Falloff in Aggressive TV News Reporting Cited

Money pressures may explain a “startling” drop in the amount of enterprise reporting on local TV news broadcasts, according to a new study.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism said it found that enterprise was sharply on the decline, despite clear evidence that viewers support stations that produce high-quality reporting.

The study, issued last Thursday, ranked newscasts at 59 stations in 19 cities over two weeks earlier this year. The definition of “enterprise” included investigative stories and reports produced at a reporter’s initiative, instead of just reactions to events.

More than 80% of the stations received a D or failing grade from the study for their amount of enterprise. A similar study last year found only a quarter of the stations with such low scores.

Nine out of 10 stories on local TV news originate from police scanners or planned news events, the study found.

TV news executives surveyed by the project said their biggest obstacle to quality is a lack of staff and demands on them to fill an expanding amount of broadcast time. Many require their reporters to produce at least one story a day.

The study found a clear relationship between quality and high ratings: Stations given the lowest grades were twice as likely to be failing commercially.

“People in television news should be quite heartened by a study like this, because it shows that if you want to do good journalism, you can do well,” said Carl Gottlieb, deputy director for Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The study found that an investment in staff is more likely to pay off in higher ratings than getting new technology or equipment, such as news helicopters.

Crime news is still easily the most popular topic on local broadcasts, but it doesn’t dominate them as it used to. The percentage of crime news on the broadcasts dropped from 28% last year to 22% in 1999.

Researchers also found that in New York and Boston, stations aired their best newscasts at 6 p.m., even though they had more viewers at 11 p.m.

The project said the five best newscasts it found were on WFIE and WEHT in Evansville, Ind., WSVN and WTVJ in Miami and KRON in San Francisco.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism is affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Its study was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.