It’s Time to Stop Sending Television Reporters into the Field Alone

-first published in Substack blog “The “Last Editor” on September 24, 2025

I finally got swipe access to KOMU-TV this week. Now, you may be saying to yourself “Didn’t Stacey work at KOMU for 28 years? Wasn’t he the news director for most of that time? How can he not have swipe access?” It’s true, I spent nearly three decades in that newsroom. But when I left the news director role in 2014 to start Mizzou’s Documentary Journalism program, we didn’t have swipe access. We had a keypad with a code—numbers that would be easy to remember like our street address—to allow students and employees into the newsroom. In my intervening years running the documentary center, I would still go to KOMU frequently to Tiger Chair (iykyk), but someone would just let me in for that. And, since I retired, when I return to campus for recruiter visits the same would happen. Finally, KOMU executive producer Randy Reeves said, “It’s time you have swipe access!” So he set me up (thanks, Randy!). Now I swipe my university ID and I’m in.

A locked newsroom door with limited access seems so commonplace to most of you that you can’t remember a time when it your building didn’t have one.

But it’s still a relatively new feature at KOMU. The station, though owned by the University of Missouri, is not on campus in Columbia proper. It actually sits five miles (as the crow flies) southeast of the School of Journalism on U.S. 63 headed toward Jefferson City. That rural location meant for years we didn’t really get foot traffic and the doors to the building were unlocked 24 hours a day. It wasn’t until about the mid-1990s that we had any concerns about locking the place. After a couple of weirdo encounters by the talent away from the station, two newsroom employees told me they’d be more comfortable if the station doors were locked. I have to admit I hadn’t even thought about locking the doors, but saw their concern and got the locks installed. I still feel a little ashamed I hadn’t been proactive and installed the locks before the asked, but we were basking in a time that just seemed safe.

Flash forward to today and political violence—including violence against journalists—hangs over our work every day. Just last Friday, someone fired three shots through a lobby window at KXTV ABC 10 in Sacramento. Police have a suspect in custody, a 64-year-old man whom the U.S. Attorney’s Office says had notes in his car reading “Do the Next Scary Thing” and “For hiding Epstein & ignoring red flags. Do not support Patel, Bongino, & AG Pam Bondi. They’re next. – C.K. from above.” If these notes are genuine and from the suspect, this would seem to be a politically-motivated attack on the television station—an affiliate of ABC, the network which had suspended Jimmy Kimmel just two days before the shooting.

My innocent view of the world in the unlocked KOMU newsroom of 1995 is a thing of the past.

Aggressive confrontations between the public and members of the media have moved from rare to nearly commonplace. Who can forget the T-shirt seen at a 2016 Trump rally—and for sale at Walmart—emblazoned with the words, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required.” Or the comment by Trump at a 2024 campaign rally that he “wouldn’t mind” if someone shot through to news media covering the event to try to get him. Anyone working in a newsroom now has stories about the nasty comments and gestures they get when they’re out in the field. This isn’t normal and it’s inching closer and closer to real tragedy—tragedy that could happen over and over again.

So what can we do about it? First and foremost, TV stations need to stop sending journalists into the field alone—for any story. Our colleagues in the purely print and digital space have always been lucky to work mostly anonymously. A pad and pen don’t instantly give you away as a reporter as clearly as a TV camera, tripod and LiveU backpack do. Some TV groups have already stopped doing solo live shots, but others still have reporters out there alone, hoping measures like not doing live shots at night and not near crime scenes will protect the journalists in the field. Sadly, I think that’s becoming a false hope. A reporter going live, looking over her notes and trying to perform a story perfectly is too distracted to see what’s happening around her. Ask Tori Yorgey, a reporter at WSAZ-TV in West Virginia back in 2022 when she was hit by a car while going live. Yorgey was unhurt, but the incident could have been much worse.

We need to have journalists in teams to watch each other’s backs.

There is usually safety in numbers, and a lone bad actor is less likely to try something when he’s outnumbered. This isn’t a foolproof approach to safety, of course. We’re all too familiar with the fatal shooting of reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward in Roanoke ten years ago. But they were killed by someone they knew, a former reporter colleague from the station, not a stranger with a political message.

