In these sleepy days of August, it is time to review news writing for your radio station. This includes news, sports, traffic, and weather reports. Considering that colleges teach news writing from a print, TV, or public radio bias, that approach doesn’t work for your radio presentation. It is all about storytelling.
It also needs to be short and quick. Your news stories must avoid irrelevant information. Sports reports have the same issue, and many examples I hear are filled with the same problems as news. Traffic reports sometimes focus too much on wrecks. Weather reports sometimes ignore the real reason why they exist in the age of dozens, if not hundreds, of weather apps. Why should radio stations still broadcast these reports?
Your news talk station must be a trusted voice in your community for news. Your listeners likely have a very low opinion of TV stations and newspapers. While your radio station’s news must be fair and down the middle, you must bring facts often ignored by local media. Fox News has built its news brand around a couple of concepts: fair and balanced. This does not include the opinion shows on the network. But, if you notice, opinions differing from the editorial bent of the network are often offered. Fox News frequently criticizes President Trump in their news. It doesn’t seem to hurt Fox News at all.
In fact, it makes them more credible. MSNBC and CNN infrequently criticized the Obama and Biden administrations. I don’t care how much you like any president—mistakes are always made. There are so many moving parts to any administration that some things don’t go well. Be factual. No matter what. Once a news department loses the trust of listeners, readers, and viewers, it is tough to earn that trust back. So, your news department must tell the truth. Facts matter, and even if there is blowback, ultimately your news department will be proven correct.
Our universities are turning out journalism graduates who have professors from print and television. The radio instruction that is taught is focused on public radio. Every j-school graduate that I have hired needs to be reprogrammed. There are many journalism schools that teach about social media, which can be quite helpful for any radio news department.
So, here are the brief instructions that I give to my news people: No story longer than three lines. Biggest details first. Governmental processes are the least important facts—don’t lead with governmental actions like, “There is a meeting tonight,” or, “Police arrested someone.” We don’t need to know about how much bail is. Story rotation is a fallacy. Biggest stories first. Your audience is likely completely different from 30 minutes ago. Lead with the biggest stories. If you have small stories, rotate those after the big stories. Pay attention to telling a story—yes, in three lines.
Sports reports are frequently just scores and previews of the next games. The scores are really not that important. The chronic gamblers in your audience already know whether they won or lost bets on the Twins/White Sox game last night. Sports is a quick summary of what is going on. My community focuses on Mizzou, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the St. Louis Cardinals. There is a very limited appeal to prep sports unless it is a state tournament.
Traffic reports are important for one big reason—they prove that people at the radio station are focused on what is going on in their community. Depending on your community, if there is a big tractor-trailer wreck on the drive home, it is the biggest story of the day. I have instructed local shows to focus completely on a big wreck in morning or afternoon drive if there is a main artery clogged by the accident. Even if the traffic is smooth, that’s great news. Talk about the positives.
Weather reports—yes, you can get the weather on demand at any time through Alexa or on your phone. But weather reports prove that you are focused on the community. Your station may have a weather partner in Accuweather, a local TV station, or another service. I heard a smaller weather service spend time on the light breeze from the southwest at 5–10 miles per hour. Yeah, the only time people are interested in wind velocity is when it’s a 60 mph gust.
In the old news/talk field, news, sports, weather, and traffic are cume builders that fuel the time spent listening machine from talk shows. A robust information infrastructure is essential to our mission. When it comes to news, sports, weather, and traffic, it is sometimes difficult to rationalize the return on investment. I argue that the information expenses are some of the most important dollars in your budget. Any news/talk radio station is expected to have the biggest stories of the moment. It is like the music station in your building ignoring the biggest hits. News/talk stations’ hits are the biggest things happening in the community.
Figure out ways to accentuate these service elements. If you are the program director, work with your station’s market manager, sales manager, and sales team to make sure that money is attached to every report. Mr. or Ms. PD, if your information team is making money, they will never be cut. What is the minimum ROI for any item on your station? Is it five times the cost? I don’t know, but you probably have the information. Make sure that your information team cannot be cut when bean counters are trying to save money.
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
Peter Thiele is a weekly news/talk radio columnist for Barrett Media, and an experienced news/talk radio programmer. He currently serves as News/Talk Format Captain for Zimmer Communications. Prior to joining Zimmer, Peter held programming positions in New York City, San Francisco, Des Moines, Little Rock, Greenville, Hunstville, and Joplin. Peter has also worked as a host, account executive and producer in Minneapolis, and San Antonio. He can be found on Twitter at @PeterThiele.
