Am I the only one who thinks that local newscasters should probably try a little harder? I don’t mean that they don’t work hard. In fact, I think that their jobs are sometimes thanklessly difficult. These poor folks are required to fill a fixed amount of time day after day. Sometimes, those days are pleasantly newsless. You know the days when the only story to be told is that someone’s dog got loose and dug up the next door neighbor’s petunias. How does one transform that into a complete newscast? So, yes, I have sympathy for them.
What I find questionable, however, is how poorly many of these news professionals communicate their stories. While they are all able to speak English, they don’t always speak it in ways that are comprehensible. Most newscast attest to this. The person read something from a teleprompter that makes little sense. This may be caused by poor grammar, mixing tenses, lack of coordination between subject and predicate, and language that simple doesn’t match the person speaking. This is obviously caused by poor writing or editing. Now, I could give this a pass for most folks. We have not chosen public communication for a career. Nor, have we spent time and money at university learning communication skills.
They have.
So, there’s no excuse for the aural abuse we viewers are subjected to every day.
The most egregious errors are made by those who don’t work from a teleprompter. You know, those who report from remote locations and, perhaps the worst offenders, Meteorologists. Yes, those weather folks who try to educate and communicate the fraught world of climate. I suppose that I should give them some slack. After all, they are speaking without the benefit of a prepared script. There reports are supposed to flow seamlessly from one projected graphic to another. And, they have to do that in a finite amount of time or risk the Wrath of Khan, er, the Producer. I get it.
What I don’t get is how a weather caster can take a 30 second tease and turn it unto a word salad that no one can possibly understand. I watched that happen not long ago. The person was, I think, trying to describe an event called an Atmospheric River flowing out of the Pacific Ocean. Somehow he presented our risk in Ohio in terms that, well, I don’t really know. He made no sense whatsoever. Now, I think that he is truly a wonderful person. He seems like it in his interactions with others on the set. His butchery of the English language, however, is difficult to listen to. “Titrate?” Really? Who talks like that? I have a pretty fair vocabulary and I had to look that up. It reminds me of a sign my Dad used to have over his desk, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance; baffle them with bullshit.”
Part of the problem is that these folks try too hard to impress us with their knowledge. They have spent large sums of money to learn the science of weather. So, they naturally want to prove to themselves, (and their parents?), that the money was well-spent. However, the very best meteorologists on air are the ones who are their genuine selves. There is one person in our market who sometime jerks and stammers through the weather like any regular, blue-collar person would. It works for him. His entire persona is regular, blue collar guy. He rarely wears a jacket and many times appears without a tie and his sleeves rolled up. His presentation and character match. He doesn’t try to appear as something he is not.
There is another who appears completely unpretentious. He jokes with others on set and presents the facts in a way that allows viewers to feel like they are friends.
There are too many others who don’t seem to know the difference of East from West. And, please, don’t get me started on the overuse of the word “corridor” when speaking about geography. “Rain will impact those west of the I-71 corridor” is something that should be spoken by no one, EVER! Especially when the rain event is actually happening EAST of I-71!
While I’m on a nice rant, let me mention one more thing.
Who ever told local news outlets that watching someone play with a computer is entertaining? I say this about how stations turn over their broadcasts to meteorologists for hours on end during sever weather events. Please don’t misunderstand me! I get it that sever weather can have devastating impacts on people. We just need to look at how that Atmospheric River affected millions of folks on the west coast. Warning people is a public service that must be engaged in.
But, not for hours on end by weather folks who have absolutely no aptitude for it. They are trained, and paid, to fill a time slot of several minutes. They prepare for that and form a weathercast that will inform and entertain people. When the weather turns severe, however, they are called on to ad lib while showing various views of radar and wind and all sorts of mean, nasty things. Then it becomes painfully obvious that they are totally out of their depth. No one trained them to speak coherently and meaningfully for that length of time. It would absolutely be more effective to live report the initial risk then run a crawler at the bottom of the screen with necessary details. If conditions deteriorate, break in for a few moments to update live. Then, back to the crawler that actually reveals more than the droning on and on about things that truly have little meaning for the lay observer.
Sorry. That’s a pet peeve of mine that I really needed to get off of my chest.
All in all, most people who inhabit the world of local news perform a service that our communities need. Especially, with the collapse of national news into sound bites that try to create fear so that viewers will not change the channel. Local news can truly present stories that have real meaning to their viewers.
But, really, could ya try a bit harder to communicate in language that is clear and understandable?
Oh, and quit with the “Breaking News” already! It’s like that boy who cried Wolf! No one listens anymore!
Ok, I’m done now.
Thank you for listening!