Teaming up journalists in pairs shouldn’t be limited to live shots. Reporters are just as distracted gathering their gear from the car and lugging it around to set up for interviews or to collect cover video. It’s still too easy for someone with bad intentions to approach a reporter working alone, getting close to do harm before anyone notices—and then it’s too late.

You may be thinking that doubling crew size in the field will be a financial burden on the stations. Yes, there are some costs to doing this. But it is every station’s responsibility to provide a safe working environment for its employees. Federal rules from OSHA require expensive safety equipment and procedures in many workplaces. The owners of those companies may not like the regulations, but the good ones follow the rules to keep their workers safe—and the bad ones do it to avoid the fines that come from violations. Stations without dedicated photographers (which everyone should have anyway) can pair reporters to work on two stories or more together throughout the day, keeping the output level consistent with what comes from reporters working alone.

Teaming up journalists in the field is a good first step, but there are other ways to make everyone safer on the job.

A few of those include:

Stop driving marked news vehicles: In this day and age, I’m not sure how much those rolling billboards help drive viewers to the content. We once figured that if potential viewers saw a news car in their area, they’d tune in that night to see what was going on. That’s a quaint notion in today’s media world in which they would probably go to Next Door to see what it is, rather than your newscast. Plus, that marked car is just as likely to generate some raised middle fingers as it is to get people to watch at six. The other benefit of all unmarked cars would be ending those phone calls about news cars speeding down the highway or parking in disabled spots.

Move to smaller cameras and less equipment: We are lucky to live in an age in which our phones produce video better than needed for broadcast television. I’m still a news photographer at heart and sort of miss the 50-pound RCA TK-76 I lugged around the streets of Orlando back in 1981. There was something about a heavy camera that made it all seem more serious and professional—even with my ongoing back pain nearly 45 years later. But big TV cameras—even big by 2025 standards—stick out like a sore thumb. Throw in a tripod and it’s pretty obvious when a journalist is at work on the street. Some newsrooms are using phones regularly for field work, investing in mics and other accessories that keep the quality professional. Switching to more stealthy gear would allow us to move much more anonymously through the streets to gather our stories.

Avoid setting up lights at night: As with the previous point, technology has come a long way in terms of how sensitive our cameras are in low light. We don’t need to flood a scene with a 4000-watt HMI light anymore to see what’s going on. I love a beautifully lit live shot as much as the next person, but I’d be willing to give that up if we could keep from giving up our locations so easily. Moving a camera closer to the reporter and the reporter closer to the scene of what she’s talking about should make the best use of natural lighting to see what we’re covering.

Stop announcing where we’ll be in advance: A staple of the summertime newscast is the county fair live shot. We send the meteorologist out to give the fair forecast and eat some funnel cakes. We always promote the met’s appearance, of course, to drive viewers there. But telegraphing where our talent will be in advance allows someone with bad intentions to make a plan and carry it out. There are some regularly schedule events at which people can figure we’ll be, from high school football games to important news conferences, but there’s no need to regularly give someone a calendar listing of where to find us and when.

Hire private security when necessary: This is becoming more and more common, and that’s a good thing. Even pairing up journalists won’t be enough in some risky locations. We can’t always predict when something will turn ugly, but for those events at which we can—heated political demonstrations, crime scenes, etc.—let’s anticipate the need and meet it. Every news organization should have a contract with a professional security outfit that can accompany crews when needed to help assure their safety in the field. And, of course, stepping up safety around our TV station grounds is equally as important. Locked gates and fences, cameras monitored around the clock to look for threats and a general increase in building security is an important step.

Give every journalist the right to leave a scene—or not enter one—if it doesn’t look safe: I actually think a lot of newsrooms already have this policy, but it’s still worth mentioning for those that don’t. No producer, assignment editor or other manager can judge—from the safety of the newsroom—just how dangerous a story scene is. That decision must rest with the journalists in the field and the newsroom leaders must support whatever decisions those in the field make. The newscast may lose a live shot or even a whole story, but it’s not worth risking the lives of the crew in the field to fill 90 seconds in the newscast.

It's not a matter of “if” but of “when” an attack like the one on KXTV will happen again—and whether someone will be hurt or killed. The same goes for violence in the field against our reporters. The blame for these attacks will go squarely on the shoulders of those who commit them—and those in power who encourage them. Let’s be sure we don’t share any of that blame for taking these threats too lightly.