Eyes & Ears: TV partnership brings cameras into newsroom

Typically a place where sources come by for interviews or where reporters ask questions via telephone in the newsroom, we’re now on the receiving end of some of that questioning.

A recently agreed upon news partnership with KSPR brings TV viewers “This Week in Springfield Business Journal,” a preview of the issues just hitting newsstands, home mailboxes and office desks. The segment profiling our top weekly stories airs during the 10 p.m. Sunday night newscasts and Monday morning shows. It launched May 25 with Reporter Matt Wagner’s breaking story of a new community bank filing for state charter. The story on the proposed Springfield First Community Bank, which at press time had yet to be picked up in other local media, was published in the May 26 issue of SBJ.

The news-sharing arrangement gives KSPR business news from those they believe to be the expert sources: SBJ’s staff. KSPR morning anchor Kyle Bosch and a cameraman visit SBJ each week to interview editors and reporters about the top stories.

The KSPR team takes our scripts, collects topical B-roll, and Bosch crafts his own copy based off of our material. On occasions, we’ll also share information graphics and illustrations developed by designer Aaron Scott.

The camera time by SBJ’s expert sources will vary between editors and reporters, particularly when it’s a story a reporter’s been following for a long time or for which they have special insight.

Practice, practice, practice

It took about a month of practice before SBJ’s word gurus passed on-screen approvals. I thank Bosch, who’s been professional to a tee, and the KSPR team for their patience with us. After all, we’re in print media for a reason.

I must say, it’s been challenging on the other side of the questions. Perhaps, it’s the camera in my face. That will require some getting used to, even though I have brief experience on the TV side.

In college at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., I was a communication major with a double emphasis in journalism and broadcasting. The university had a greater focus on radio because it broadcast a Chicagoland Christian music station, as well as a smaller campus station. I didn’t take to the radio too well, so when I moved to Springfield for a semester in fall 1999, I tried my hand at TV to fulfill my broadcasting internship.

I interned under Ned Reynolds at KY3, where I learned a lot and had a blast. But the mock studio sessions they afforded me proved that print was my thing.

Those memories behind the anchor desk make me shudder; I still have the tapes if I ever need a laugh.

But here we are making SBJ history with a TV partnership. The idea originated from talks between KSPR News Director Brad Belote and SBJ Business Development Director Mike Noggle, and it materialized during a lunch discussion by the three of us around an upstairs table at Nonna’s.

Web share

The partnership also has a Web component through which our daily Web headlines are fed to KSPR’s Web site via really simple syndication, or RSS, and link back to sbj.net. Once our Web redesign is launched, perhaps before fall, the plan is for sbj.net to carry KSPR weather and daily headlines.

This component gives sbj.net readers another layer of content, while KSPR online receives targeted business news. Under the banner of Web diversification, it gives news consumers more options at the quickly evolving electronic media smorgasbord.

As SBJ Online Editor Dee Dee Jacobs learned at a recent journalism conference held by The Kansas City Star, news sites should build a community of readers and offer plenty of options to digest. A remark in Jacobs’ conference summary that sticks with me is that traditional news sites are becoming idea sites.

This Week in Springfield Business Journal clips also are posted to www.kspr.com; search “SBJ.”

Here’s an idea: Join us in the changes, view our new content format, and tell me what you think.

Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.