How to Operate a Radio News Department with a Small Staff

As staffing at radio stations become smaller, employees are asked to do more with less. This makes running a competent news department especially difficult.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Telephone
• Fax Machine
• Computer with internet and email

How to Operate a Radio News Department with a Small Staff

1. Take stock of what staff you do have on hand. Any and all staff can be called into regular news gathering duty if needed, even clerical and sales staff. Such a person could be utilized for something as simple as collecting news releases to reading news on the air.

2. Contact department heads at all colleges and universities in your area for potential interns. If a school does not have a communication department, look for interns in the English department. Interns can do anything from filing news copy to attending local meetings to reading news on the air.

3. Prepare a master list of contacts and zero in on a single contact person to whom you have introduced yourself and your station. This would include all police and fire departments (even volunteer), emergency services, schools or board of education, etc. This will save you time when trying to track down information on a story. Police, fire and emergency services should be placed on a "call sheet" and contacted directly at least once a day to find out about recent newsworthy activity. Make sure each is sending you official news releases, whether through phone, fax or email. If a website is available for any of these, bookmark it and check it daily.

4. Develop a working relationship or agreement with as many newspapers in your listening area as possible. You will need your station manager's input and agreement to do this. This will allow you to use material freely and perhaps have the papers supply you with news content directly.

5. Create a "News Watcher" program with your listeners. Run advertisements telling listeners to contact the station when they "see news happening." Credit the listener when a story is used. Be sure to confirm any information you receive this way. Extend this concept to emergency professionals (Police, Fire, E.M.S.) in your area. Directly or through their company, seek taxi drivers to become "news watchers." They often are the pulse of an area and the first to know of accidents or other emergency incidents. Members of neighborhood crime watch groups are also excellent resources.

6. Liberally use public service announcements as news stories. Since these generally arrive to the station well in advance of an event's date, you have time to contact a representative and develop a news angle and prepare a future news story.

7. If your station airs a long-form public affairs interview show, try to schedule local politicians as much as possible. A ten-minute interview is likely to touch on enough subjects to produce several news stories that you can prepare after the interview for a future newscast.

Tips & Warnings

• Be sure that any staff member obtaining or writing news is aware of the "five W's of a story: who, what, where, when and why.
• Stay well-read and up-to-date on events in your area.
• Any time you are using a story from another source, such as a newspaper or television station, you must credit them in the story. For example, open such a story with, "According to the Daily Times,..." Failing to do this is not just bad form, it's plagiarism.

[andre7514]

on 9/17/2008 This is effective information that I needed. Thanks!