Until Jan. 1, 2019, Gannett had an agreement with the television stations that used to be a part of the company until it split in two pieces in June 2015. We could post stories, photos and video from the Tegna TV stations, and they could post USA TODAY Network content.
The good news was the stations were located in large markets where Gannett lacked newspapers. The bad news? Well, many TV reporters don’t write well, gloss over sourcing in their scripts and and use their best “real people” and quotes on camera but not in the words accompanying the video.
That makes translating something on a TV station’s website into a story suitable for usatoday.com a challenge, especially in the middle of a busy newsroom where transcribing a video just isn’t quick nor feasible.
Posting an AP story when something from our sites is available is frowned upon. Combining AP with our sites is encouraged.
When news broke about a Dallas priest disappearing after being accused of sexual abuse, I rewrote the lead from WFAA-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth to grab the attention of an online reader. Broadcast style often dictates backing into a story because a viewer hears something interesting and then starts to pay more attention.
My extensive rewrite also wove in AP and information from the church’s old social-media posts to provide background and a little bit about the Pennsylvania grand jury report on that state’s Catholic priest sexual-abuse cases because both events had happened within the same week.
