by Beth Johnson | Apr 11, 2024 | App Articles, Survival Kit, The Latest, Writing Help
If I had a dollar for every shot of generic video in a story, I would be rich, on the beach living the high life! It’s so common, it’s almost become accepted in the industry. And that’s a big mistake because generic video does nothing to help viewers trust that you...
by Beth Johnson | Dec 7, 2021 | Survival Kit, The Latest
Mental health is a growing concern among TV news journalists. Old time journalists often were told to grit it out, suck it up, understand the stress and anxiety of the daily deadline pressures and, frankly, awful crime stories are part of the job. Surviving as a...
by Beth Johnson | Sep 16, 2021 | App Articles, Survival Kit, The Latest
I posted a question on @Survivetvjobs Twitter line. Within 24hours it had more than 29 thousand impressions. Talk about hitting a nerve. It was “Hey TV news journalists what do you do to relieve stress?” TV News is a stressful career no doubt. Now with more...
by Beth Johnson | Apr 9, 2021 | App Articles, Survival Kit, Writing Help
Our cliche list is still the most read section of Survive: 10 years later! So it seems like a good time to remind of a few ways to avoid cliche writing. In the past, we’ve discussed trimming words away, to eliminate a cliche. We discussed reading copy aloud in...
by Beth Johnson | Jul 31, 2020 | App Articles, Survival Kit, The Latest, Writing Help
This isn’t easy to admit. I get that. But if you keep writing fact errors, you need to own up to it and do these things to stop. In newsrooms nowadays, prevention techniques are not being taught much, and many times scripts aren’t being reviewed for accuracy. So...
by Beth Johnson | May 26, 2020 | App Articles, Source Building, Survival Kit, The Latest
I recently posted an article on lessons learned while covering the midwestern flood of ’93. It was an intense time for much of the region. We lived and breathed coverage for months. But luckily for me I had a news director who also understood that we had to help the...
