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Does TV/Radio News Over-Rely On Newspapers?

Here in the Charleston, SC area, our radio and TV stations basically rip and read much of their news from the Post and Courier.

For example, when there is something happening Friday night, it gets in the Saturday paper, but TV doesn't get it till Sunday, and the radio doesn't even cover it until Monday morning.

They say, "according to the Post and Courier," but they usually read our local newspaper website to get stories, not using the scanners for them.

Radio news has gone down the tubes in the last ten years, but Charleston actually has fared better than other markets. We have three news-talk stations, two with newscasts from 6am-6pm, traffic all day on one station, during drive time on the others, and a small news operation on one of them.

Twenty-five years ago, Charleston was a much different market. All of the big stations, including WTMA, WOKE (1340), WQSN (1450), WCSC (1390), and even WPAL (730) had news operations, often beating the TV stations, which (like most smaller markets at the time) only had news at 6 and 11, with a noon on Channel 5.

The way people are getting news has changed a lot. Even fifteen years ago, almost everyone listened to the radio for news, because there was very little local morning news, and if there was, it was only 30 minutes long.

Now, there is two hours of morning news, the internet has gone full circle, and you can get the news on your cell phone.
 
The big co-owned Cox entities in Atlanta (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WSB-TV, WSB-AM) all maintain seperate operations, and the newspaper is in seperate offices a few miles away from the TV/radio studios. There is very little collaberation between them, although there is some on occasion.

Last week, the AJC announced layoffs. The newspaper industry is hurting thanks to the internet and self-canabalism (putting their stories online for free). Meanwhile, while WSB-TV prints money, and can afford to send reporters to anywhere (I literally mean anywhere) in the world to do stories. Because they are owned by a private entity (along with the AJC, while WSB-AM is under the publicly traded Cox Radio umbrella), WSB-TV is the exception to the rule. Most TV stations are owned by publicly traded companies, and have to meet the shareholders needs (for money) first. That is why they are cutting costs left and right.

Expect the shodification of news coverage to continue...in more ways than one.
 
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