So the title of this blog might be a bit of a downer for a lot of you.  You enjoy the holidays and hate to think of those times when you get stuck working.  But I’m writing this for all those newsroom managers out there who’ve been pulling their hair out trying to deal with holiday vacation requests while still having enough people to keep the shows on the air this week and next.  Here’s a handy, pocket—sized guide (if you print it and fold it up) to whip out and drop on your holiday-loving employees.  It’s a list of a few of the best reasons to work on Christmas—reasons news people can stay sane after working all the days everyone else has off…

I’m sitting at my desk this week trying to figure out how to Skype back my coverage from the Texas bowl later this month.  Our local team, the Missouri Tigers, plays there New Year’s Eve.  Between now and then I’m trying to come up with the method for my sports people to do live shots via the internet video phone service that I can actually put on the air.  We’ve been FTP’ing for a while now.  But we have yet to Skype live.  I know other stations do it.  I know Oprah does it.  So now it’s time for us to do it and I’m determined to figure out how—all by myself.

I just spent the past weekend in Los Angeles helping judge the southern California RTNA’s Golden Mike awards.  The folks from RTNA were great hosts and I really enjoyed watching the work from all the talented folks in Los Angeles and the surrounding markets.  But what I didn’t enjoy was getting there.  Thanks to my RTDNA chairmanship, 2009 has been a very busy travel year for me.  And that has meant a lot more time in airports and on interstate highways.  And that’s where I’m running into my problems. What I’ve noticed, whether flying or driving, is the growing occurrence of what I like the call “human chains.” 

To: Tiger Woods, Professional Golf Superstar
From: The Media, Professional Golf Superstar Makers

Mr. Woods:

It has come to our attention that it is your desire to keep the details surrounding your recent car accident to yourself.  You have issued a statement on your web site saying, “This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way.”  That may be well and good for the other 300 million people in the country who are NOT Tiger Woods, but this approach—both the written web statement and the request for privacy—just won’t due.  You are who you are thanks as much to media interest as to your own golf ability, and we, the media, won’t settle for this approach you’re taking…

Here it is Thanksgiving week and I feel the need to write something connected to that holiday.  I began to tick off my possible topics and realized I’d already robbed Peter to pay Paul in some earlier blogs.  I recall writing about what I am thankful for in modern newsrooms way back in the summer (great timing there).  I also wrote about football regarding our ongoing scrimmages with athletic conferences and their shortsighted media policies.  So if thankfulness and football are out as Thanksgiving topics, what’s left?  It could only be gluttony. We’re raised to think that gluttony is a sin.  It’s literally on a list, of course.  Around the end of the Sixth Century, Pope Gregory I took eight sins the Greeks saw as the most egregious, narrowed them to seven (changing a few in the process), and thus, the Seven Deadly Sins were born…

Last month, with the flip of two letters, the Radio-Television News Directors Association -- better known as the RTNDA -- became the RTDNA, the Radio Television Digital News Association. It marked the second name change in the organization's history, which was founded in 1946 as the National Association of Radio News Directors. It embraced television and became RTNDA in 1952. By whatever combination of those five letters, RTDNA is the world's largest organization for TV and radio journalists representing professionals in the United States and in more than 20 other countries.

There are those times in our newscasts and our stations when things don’t go exactly as planned. Luckily, most of those gaffes happen without too many people taking notice. After all, we’re only human. Compound those human frailties with the complexities of modern television and radio facilities, and even more problems can erupt. As I said, most happen without much fanfare or complaint, chalked up to a “%#@%$ happens” philosophy among much of the audience. Other times though, it seems as if everyone is watching when the big error hits. Yesterday was one of those days at my station. We carry Oprah. And in case you were in Antarctica for the last three weeks or so, yesterday was the day Oprah interviewed Sarah Palin.

The big story last week was undoubtedly the terrible violence at Fort Hood in Texas.  Most of us were probably in our newsrooms when we first heard about the shootings that afternoon. As we jumped into action for our own newscasts, we had to keep an eye on the information flowing from the area.  The common practice is to tune to CNN, Fox News Channel, or MSNBC.  In my newsroom we tuned to MSNBC, tracking the details coming from the scene.  It was there I saw one of my former reporters live on the scene outside the base.  Jade Mingus stood right at the front gate, relaying information she was receiving from her own senses — the sights, sounds, and commotion all around her.  Later, she had the chance to tell everyone at once what happened while doing a live talkback with Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News…

We’re covering eleven elections in nine counties across central Missouri today.  That’s not a lot.  Typical elections for us involve 200 races or more.  But those are general elections in even-numbered years—the days we elect presidents and governors and such.  Today is different.  Officially, Missouri calls it a “public election” day.  And it’s one of six such days this year. That’s right, Missouri’s had six election days in this odd-numbered year—February 3, March 3, April 7, June 2, August 4, and November 3.  That’s crazy. Now, I’m not anti-political or anything.  I have two advanced degrees in political science and love talking all things politics.  I even own the DVDs for HBO’s “K Street.” 

Thirty years ago, when I was a student reporter here in Columbia, I can remember how easy it was to reach just about any government official I wanted. Even the governor himself was an easy get on just a moment’s notice.  All it usually took was a call to his secretary and within the hour, the governor would have me in for an interview. I can even recall one time on a particularly tight deadline, I actually knocked on the governor’s office door facing into the Capitol rotunda.  About a minute later, the face of Joe Teasdale himself cracked the door and asked what I wanted.  I asked to shoot a quick sound bite and Teasdale stepped out into the hallway to face my CP-16…

When it comes to newsroom management, I’m not a good communicator.  My employees know it and I know it.  I know why that is, and maybe I’m just kidding myself, but I think a lot of other managers are in the same boat. The reason for me is that there seems to be so much for me to handle personally I don’t have time to keep everyone else up to date. And it’s only gotten worse. Back when I only had three newscasts a day, it wasn’t that bad. I seemed to have slow parts of the day and week where I had time to visit with people and keep them in the loop. Now we’re publishing 24/7. Every manager is driven by a looming deadline always just minutes away from whatever time it is now. And at least in my case, that sure doesn’t leave much time for thoughtful communication with the staff.

