How a small TV newsroom works — inside LRTVS NewsWatch

A national newsroom has a rota, a picture desk, a legal department and somebody whose only job is the autocue. A regional newsroom has none of that. What it has is a handful of people who each do four jobs, and a deadline that arrives at the same time every day whether the county has been eventful or not.

LRTVS NewsWatch is the newsroom of Channel 10, in New Amsterdam. Channel 10 has been carrying news to Berbice since 1989. This is roughly how a day in a newsroom that size actually goes — and, at the end, how to bring it a story.

Where stories come from

Not from wire services. A regional newsroom’s story list is built from four sources, in this order of volume:

1. The telephone. Somebody calls, or sends a WhatsApp message with a photograph. This is the single largest source of local news anywhere in the world, and it is why the station’s numbers are printed on everything.
2. The diary. Events with a known date — a court sitting, a council meeting, a school event, a ministerial visit, a commissioning, a funeral of somebody notable.
3. Official releases. Ministries, the police, regional authorities and the utilities.
4. What the reporters see. A flooded road on the way to work is a story.

The morning job is to turn that pile into a realistic list. Realistic is the operative word: a newsroom of a few people can properly cover a small number of stories a day. Trying to cover ten badly is worse than covering four well.

The reporter does everything

This is the defining feature of a small newsroom and the thing viewers rarely realise.

At a large broadcaster, a story involves a reporter, a camera operator, a sound recordist, a producer, an editor and a graphics operator. Here, one person often does the lot: drives out, sets the camera, checks the sound, conducts the interview, films the cutaways, drives back, logs the material, writes the script, records the voice-over, edits the package and writes the online version.

That has consequences worth understanding if you are the subject of a story:

• Travel time is the real cost. Berbice is long. A story on the Corentyne can consume most of a day in driving alone. If a reporter cannot get to you, it is a logistics problem, not a judgement about your story.
• The interview matters more than at a big outlet. There is rarely time to come back. What you say on the day is what airs.
• Pictures decide the running order. A story with usable footage will lead over an equally important story with none. That is not cynicism; television without pictures is radio.

Writing for the ear and the eye at once

Broadcast writing has its own discipline: short sentences, active voice, one idea per sentence, numbers rounded so they can be heard. The script is written to be said, and it is written to the pictures — the words and the shots have to arrive together.

Then the same reporter usually writes the article. Every NewsWatch report is broadcast on Channel 10 and published as a written article with the video at lrtvsnewswatch.com. That is two different crafts on one story, which is why the written version sometimes carries detail the broadcast version had no time for.

Verification, with no legal department

A regional newsroom does not have a lawyer down the corridor, which paradoxically makes it more careful, not less. The working rules are old and simple:

• Two sources, or attribute clearly. If only one person is saying it, the report says who is saying it.
• Right of reply. If a report criticises a person or an organisation, they are asked to respond before it airs, and the report says whether they did.
• Do not name people who have not been charged, and do not identify minors.
• Photographs and video sent by the public are checked — where it was taken, when, and by whom — before anything is broadcast. A dramatic clip from somewhere else entirely is the most common trap.
• Grief is handled slowly. In a county this size, the people in the story are known to the people watching, and often to the reporter.

The daily deadline

Everything above compresses into a fixed point in the evening. The script has to be finished, the package cut, the graphics built, the running order set and the studio ready.

Then the newscast is presented live, which means it is unforgiving — a package that is not rendered by transmission time simply does not exist. Full editions of the LRTVS NewsWatch newscast and the NewsWatch Update are streamed from the studio and stay available afterwards, which is why you can watch a bulletin from last week as easily as last night.

After transmission, the reports go online, and on Fridays the week’s coverage is summarised in The Little Rock Press, the station’s free weekly newsletter.

Where the money comes from — and where it does not

A regional newsroom is funded by advertising, sponsorship and announcements. The line that keeps it honest is that none of those buy coverage. Sponsored content is labelled as sponsored, and an advertiser has no standing to influence a report. If you ever see a station where that line is soft, the news it produces is worth less.

How to bring the newsroom a story

If something has happened in Berbice that people should know about, the newsroom wants it. Make it easy for them:

• Send it early. A story that arrives at four in the afternoon may not make that night’s newscast. The same story at nine in the morning probably will.
• Say where and when, precisely. Village, street, time.
• Send pictures or video if you have them safely — landscape, not portrait, if you can — and say who took them and when.
• Give a name and a number the reporter can call back. Anonymous tips are followed up, but they are followed up more slowly.
• Say if somebody is willing to speak on camera. A story with a person in it is a story that gets covered.

Contact: WhatsApp +592 741-4911, telephone 592-333-4758, 592-333-3758 or 592-333-4445, or email littlerocktelevision@yahoo.com. You can read the newsroom’s current work at lrtvsnewswatch.com.