Will local TV news survive? This guide could be a lifeline
With local TV news viewership struggling, Northeastern’s Reinventing Local TV News Project created a survival guide designed to get newsrooms onboard with digital and social media.
For the past decade, Mike Beaudet was a familiar face for Boston-area TV news viewers.
Beaudet and the hard-hitting investigative team at Boston’s WCVB-TV, “5 Investigates,” scooped up countless stories, and Emmy Awards, over the last 10 years. However, Beaudet also noticed something troubling: People, especially young people, just aren’t watching local TV news as much as before.
Beaudet wants to change that. With “Reinvent: A Survival Guide for Local TV News” — a joint effort between Northeastern University, where Beaudet works as a journalism professor, the Stanton Foundation and local broadcasters — he has an urgent message for local newsrooms: embrace social media.
“As someone myself who’s worked in the industry for more than 30 years, it’s old-fashioned,” Beaudet said. “It’s largely doing things the same way, so we’ve always been focused on how we can help the industry get up to speed with current trends.”
For nearly a decade, Beaudet, the investigative reporter, has been moonlighting as Beaudet the researcher, charting viewing habits for local news and monitoring where the industry is lagging. The end result of that work is the Reinventing Local TV News Project. The survival guide, which provides recommendations for local stations, is built on years of embedding reporting fellows in newsrooms for innovative digital news experiments.
The project also recently received funding from the Stanton Foundation to launch the Reinventing TV Digital Media Innovation Center at Northeastern. The center, which kicks off in 2026, will eventually place not only fellows but Northeastern co-ops in newsrooms across the country.
All of that work comes at a dire time for local news, as local newsrooms increasingly face layoffs, budget cuts and resource deficits. It also has pointed in one direction: Local TV stations need to embrace digital and social media.
“I think the clock is ticking for newsrooms, truly,” said Lisa Thalhamer, a Boston-based Emmy-winning journalist and newscast producer and video innovation scholar on the project.
While adults over the age of 50 remain regular TV news consumers, according to a Pew Research Center report, the same cannot be said for millennials and Gen Z.
The Reinventing Local TV News Project conducted nationwide surveys and found that only 19% of those between the ages of 18 and 34 watch local TV news. They have turned to other sources for local news, primarily social media platforms, Beaudet said. According to their findings, YouTube is their number one choice for getting news, followed by Instagram and TikTok.
In the survival guide, Beaudet and his collaborators recommend that newsrooms create dedicated roles for digital content creators who will produce stories tailormade for social platforms. The project embedded digital news fellows in three newsrooms, WCBS in New York City, WLS in Chicago and Beaudet’s WCVB, as a proof of concept. However, every reporter should be trained in social and mobile-first storytelling, according to the guide.
“We want these great, smart journalists to contribute to these platforms and to use the strengths they already have as wonderful storytellers, especially in video, on these platforms,” Thalhamer said.
For newsrooms hesitant to make the jump to social media, the key is understanding that even if the packaging changes, the tools remain the same.
Editor’s Picks
“I always tell people that the work we’re doing on our platforms may not look like the 6 o’clock news, but it’s going to have all of the rigor and the tenacity and the reporting groundwork that the 6 o’clock news is going to have,” said Leanna Scachetti, a fellow on the project who was placed at WCVB and now works there full time as a streaming content producer.
Younger audiences are much more interested in “authenticity” over formality, Scachetti added. Stand-up mics, news anchor voice and the news desk can go by the wayside.
That stance might seem alien to reporters and news producers who are used to traditional TV news, but it has the potential to reach viewers in new ways, Scachetti said. She hopes the intimacy of appearing on someone’s phone while reporting on their community can combat a recent Gallup poll finding that only 28% of Americans trust the media.
“There are so many ways that you can still maintain your professional reputation but be very approachable on those platforms as well,” Scachetti said. “I think when we increase transparency, we increase trust.”
Beaudet said local TV stations have sometimes resisted investing in this approach. The biggest revenue stream still comes from linear TV broadcasts, not digital advertising on social platforms. But the newsrooms that took part in the project almost immediately saw the value. WCVB trained every reporter in digital storytelling, and Scachetti has been training other people in parent company Hearst’s TV stations.
“We don’t have the magic formula because if we did, everyone would be using it. But you’ve got to get in the game, you’ve got to experiment and see what works,” Beaudet said.
