It also has a lot of parents of adopted children talking, sharing their experiences, in the hopes that an agreement between Russia and the United States that allows for adoptions can be continued, despite the actions of a few.

11Alive’s Valerie Hoff is uniquely positioned to speak about the adoption process.  Last year, her family adopted a little boy from Siberia.

Val recently wrote about her experiences.  After reading about her family’s commitment to create a loving home for an orphaned boy, I was amazed by their courage and awed by their devotion.

I would strongly encourage you to read Val’s honest account of her own experiences here.

This is a great recognition of the hard work and dedication of a truly outstanding and innovative news staff.

I hope to write more about how some of the work that went into the earning these awards.  In the meantime, here’s the official news release:

11Alive Wins 8 of 13 Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards
Earns More Awards Than Any Large Market TV Station

ATLANTA (April 7, 2010) – WXIA-TV’s 11Alive news team won top Edward R. Murrow awards in eight categories announced today by the Radio Television Digital News Association, the world’s largest professional organization exclusively serving the electronic news profession.

The Atlanta-based NBC news affiliate won more Edward R. Murrow Awards than any other large market broadcast station. 11Alive received this honor in a year when it worked to change the face of local news in the Atlanta market. The station has focused on solutions oriented newscasts.

11Alive broadcasts solutions-oriented newscasts across metro Atlanta to provide news that helps viewers resolve issues in their community. “We knew that we were making a difference by programming a newscast that isn’t just crime and car crashes, that isn’t a copy of other local stations,” said Ellen Crooke, vice president of news at 11Alive. “To earn eight Edward R. Murrow awards – more than any other large market TV station – is certainly the biggest validation of our commitment to revitalize TV news that I can imagine.”

11Alive competed in Region 13 against all large market stations in Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands. The station received Edward R. Murrow awards in the following categories:

• Overall Excellence – 11 Alive News
• Video Breaking News Coverage – September Floods
• Video Continuing Coverage – State of Stimulus: Tracking the Money
• Video Feature Reporting – Leo
• Video Reporting: Hard News – Loss of American Dream
• Video Investigative Reporting – A Voice for Stefan
• Video News Series – Raven
• Video Sports Reporting – Woodland Warriors

The Murrow award for Overall Excellence is the result of 11Alive’s commitment over the past 18 months to listen to viewers and community leaders and provide an innovative newscast that renews interest in local TV.

“We hear you,” 11Alive promised. The station took the motto as a call to deliver truthful, solution-based news that supports the community it serves. Learn more about 11Alive at www.11alive.com.

In one of the ads, baggage handlers are seen yelling at a plane with an obscured, but still identifiable tail logo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl16hPa1qkQ

In case you can’t tell, the airline being called out by Southwest is AirTran, and the folks there are taking the ad personally.

So, they created an ad (online only, apparently) of their own.  AirTran cleverly blurred the logo of the airline they’re targeting.  Gee, I wonder which airline it is?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6DdDlPT4Uc

Generally speaking, the people I encounter, and subsequently interview on-camera during the day don’t have the same opportunity to prepare that I have. And many times I forget that what is a casual, run of the mill interview for me is a rarer occasion for my victims.

Let’s face it; we all have things about our physical appearance that we’d like to change. Whether it is your physique, complexion, nose size or those pesky bags under your eyes, you may think that by changing that one thing about yourself, you’d be better looking.

Yesterday, I was working on a story on the current unemployment problems and its effects on men. Nationwide, the unemployment rate among men is 10 percent while among women it is 8 percent.

Industries that have been dominated by men like manufacturing and construction are disappearing and that means a lot of men are being forced into a new job: stay-at-home dad.

It turns out radio host Jimmy Baron has been there before. So, he was inspired to create a play date for “Dads Between Gigs”.

Baron was the victim of one of my interviews yesterday. The gracious professional that he is, he patiently answered my barrage of questions about a topic that many would find uncomfortable: his own unemployment.

