Yes, we’ve done this before.
Much like history, some news stories tend to repeat themselves, a lot. A few come about semi-annually while others seemingly appear every hour on the hour.
I’m not talking about the telling or the presentation of said tales, I mean the actual stories themselves. We know they’re coming, and we even know where and when so you would think we would be ready or at least slightly prepared in order not to be redundant, repetitive or retiring.
Easier said than done.
I’m guessing I’ve reached at least a baker’s dozen when it comes to writing, editing or producing pieces on Daylight Saving Time (DST). Within that collection includes interviews with climatologists, psychiatrists, historians, a quantum physicist and a bunch of people who just can’t get up in the morning.
Changing the clocks is a guaranteed two-hitter for news outlets, fifty percent better than Groundhog Day, Black Friday or the Swallows’ return to Capistrano. (No, nobody covers it when the birds depart.)
With stories like the time change, it’s not always so easy to keep these things fresh. It actually becomes a “here we go again” moment and who draws the short straw in putting something together.
The recurring stories are necessary, even essential as they help form the template of a show or broadcast much like they do in real life. With that in mind, you still want to do them justice and so much of our jobs involve creativity that the challenge is often what makes things fun.
DST allows you to dust off elements like videos and graphics of the backward or forward analog clock or the ticking timepiece. (All things by the way that anyone under 35 is probably unfamiliar with) but it’s the settings, the natural sound and the B-roll that often take the most thought.
Elements aside, the restless among us want to be original or perhaps even thought-provoking. Actually, we want attention to our work if at all possible and these recurring topics make that work all the more arduous.
My clever idea (I said clever, not new) this time out was to speak with a psychiatrist and explore the connection with Falling Back to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Imagine my joy when I was informed that there is in fact, no connection. The two are mutually exclusive. During my interview, however, our expert kept referring to it as Daylight Savings Time so things were not a total loss.
By the way, the ubiquitous go-to sidebar on DST is always the fire department’s message on changing out and checking your smoke detectors so there’s always a built-in in times of crisis or writer’s block.
More exciting but equally as pervasive is coverage of mammoth lottery drawings. This also happens to be a current part of the news cycle as the Powerball prize swells day by day.
Consider a visual timeline of the jackpot’s growth into a financial analyst’s explanation of the taxes a winner has to pay into the real-life risk of losing one’s anonymity: all fodder for spruced-up approaches or just a carnival wheel of return engagements?
The first stage of giant lottery stories is often to simply go and ask random people what they would do with the money. Basically, there are maybe four answers to these questions and we just go around and find different voices, accents and faces to either paraphrase or recite from what often sounds like a prepared script.
“It’s early retirement time” (You’re seventy-three.)
“I’m gonna buy a big house” (That’s great, what about the other four-hundred-seventy-three-million-eight-hundred-forty-seven-thousand-two-hundred-twenty-three-dollars and forty-one cents?)
“I’m springing for the full sports package”. (That answers that question.)
This time out, however, how about a different approach?
“What wouldn’t you do with the money?”
“How many family members (In-laws included) would NOT get a dime from you?”
But really, it is an ongoing battle unless you do in-depth pieces following the money the states take in and where that really goes or an occasional story of past winners who lost it all or publicly funded a charity.
Among my favorites are the inventive pieces detailing what one could buy with the winnings; which small country or island is in that price range or how large an air force could be funded with the lump sum payment.
It certainly tops two anchors at the desk trying to ad-lib their way through another, “well, if you don’t see me here tomorrow…”
Bill Zito has devoted most of his work efforts to broadcast news since 1999. He made the career switch after serving a dozen years as a police officer on both coasts. Splitting the time between Radio and TV, he’s worked for ABC News and Fox News, News 12 New York , The Weather Channel and KIRO and KOMO in Seattle. He writes, edits and anchors for Audacy’s WTIC-AM in Hartford and lives in New England. You can find him on Twitter @BillZitoNEWS.