If you’re reading this blog then by now you have discovered that what was once  “RTNDA” is now “RTDNA,” The Radio Television Digital News Association.   I won’t go into a lot of details about the specifics of the name change here – you can read those in number of other places on the RTDNA.org web site.  But what I will talk about is what the new RTDNA is not.  It is not New Coke. If you were old enough to have been drinking something other than mother’s milk in 1985, then you probably know what New Coke is.  For those of you younger than that, I’ll give a very brief backgrounder. The Coca-Cola Company took its famously successful Coca-Cola drink and—without anyone really asking for it, changed its formula in 1985.

I’m always on the lookout for new apps for my iPhone, especially those that will deliver news. As far as national and international news goes, one of my favorites has got to be the Associated Press app. That only do I like the depth of stories in the app, but I like the way it gives me quick news alerts on breaking stories. The other day an alert went off and I went to the AP app to see what was. After I read the breaking news I started looking around the rest of the stories on the phone at that time. I stumbled into the “Most Shared” stories section of the app, and found a very interesting list. 

I had the pleasure over the weekend of participating in the RTNDF news leadership workshop at CNN in Atlanta. I’m going to break my general rule of not writing about RTNDA matters in this column because there was something happening at this seminar worth sharing with all of you. I didn’t organize the event.  RTNDF executive director Kathleen Graham and meeting/convention coordinator Audrey Lamb did all that hard work. I wasn’t an instructor, leaving that job to the far superior Jill Geisler from Poynter, Chip Mahaney from Scripps, and Victor Hernandez from CNN. Instead, other than offering an official greeting here and there, I got to be part of a three-man Cover It Live team. Myself, Ed Esposito, and Steve Safran all worked to provide contextual coverage of the event live to our website and archived for you to look at now.

I imagine this blog’s going to get some people complaining I don’t know what real news is.  But that’s the reason I’m writing it now.  I’ve had this one in the back of my mind for some time—longer than I’ve been writing this RTNDA Chairman’s blog—and I was just waiting for the right time to release it. The right time seemed to roll around once all of us in the news business decided that the apparent murder of a 24-year-old graduate student in New Haven, Connecticut was the biggest story in the country…

I hope by now you’ve checked out the piece we posted with regular news viewers from Kansas City reacting to coverage by CNN and other outlets of the Potomac River scare on 9/11.  The focus group was part of RTNDF’s “New Tech Creates New Pressures” workshop held Friday and Saturday to help news managers navigate the today’s complicated news delivery environment.  Nearly 50 of your peers—including me—had the chance to sit down and listen to viewers talk openly about what they love and hate about TV news.  Now, I’m not a negative sort, but the things they hate always tell me more than the things they love.  Workshop leader Al Tompkins (ably assisted by KPNX’s Lynn French) summed it up well following the panel, letting the assembled journalists know that viewers sometimes find it hard to tell us what they want us to do, simply because they don’t know what’s possible.  But they can almost always tell us what they hate, because they’ve been watching us do it for years…

Have you noticed that the commissioners of the major collegiate athletic conferences are starting to sound more and more like Brangelina every day?  Think I’ve lost it?  Stick with me here and you’ll see how the comparison makes sense. There’s no doubt that some of the great fame Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie enjoy right now has come from the fine body of work each has put together as a screen actor.  Both move effortlessly from heavy drama to light comedy and both have undeniable screen presence that doesn’t come along all that often…

The topic for this week’s blog emerged in the midst of my current trip to move my daughter to college in Boston.  My wife’s glaring at me now for typing away as we drive in the car, so I’ll keep this one brief.  But I think I can make my point in just a few words (in fact, that’s even part of my point). The trip (by car from Missouri to Massachusetts and back) put me in the perfect place to experience a multimedia mix of news about the death of Ted Kennedy.  The story began with a first for me—my first major news event I first heard about on Twitter.  I’ll admit up front I’m not a rabid Twitter user…

It’s back-to-school time at journalism and communication schools around the country.  Your future employees are making their way into the classroom to prepare themselves for a career in reporting, producing, and more.  One fall tradition over the last decade or so is for little Beloit College in Wisconsin to release what it calls its “Mindset List.” The idea is that the students entering college this fall—in all areas of study, not just journalism—are the product of the times in which they have been raised, and that those times are far different from the ones in which we grew up.  This year’s list (for the class of 2013) highlights what the world is like for students born in 1990 and 1991…

As a TV news director, I sort of feel like I have a pretty cool job.  It’s the sort of job that you figure your kids must go to school and tell their friends about, and everyone thinks I’m the coolest dad with the coolest job is school–at least I thought until the daughter of the owner of the landmark pizza place in town moved into my daughter’s class—then I was number two on the coolness chart.  But I digress.  This blog is not about pizza and not even about being cool.  It’s about the question I get asked most about my job.  The question isn’t about all the famous people I’ve met.  It isn’t about those times I was in mortal danger while out covering a story as a young photographer.  It’s not even about all the gatekeeping power I wield.  It’s this: “How many e-mails do you get a day?”…