By Brandon Theo Dorsey
We visited KOMU as a class
and the lesson we learned is one many local stations need to hear. “If you’re going to compete in this day and age, everything needs to be local,” Jim Riek, senior anchor, told us.
and the lesson we learned is one many local stations need to hear. “If you’re going to compete in this day and age, everything needs to be local,” Jim Riek, senior anchor, told us.
The reason Riek gave for this is the domination of national sports news by entities such as ESPN. National sports coverage runs 24/7 online and on major TV networks, so this raises a major question: Why would anyone wait on local news for the information they can access anytime?
They don’t and they won’t.
This is why it is imperative for local stations, especially campus stations and those serving small markets, to focus on the stories that major networks don’t cover. And we were advised that the best stories are the one’s focused on a person.
Not everyone is a sports fan, but audiences love human-interest stories. To take a local sports star and show the human side of his or her story is much more relevant than to give a preview to the NBA Finals.
Uncovering a story behind a story is not always the easiest task. This is why Kent Collins, chairman of radio and television at the University of Missouri, made sure to inform us all that sports journalism is not a walk in the park. “It’s not easy,” said Collins. “If you don’t have the guts for this, go do something else.”
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