I wouldn’t believe it unless I’d seen it happen repeatedly: Media outlets sometimes give their own news to other media outlets to report first.
It happened last Friday when WCCO-TV/4 (Minneapolis) announced plans to launch a 4 p.m. newscast. It appears that the news was first reported by the Star Tribune at 10:55 a.m. and was also reported by Bring Me The News and here on NorthPine before it appeared on WCCO-TV’s own website at noon.
To be clear, WCCO-TV’s digital properties — an increasingly important piece of the business — compete with the Star Tribune and Bring Me The News.
They got scooped by the competition based on their own news release.
A similar incident happened just the day before with an announcement out of Sioux Falls, though it did not involve a local competitor. TVNewsCheck reported on KELO-TV’s news release about plans to launch a new 4 p.m. newscast hours before the news was posted on KELO-TV’s own website.
To repeat: Even though WCCO-TV and KELO-TV’s plans were announced via news release, those news releases were not posted to the stations’ own websites or social media platforms until after other news outlets reported on them.
Unfortunately, these incidents are not isolated. In following the Upper Midwest broadcasting industry over the past quarter century, I’ve seen repeated instances in which a news outlet reports on an apparent news release from a station or company, but that news release is nowhere to be found on the station or company’s own digital platforms. (It happens outside of the broadcasting industry, too.)
Can copying-and-pasting really be so hard?
Without knowing the internal circumstances of every situation, it could sometimes be a matter of communication. If the person issuing the news release does not have direct access to post it on their website, they need to reach out to the news department or web team before sending a news release to the competition.
That way, stations can be the first to report their own breaking news.
Jon Ellis has worked in small-market TV news for 20 years in assistant news director and producer positions. He’s glad to read your news releases at jonellis@northpine.com.
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