TV journalism conference emphasizes better training

Kirk Baird

Thursday, June 22, 2000 | 9:37 a.m.

If being licensed is good enough for doctors, lawyers and CPAs, why not journalists? That's what Herb Brubaker, chairman and president of Television News Center (TNC), a public nonprofit group that trains TV journalists, wants to know.

Instead, he said journalists use the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press, as an excuse not to be licensed. Consequently, journalists are free to say what they want, without fear of having either a state or government license revoked.

Because of that, Brubaker helped to create the World Television Journalism Conference (WTJC). The two-day event is co-sponsored by WTC and the UNLV Division of Continuing Education in partnership with KLAS Channel 8, the Hank Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, the Nevada Broadcasters Association, the Society of Professional Journalists and PR News Wire.

The conference will include training sessions, speeches and panel discussions featuring some of the biggest names in journalism.

The WTJC, which begins Tuesday, is at the Tropicana hotel-casino and is open to the public, although it's geared toward professional journalists. (Tickets are $395, $350 for groups of three or more and $300 for students.)

Among those scheduled to appear at the conference are Hugh Downs, former host of ABC's "20/20"; Helen Thomas, recently-retired UPI White House correspondent; John Cochran, ABC News White House correspondent; and Bob Kur, NBC News correspondent.

Among numerous panel discussions will be Wednesday's "From Keyboard to Camera: Making the Transition from Print to Television Journalism," with Sun reporters Jon Ralston, Kate Maddox and Erin Neff, and Channel 10's Mitch Fox.

Some of the other topics of discussion include ethics in journalism, the First Amendment, the essence of good reporting and the new media. In addition, there will be workshops for the 200 students and professionals expected to attend the event on handling live shots, writing for broadcast journalism and producing a newscast.

Brubaker said that the industry should take note of the conference and offer training and continuing education to help reporters keep up with the changes in the profession.

"What's wrong with (broadcast journalists) is that we don't require of ourselves that we take a certain number of (training) hours a year in writing, producing and performing in television news or any of the skills that are required," Brubaker said. "We'd be the ones to benefit from it."

Brubaker said that he hopes that by having such a conference with these workshops, mistakes by reporters from lack of training and experience can be avoided, such as those that occurred during the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

"The anchors were urging students to call their TV stations, which could have tipped off the gunmen," Brubaker said. "Also, there were invasive questions to family members. I'm all for getting news, but sometimes we can go too far."

Local broadcasts of the S.W.A.T team as it surrounded the school were also a mistake, in that "the suspects could have seen it and been tipped off," he said.

"The problem with television news is that serious professional development has not been part of our culture," Brubaker said. "The consultants have been reigning (and focusing on) hair and makeup and ratings. It's not that we don't care about those things, but we care first about good television journalism."

So eight years ago he left a job at NBC News as a producer and formed TNC with the idea of providing broadcast journalists an opportunity to further develop their skills -- things they either learned in journalism school or, "if you're lucky, you get a mentor, otherwise you fly by the seat of your pants," Brubaker said.

A few years ago he approached Chris Schearer, program coordinator at the UNLV Division of Continuing Education, with the idea for the conference and 15 months ago they began to put it together. And now Brubaker said that he hopes the conference, which originally was scheduled for January of this year but was pushed back to June to avoid conflict with the New Year's celebration, will become an annual event. There's already discussion about a UNLV-TNC joint sponsorship of a conference next year.

"I think that this conference in Las Vegas will be high-profile," Brubaker said, "and will call attention to our television training needs."