational and people skills. I’ve never had a news director ask about convergenceskills.Final ThoughtsThere is no “one size fits all” solution to creating more producers and it doesn’t takethe re-inventing of the wheel either. But there are some final points to consider whenlooking at ways to increase the number and quality of newscast producers.No matter how much time in a broadcast journalism curriculum is devoted towriting it’s probably not enough. In my producer/anchor survey project, the lack ofwriting skills was the biggest complaint veteran anchors had about young producers.Anchorman Steve Craig of WIVT in Binghamton, New York believes the advent ofsimplified cutting and pasting of wire copy on a newsroom computer has erodedwriting skills. He says a lot of young producers simply rearrange stories that havealready been written, adding, "I don’t think there’s much experience of starting fromnotes and writing a finished product." Given that many colleges and universities usethe same news processing systems the pros use, instructors should take note of Craig’sobservation before relying on wire copy for writing exercises.WVTM Birmingham anchor Mike Royer says he spends more time fixing scripts38Feedback May 2002 (Vol. 43, No. 2)