But, it turns out the topic of discussion wasn’t what made Baron nervous. It was the commonly feared close-up cutaway shot.

On his blog this morning, Baron posted a freeze frame of that close up. That shot revealed what Baron described as a “muskrat” living above his eyes.

Labeled a “Big Fat Fail” Baron enticed his listeners to view the “terrifying” picture on his blog.

The truth is, I never even noticed Baron’s allegedly ungroomed eyebrows. I thought he was perfectly “TV ready”.

And just for the record, Baron was more concerned with being interview weather 92.9 Dave FM apparel and standing in front of a Dave FM banner than he ever was about his eyebrows.

“B-roll” is apparently an “old film term” which I am too young to understand, and you probably don’t care about the details anyway.

Here’s what’s interesting: Sometimes reporters will find themselves assigned to cover a story that is “weak on video”.  Usually that means the story is about an event that was not visually capture, or a story about an issue.  These are often referred to as a “great story for newspapers”.

Apparently, an Asian media mogul has developed a way to fudge that b-roll by making news reports look like video games.  As this report from CNN shows, his company creates animations to depict the news.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to call these guys?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItFvB0Upb8

The Late Show with David Letterman has had a Twitter account for some time, but the feed has historically been little more than a promotion space for upcoming shows.  Now, Letterman’s thoughts are being mixed in.

Dave’s first tweet: “Do you smell veal and peppers?”

My favorite of Dave’s tweets (he only has three so far): “I’m making toast!”

The FTC is seeking to require bloggers to disclose any handouts, freebies, affiliations or paid product reviews in order to protect consumers who might otherwise be misled.

FTC: Bloggers, Testimonials Need Better Disclosure

“The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. The guides are not binding law, but rather interpretations of law that hope to help advertisers comply with regulations. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could result in various sanctions including a lawsuit.”

“The FTC’s proposal made many bloggers anxious. They said the scrutiny would make them nervous about posting even innocent comments.”

“To placate such fears, [Rich] Cleland [assistant director of the FTC's advertising practices division] noted that the FTC’s enforcement priorities make it more likely an advertiser would be targeted for disclosure or testimonial violations than a blogger. The exception would be a blogger who runs a ‘substantial’ operation that violates FTC rules and already received a warning, he said.”

Read more

I think it will be interesting to watch how all of this shakes out. I’m unsure how the FTC will define a “substantial” blogging operation, or how it intends to enforce these guidelines.  I’m not the only one who is confused.

The web has traditionally been embraced as one of the few places in this world that is almost completely unregulated. That lack of oversight on content has allowed new ideas about politics, business and commerce to emerge, be discussed and modified and perfected. While there is some garbage out there, I start to get nervous when I hear about a governing body’s attempts to filter and control that content.

Hardy Wallace, a wine blogger from Atlanta currently on assignment in Napa Valley, California had some interesting thoughts today:

“I do know a number of non-wine bloggers that do a ton of pay for play and don’t disclose that to their readers. I have an issue with that, but one that I want no part in attempting to regulate.”

“The positive we fail to see is that by only regulating the online/blogosphere piece, we instantly make blogging more credible than traditional media. Bloggers receive 1/100th of the freebies, trips, dinners, samples, jet boat rides, cougar hunts, and Spice Girls tickets than traditional media.”

“Disclosure for us is easy. Disclosure for legacy media is not easy or pretty and comes with a much higher cost.”

The proliferation of the OMB/BPJ has caused much consternation among old school reporters.  “How can I do all of this?” they ask. “The quality of my work will surely suffer!”

Now, with the growth of social media, reporters are finding one MORE task to add to their daily workflow: updating Twitter, Facebook, etc.

But, I contend that there are plenty of OMB/BPJs out there getting the job done and getting it done well.  Case in point: Julie Wolfe.

