He’s a man on a mission to change the industry for the better. “Everything from what [news] is to how we do it, to how we present it and distribute it, is in the process of kind of being upended right now,” said Vice President of News for Graham Media Group Sean McLaughlin. “My job’s actually gotten easier because people can no longer argue with the reality, this business is in trouble.”
Always thinking outside of the box, McLaughlin’s passion for news began in middle school. “I knew in eighth grade what I wanted to do,” he said. “I was sitting in the living room, and my mom was watching the news, and I had to come up with a project for two weeks at school and thought it might be kind of fun to go follow a reporter around.” McLaughlin called KSTP the next morning and asked to shadow their reporter.
After some more schooling, his childhood dreams came true. McLaughlin said, “I got a reporting job after doing an internship in Austin, Minnesota.” He later got into anchoring and worked a political reporter beat in Springfield, Illinois before becoming a News Director at 27. “I was a rare news director that came out of the field, and I found that very helpful to me because for me, it’s all about the story,” he said. “As I sit here all these years later, it’s still all about the story, not the newscast which I think is kind of an antiquated relic that’s about to go by the wayside.”
The former Scripps Senior Vice President is now taking a fresh look on how to monetize the industry, which is rapidly changing. “One of the problems I think in the industry is the audience has changed completely but the way we do news has hardly changed at all,” he said. “I think that gap is causing a lot of problems.”
One major example he gave is the time newscasts are aired saying, “The local news times are not even close to convenient for the way I live my life. I get up in the morning, I go to the gym for an hour. I come home. I’m in a crazy rush the rest of the day until I get out the door. There is no way I have time to turn on the TV and watch the news in the morning.”
McLaughlin believes it’s more than a morning news problem as he adds, “I’m still at work [when the evening news is happening]. I end up watching the news as my job but if I was running a machine somewhere, there’s no way I’m watching the news at 5 or 6.”
He noted, “70% of the people who consume our content are consuming it off our platforms and in ways that we don’t get monetized for that. The days of us just relying on advertising revenue from TV stations and retransmission fees paid by cable companies, that train’s left.”
To future journalists looking to follow in his footsteps, McLaughlin put an emphasis on something he is very passionate about. “I was at the RTDNA board meeting in Los Angeles the last few days and we talked about the future of the industry and the future of journalism,” he said. “I worry young people don’t value journalism enough and vetted, real information. When I look at everything going on in society, there’s a lot of things that are f***ed up right now.
“When I look at what’s really f***ed up, and this isn’t political because I think you could talk to people on either side and they will both say this, there’s not trust in journalism anymore. Misinformation is a big, big problem. Multiple versions of reality exist in our space right now, which is not healthy or good or sustainable.”
With the onslaught of young journalists being quasi activists, he wants them to be aware of implicit bias saying, “I still need to be able to take a step back as a journalist or as somebody who makes decisions about journalism and make sure that we’re inclusive, that we’re telling the whole story, that we’ve covered it thoroughly because a lot of people think they’re covering things in a way that doesn’t show bias, when it can easily happen.”
McLaughlin added, “As happens in newsrooms, what are the predictors of bias right now or what are the predictors of political affiliation right now in education level? City versus rural income level will get into most newsrooms. Check, check, check, check. You’re going to absolutely have a liberal bias. It’s not intended. Nobody came in today and said, ‘let’s go to the left’. It’s just ingrained in everybody. And so, I think you need to be aware of what your implicit bias is.”
Most importantly McLaughlin said, “In the craft of journalism, you trade your ability to be able to blast your opinions on social media around controversial or complicated political issues. Otherwise, people aren’t going to believe you and people believing you is the currency. Your credibility is at the center of who you are as a journalist.”
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