For many stations, deep-digging, hard-hitting investigative journalism
became a casualty of the shrinking local TV economy. Experienced gumshoe
reporters are expensive, and the costs of months-long investigations-including
surveillance, Freedom of Information Act requests and even deploying
helicopters to track a perp-can be hard to justify in ever-tighter budgets.
But for the six stations among the 14 winners of the 2010 duPont-Columbia
awards for their market-changing investigative work, such cuts are hard to
fathom. "Unfortunately, people identify investigative journalism as an area to
cut," says KMGH Denver VP/General Manager Byron Grandy, whose station won for a
report on grave emergency-response woes at Denver
International Airport.
"If a newsroom is not uncovering things, I'm not sure it's meeting the
expectations that people have for it. I believe it's a mistake."
The six stations winning the prestigious duPonts, called the broadcast-news
equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes by Columbia
University, which gives out both
awards, doubled the three that got awards in 2009. Other winners include HBO,
CBS News and NPR. Of the six stations, five have previously won duPonts, four
would be considered market leaders and five do business in DMAs 10 to 51. Three
are owned by publicly traded companies, and four of the five winning owners
have four or fewer stations.
DuPont director Abi Wright says 150 stations submitted entries, down from
175 the year before. Yet twice as many won. "I can only conclude that more good
work is being done [at the station level]," says Wright, who is not involved in
selecting the winners.
The stations say their robust investigative reporting is essential to
maintaining their news brand. WTVF Nashville's six-person I-team produces 10 to
15 reports a year, and increasingly pitches in on breaking news. "If you want
to stand out in your market, you have to deliver what the others don't," says
President/General Manager Debbie Turner, whose station's winning report used
its chopper to follow judges who failed to show up in court because they were
spending personal time or doing second jobs while the accused waited for their
cases to be heard.
Some stations focus on civic corruption, others on street-level scammers.
Some, such as WCAX in DMA No. 94 Burlington, Vt., don't have I-teams per se,
but encourage investigative work throughout the newsroom. "It's what we do,"
says President/General Manager Peter Martin. "If you're the trusted source of
information in your community, you have to do these sorts of things."
WSVN Miami's "Help Me Howard" segments get some 50,000 e-mails or calls a
year from viewers looking for help, says VP of News Alice Jacobs. WSVN won for
a series on storefronts selling prescription drugs to addicts. "We're a local
TV station-it's what we're supposed to do," she says. "We're supposed to help
the community."
But the winners say their motivation is as much about strategy as it is
about altruism. While publicly traded Belo Corp. has had its share of
belt-tightening the last few years, Executive VP Peter Diaz says its
investigative crews have remained essential to the business model. (Belo's KHOU
Houston and WWL New Orleans won 2010 duPonts.) "The station that does great
investigative work stands out in the market," he says. "That translates to
better ratings, which translates to better revenue, which translates to better
recruiting."
Indeed, as stations begin hiring talent after a long freeze, Diaz says a
reputation for impactful reporting is a big draw: "People want to work for
stations that do good news."
As much as they enjoyed claiming the silver batons in New
York last month, station executives take greater
pride in seeing the reporting bring about change. Jacobs says the "Pill Mills"
series prompted Florida to create
a system to track how and where prescription drugs are dispensed. Grandy says
KMGH's report pressured Denver's
airport to position an ambulance on-site for emergencies.
Like the other winners, Grandy credits the parent company for supporting
such enterprise. "McGraw-Hill has a strong belief in making sure what we do is
meaningful," he says, "and making sure we can keep doing it."
