Breaking News: A Different Way of Doing Breaking News

Posted August 20, 2024

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Sometimes when you are searching for something, the answer is right before your eyes.

For years, I have been looking for a new and powerful way to cover breaking news stories - and now, I think, I've got it.

For the past 35 years, we have been working with TV news organizations around the world to help them restructure the way that they craft and produce news stories.

Our primary focus has always been on the power of storytelling.  Our model is Netflix - compelling stories with a main character, and arc of story and a resolution.  More than 280 million people subscribe to Netflix because it delivers what they love to see - well told stories.

What we have done is to take the format for great storytelling (which you can read about in Joseph Campbell's seminal guidebook for every Hollywood producer - The Hero With A Thousand Faces) and marry it to great journalism.  It works.  We have found that numbers for audience engagement go through the ceiling.  It's the same reason people binge watch Netflix, hour after hour. They are captured by the story and the characters.

When it comes to news, however, we are always asked about how to handle breaking news.  A lot of TV news is driven by breaking news.  We have examples of character-driven breaking news, but it's hard to find the right character and turn a story around so quickly.

The solution, however, was ironically right before our eyes. An entirely new, and I think, far more compelling and interesting way to cover a breaking news story.

For most of the years we have spent designing or retro-fitting TV news organizations to our VJ or MMJ model, we tried to use the smallest cameras we could find.  NY1, for example, was started with Hi8 video cameras. At The BBC we went with Sony PD 150s.  With NY Times Television, Panasonic, working with us, developed a camera called a VJ-Cam. We used those for almost all our many reality series with Discovery, TLC and so on.

Seven years ago, we began to work with Spectrum New 1 in Los Angeles, and then, in an extremely radical move, we suggested using only iPhones. It worked.  The phones are remarkably powerful.  For the past two years, we have been working with CBS News, again using only iPhones.  Other broadcast networks are coming online with us soon.  All will be iPhone driven.

Now, iPhones are really great tools for television journalism. The quality of the video is astonishing. I have a 15 and it, and the lenses are just incredible,  Of course, iPhones also allow the reporter to edit in the field, on the phone; to add music and track and to send back the finished file by simply uploading it.

All good.

Of course, as any 9-year old knows, the phones also do something else.

They allow you to 'go live', whether it is on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or YouTube.

By the time we are done with a local TV news station, we have trained and fielded 40 reporters, or MMJs or VJs, all iPhone equipped.  The ability of a local TV news station to put 40 cameras in the field every day is remarkable fire power,

So, the question arises, what is the best way to leverage off of that incredible fire power in a breaking news situation?

Here's my idea (as illustrated above, courtesy of AI):

Deploy 15 or 20 reporters, all with iPhones, to various aspects of the same story.

Let's say there's a major flood - which happens a lot here in the UK.

Reporters on the ground, reporters with rescue crews, reporters with the police in boats, reporters with families trapped in their homes, reporters at the hospital, reporters in shelters like schools and libraries. Every aspect of the story covered.

Then, go live. With all of them. At the same time. All you need is the iPhone, which everyone has already.

Bring all the reports, live and in real time, back into the studio for the anchor to organize and put on air. (See my great AI representation above).

It really leverages off the power of the iPhone and an army of iPhone equipped journalists out in the field in real time.

No other competing station could touch this.

This is an experiment I would love to pilot.

If you have a news channel and you're interested, call me!