Please join me ...

[dgriffin]

I hate to be a pain in the ass, but it really annoys me that a television station that charges advertisers for its services and takes up public spectrum has the effrontery to put news stories up on the web that flatly stink. As I mentioned in another thread, my email to the news director some months ago resulted in a note back saying (in so many words) he couldn't get decent help. So I'm filing a "reader comment" for each story that offends my sense of grammatical decency or contains their typical narrative stupidity. I invite you to join me at:
www.wktv.com/news/local/
For each story, fill in "Add a Comment." Don't be shy.

[frankcor]

Dave, do you mean stories like this?

LYONS FALLS - A 16 year old Port Leyden has been charged for criminal impersonation and operating a snowmobile as an unauthorized police snowmobile. after he conducted checkpoints while pretending to be a Lewis County Sheriff.

A 16 year old Port Leyden? Does that mean that the whole community was charged over 100 years ago when it was only 16 years old?

I followed the link you provided above and that caught my eye within seconds of arriving there.

What do they teach in J-school these days?

[dgriffin]

And I was also thinking of the story that contained, "The fire claimed a lot of things but not any lives. Witnesses say it burned for more than two hours hours later firefighters continued to investigate the scene." But my all time favorite story was about the Frankfort corporation that had "a part of NASA trip to Mars. All the parts they made took them 4 months of man hours at 40 hours a week to produce." And, "The only bad news out of the whole project is that CTM could not put their name on the actually part they made...but they will let that slide with future projects lined for NASA"
Huh? I've know fourth graders who can write better than that.

[frankcor]

That kind of stuff makes me want to

[dgriffin]

You know, I did a little research on WKTV...very little. I guess it was owned or run by someone named Bob Smith (Robert N.) and when he died, his wife, Anne, son Robert, daughter Jennifer, sold shares to a consortium of bankers. It's now known as Smith Media, LLC and run by a director of Boston Ventures, a venture capital firm. The FCC database says Smith Media, LLC is in St. Louis, but other sources say it's in Los Angeles. I wonder if the Smith family is still involved. They would surely care about how the station is run. Maybe.

[dgriffin]

more at:
www.answers.com/topic/smith-media
They also owned the Watertown stations, another couple of winners.

[Swimmy]

1. this is a news station, they're focus is on tv, not the web. we can't expect them to be as outstanding as their paper cousins at the disgrace.
2. the website is manned by a teeny bopper who clearly lacks adequate grammar skills and is not supervised by an editor. So don't be too quick to lash out at the journalism schools

'nough said.

[dgriffin]

WKTV is a business first, or should be. They should indeed concentrate on their website, as on any public view of their product. The fact that they are a news station also argues for them to provide their product in its best light whatever the medium. They are also a license holder of airwaves owned by the public and supposedly administered by the FCC for the public good. For them to use their monopoly of a television broadcasting channel in a community and hire a teenager to write news for their website to reduce their expenses is a shame. I don't think frankcor was "lashing out at j-schools."

[Swimmy]

Dave, you misunderstood. I was being sarcastic, not scolding frankcor for his j-school comment.

[frankcor]

Yes, swimmy has more sense than to scold a large, menacing and opinionated character like me. LOL!

I know WKTV's main business is television entertainment, including news, but if I were going to display a news web page as a spin-off from the core mission of my business, I would have enough pride to at least proof-read news stories that were posted there. And if I were giving a local kid a chance to learn more about the business, I would pay just a little more attention to what he were putting up in my name.

I had forgotten that it was a teenager running the site for WKTV and in hindsight, my comments may seem a bit harsh. Lord knows I can make typos nearly as fast as I can type, and catching grammatical errors as I write has never been a skill I ever mastered; it requires a second reading. When you see my grammatical errors or missing words, you can be certain that I've posted something without proofreading it. But when a business enterprise puts such little care into this side of their public face, it makes me wonder who is taking care of business. Call my broker -- sell WKTV.

My recent comments on j-schools are derived from the amateurism that is becoming more and more prevalent in print and television news stories. And that's not a slam against just our local media. The declining quality is evident in major city newspapers and national news service reports, too. I know reporters who practice their craft with great skill and to them, it is second nature to get the who, what, when, where and why into the story and always close to the top of the story. When submitting news stories, reporters learn very quickly that editors chop stories to fit on a page. They don't chop it by deleting sentences from throughout the story, they just lop off paragraphs, starting at the end. Reporters write knowing that and don't put anything that can't be lost near the end of the story.

Part of the decline in quality in news is the fault of the reporters, but the managers need to take some of the blame for not ensuring that every story is given a good review by competent editors. When you view or read a news story that is missing vital information, that is the fault of the reporter. When you see grammar, spelling or typing errors, that's the fault of the editor or, in the case of WKTV.com, the complete lack of any editing.

[Swimmy]

I disagree, the decline ins quality news reporting is due to the fact that quality news reporting does not sell nearly as many paper as or achieve nearly as high ratings as the crap we see today. Editors and management are lax at their jobs because the basic politically spun message is still communicated and received. Facts have become mere nuisances that inhibit a reporter's spinning, just like a politician.

[frankcor]

You're correct that declining earnings for almost all of the traditional media yields less money to pay for quality reporting. They are still seeking a new business model that will permit them to earn a profit selling news. Even the DrudgeReport will wither on the vine without headlines to copy.

Maybe we're both right. It could be a combination of management incompetence and advocacy for a certain viewpoint.

[Swimmy]

We are. It's management incompetence that decided sales and ratings were more important than reporting just the facts.

[frankcor]

In all fairness, and because I have a very close friend who was a long-time reporter who would strangle me if I didn't say it, there are reporters who take great pride in the quality of their reporting and language skills. She would also remind me that in all her years of writing for various newspapers in Texas, perhaps the most politically charged state (republic) in the nation, no editor or publisher ever asked her to apply a spin to one of her reports.

She is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal but you could not detect it in her reporting. Believe me, I've looked.

[Swimmy]

Of course there are a few good reporters still in existence, just none in Oneida County