Broken news

My University of Richmond journalism professor, Joe Nettles, introduced us to the concept of making difficult news decisions.

He began by asking us which of the following stories should be the lead in the morning newspaper:

(A) Pope Elopes.

(B) Sun Rises in the West

(C) Quake Dumps California into the Ocean

They're all preposterous. But there's really only one choice. The biggest story is the one that affects the most people. I pick option (B). Such an occurrence would knock our entire conception of the universe for a loop.

That was almost always my criteria when I was in the decision-making game in WTVR TV's newsroom.

Sometimes, all things being equal on a slow news day, I might go for shock or titillation value -- as in option (A). At other times, option (C) might look best -- just think of the amazing visuals you'd have in a live report from the Reno oceanfront.

But 99 percent of the time, I stuck by my guns: How many people does this story affect?

I must have been doing something right. WTVR's news broadcasts were the most-watched in Central Virginia during my tenure.

In the 1960s and 70s, management mostly left our news department alone to do its own thing. In fact, there was a firewall of sorts between the news department and management/sales. The station didn't make any big profits from news. Prestige, instead, was the payoff.

That, clearly, has changed dramatically since this very day in 1977 when I got out of the business.

Nowadays, local TV newscasts -- and network newscasts, too, for that matter -- are heavily influenced by marketing and sales. Petty crime often shoots to the top of the newscast. A titillating story about a flash-in-the-pan celebrity who is famous for nothing more than being famous carries a lot of TV news weight. And video of a tool shed in flames -- if it's really good video -- can work its way to the top.

Back in the day, the possibility of a dusting of snow was covered during the weather segment. Now it's breaking news at the top of the broadcast. Even if it's only a 30 percent possibility.

I remember a seemingly endless telephone conversation with a woman who wanted us to cover an elementary-school pageant. "The children are so adorable," she kept telling me.

At the time I had three reporter/photographer crews out on the streets covering real news. My only other crew was editing a story for the next  newscast. I just couldn't spare anybody to cover her pageant.

"But you have to cover it," she told me. "It's news!"

I was fast becoming exasperated. "It's only news if I say it's news," I told her.

That's definitely an arrogant thing to say, I realized after we had hung up.

But when you come right down to it, that's why I spent four years in college and a decade in TV journalism: to know what a news story was when I saw it.

And that's why I'd have all my crews working on the story about the sun rising in the west.

But in today's TV news business, that children's pageant might still make it into the lineup.

Especially if the station were a co-sponsor of the pageant.

Heck, the pageant might even be introduced as breaking news.