Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Before broadband and the Internet existed, veteran ABC News producer Av Westin would challenge his colleagues in the newspaper and magazine world.
"I used to say to them, 'You write me a paragraph describing a widow, recently bereaved, crying and bemoaning her fate, and I'll take 30 seconds of video and I'll win every single time,'" he recalls. "They couldn't argue with that."
Now, decades later, print journalists are adapting to broadband journalism on the Web. And in some ways they're ahead of their broadcast and cable competitors, says Westin, who chaired the panel judging entries for this year's first-ever News Emmy awards created for non-traditional viewing platforms such as computers, mobile phones and portable media players.
Out of 48 entries, the panel chose seven finalists. None of them came from traditional networks; several came from newspapers.
Westin says print outlets -- forced by economic realties to get into multimedia on the Internet -- are discovering that "there's a geometric increase in the amount of information and emotion you can convey if you combine good writing with good pictures. They see an opportunity to be a broadcaster without the need to have a TV station."
Former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, who served as a judge on the panel, says the panelists were "struck by the fact that the finalists did not come from traditional TV sources." He says results indicate that the Internet has leveled the playing field between print and electronic journalism and predicts that the "competitive arena is going to change as print companies become more fluent in use of video."
Peter Price, president of the National Television Academy, says the results reflect "the seismic change the television industry is going through with the growth of the Internet, cellphones and portable media players as credible news and entertainment sources."
He says, "I find it fascinating that in an age where there are daily reports that print is dying and that everybody is shifting their resources into electronic media, here we have print journalists reinventing their medium, taking their skill sets and applying them not to half-hour news programs but fast-paced, tightly produced reports for the Web."
CBS setting the stage for Couric
Although Katie Couric doesn't arrive on CBS' Evening News until September, CBS already is running a series of four promotion ads. Narrated and written by Bob Schieffer, whom she'll replace, the promos say how Couric will "have it covered," that the anchor chair "will be in good hands" with her. "She's tough. She's fair. She's a straight shooter. She'll be terrific. Just watch."
In an interview, Schieffer said he wanted to "get across that we are all looking forward to having Katie here and that she's going to be a great addition to the team. I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that's how I feel."
Rome Hartman, who produces the Evening News, says, "We have this big change coming, and promotion and preparing people for that change is a big part of what we or anybody else in this situation would do and is doing."
ABC has been touting new World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson as "Your Trusted Source." NBC has not unveiled any new campaign for Nightly News' Brian Williams.
Couric and Hartman set off on a six-city listening tour next week to talk to local residents about their news concerns.
E-mail pjohnson@usatoday.com
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
