The pace at 10News is so fast “you get whiplash sometimes,” Chelsea Tatham says.
By ASHLEY CAMPBELL
USFSP Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – In the dog-eat-dog world of local television news, there is another important layer of competition: Which station can get a story published online the fastest?
“We’re all fighting for that piece of pie,” said Chelsea Tatham, 28, a digital producer at 10News WTSP.
Tatham is one of seven digital producers in a newsroom where 150 staffers broadcast five and a half hours of newscasts per day, Monday through Friday, while also seeking a high profile on the web and social media.
In the 10News newsroom on Gandy Boulevard in northeast St. Petersburg, TVs mounted on the walls and every personal computer display current trending topics for stories.
They refresh every few minutes, so the staff can follow trends and track how often readers are clicking on the station’s stories.
Staff members have double monitors to help them multitask, whether it’s watching a trend, writing a story or editing a piece while adding information that is just arriving.
The entire newsroom stays connected with a work group chat. Frequent messaging means stories can be edited quickly, and communication about breaking news can be updated quickly and collectively.
A small black box on Tatham’s desk emits noise that sounds like a police scanner. Called the “squawk box,” it transmits voices and information that CBS News headquarters in New York sends to its more than 200 affiliate stations.
The information coming through the box is like a “needle in a haystack,” said Tatham. The station’s staff never knows what could lead to a potential story.
Tatham got her start in print journalism. At USF St. Petersburg, she was the creative director and then managing editor of The Crow’s Nest, the campus weekly. After graduating she worked at the Tampa Bay Times for almost four years.
When she was laid off, 10News hired her as a digital producer.
At dawn, the newsroom is virtually empty. That doesn’t last long.
The digital producers are responsible for the station’s online content, and what is most important to them is online engagement, said Tatham. They are able to see the average time people spend on the 10News website and what stories get the most clicks.
Digital producers can use a program that analyzes headline options to indicate which proposed headline would get the most engagement.
They also schedule social media posts to share news to the public even faster. Social media is what draws the most engagement from readers, said Tatham.
A new Facebook post goes out every 25 minutes.
IGTV scripts are written, filmed, and produced daily for Instagram.
And every news article automatically gets published on Twitter.
When breaking news hits, the entire staff works collectively to get the story published accurately and quickly, Tatham said. Breaking news may be published within minutes.
“You get whiplash sometimes,” she said.
In her newsroom, there aren’t any assigned editors. Everyone there edits everyone else’s stories, she said. In order to get the stories published faster, whoever is available to edit jumps in.
Although broadcast and digital journalism differ from the print journalism she started in, some elements are the same, Tatham said.
Every story at 10News is supposed to adhere to Associated Press style, reflect independent reporting and be supported by at least two credible sources, she said.