Tellus advocates TV with ’soul’

Photo by Jonathan Hiskes

WTHR-TV news director Jim Tellus said stations must have a commitment to narrative storytelling.

The difference between television news stations with “soul” and those without it is their commitment to narrative storytelling, WTHR-TV news director Jim Tellus told student videographers Wednesday.

Tellus was the first of a number of guest speakers in assistant professor Mike Conway’s J520 Video Storytelling class. He also spoke to Conway’s J410 Media as Social Institutions class and adjunct lecturer Lee Giles’ J385 Television News class.

In J520, Tellus spoke with a clear sense of pride in WTHR, the Indianapolis NBC affiliate, which he joined last year and sees as supportive of well-crafted video storytelling.

“Every station in every city is going to have sad stories and crime stories,” he said after showing a WTHR clip about a frozen turkey throwing contest. “If you don’t have things like this, people are going to want to slit their wrists at the end of the newscast. We need things that are life affirming. Things that make you smile and maybe make you cry.”

He said other newsrooms to rely too heavily on crime stories, which are quicker to produce than narrative features.

“The thing that separates stations like ours is that we allow time for these kinds of stories,” he said. “There’s a perception in other newsrooms that these kinds of stories are dinosaurs.”

He took questions from the graduate class, which included both students planning to work in broadcast journalism and ones who hope to produce online video.

Master’s student Jesse Darland asked how print publications could improve the quality of video on their Web sites. Tellus said it was unfair for editors to give print reporters a camera and a few hours of training and expect them to do the same thing videographers spend years learning.

“It’s just not realistic,” he said.

Master’s student January Jones asked about the effect Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had on TV news. Tellus said he’s seen some awkward attempts at imitation, but that local TV news is better off not trying Daily Show’s brand of humor.

Because of newsroom budget cuts, Tellus has seen more TV journalists work with smaller crews or on their own, he said. But he sees forcing reporters to shoot their own video as an advantage.

“Some of the best reporters I knew were photographers as well,” he said. “They understood the importance of visuals and how to get out of the way and let pictures tell the story.”

As an example of his station’s commitment to quality journalism, he mentioned its plans to send a team to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing at an estimated cost of nearly $500,000. Student Yolanda Zhang, a Beijing native, said that impressed her, as did Tellus’s commitment to local news.

“I have a better idea of how the American news cycle works,” she said. “It’s kind of different than how it works in Beijing. In China, the news is not that localized.”

Tellus also encouraged the class to learn about both the craft and the business side of journalism.

“We’re all journalists at heart and we all got into this business, I hope, because we love to tell stories,” he said. “But at the end of the day, you want people to watch it.”