Take a look at this picture.  That’s Julie, sterilized and scrubbed in for a story she’s working on.  In the picture you can also see the tools of the trade: two cameras.  What’s that?  You only see one camera?  Look closer.  That’s right, she’s holding the other camera in her hand.

Armed with her iPhone, Julie (@juliewolfe on Twitter) has been Tweeting her way through covering her stories.  She posts messages and updates regularly, and has developed quite a following.  Afterall, Julie’s job is to communicate stories, ideas and information to people.  That’s what a journalist does.  Even though she’s employed by a TV station, she knows she needs to reach her audience on different platforms.

You might call Julie (with all of her gadgets) the Journalist of the Future.  But I’d say you’re wrong.  I’d say she’s the Journalist of Today.  And a darn good one at that.

By the way, the story she’s working on is remarkable.  It’s scheduled to air Friday morning.  But of course, you can follow the developments online:

Quinn’s Transplant: Photos and twitter transcript
Atlanta (11Alive) – On Tuesday, September 29th, 8 year old Quinn underwent surgery and got a new kidney.

Quinn has Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD). PKD is a life-threatening genetic kidney disease affecting 600,000 Americans.

11Alive reporter Julie Wolfe spent the day in the OR with Quinn. Julie and others posted surgey updates throughout the day using twitter.

My experience during this event has been different than in the past.  With my background as a reporter, I’m used to being “in the field” during breaking news.  In many ways, I prefer to be where the story is.  But this week, I’ve been in the newsroom,  monitoring viewer submitted photos and videos and social networks.

For thoughts on the local media’s social media response My Urban Report has a great summary of the action.  I appreciate the nod is Amani’s analysis.

Another big nod goes to the Atlanta Twitter and non-mainstream media community.  The folks out there did a great job of keeping each other informed of the developments, even organizing the conversation with the #atlflood and #atlfloods hashtags.

Here at the station, I’m looking forward to the after action review of our coverage.  As usual, our team of journalists did an extraordinary job covering the story.  That being said, I think we are learning some important lessons about our engagement in social media during big stories like the flood.  We have a handful of reporters who have been tweeting constantly, our challenge is exposing the Twitter community to our reporters.

By monitoring Twitter, our newsroom was exposed to more breaking news as it happened.  Obviously there are a lot of rumors, but our assignment editors were able to take the Tweet leads and work towards independent confirmation.

Finally, I was amazed at the number of pictures and video people submitted to our website, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.  Armed with little more than cell phone cameras in most instances, people were able to contribute greatly to the overall news coverage of the widespread flooding.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wH-e_rQABg

As I said earlier, I haven’t had a chance to decompress yet.  But I’ll work towards more analysis in the coming days.

But when I consider how much time, effort and money went into creating these handouts, I shudder. The folders often contain glossy pictures, brochures and news releases printed on high quality, heavy paper. All of that effort and expense and 90 percent of the time, an neatly produced, easy to read news fact sheet would more effectively serve my needs as a reporter.

While I admire the attention to detail by these hard working PR folks, I’m only frustrated more when other, arguably more important details are ignored.

So, from one multimedia reporter to the public relations people of the world, here is my advice:

If you are planning to host an event (such as a news conference) at which multiple news outlets are present, consider the technical needs of these folks.

One of the most commonly overlooked needs of a multimedia journalist is quality audio. News crews will always seek to get a microphone as close to the source of sound (such as a person speaking) as they can. Often that means affixing a lavaliere microphone or the careful placement of a “stick mic”.

If you plan to host a news conference, consider using one podium at which several microphones can easily be affixed. Then each speaker may step to the podium to make their remarks. Logistically, in a multiple “talking head” situation, it is much easier to have the people move to the mic, rather than the mic move to the people.

If you prefer to avoid the mass of microphones on the podium, consider renting or purchasing a “mult box”. That will allow several television stations to connect to your one microphone.

On a related note, while panel discussions are very effective for a discussion with a live audience, they are pretty terrible TV. Because several people can speak in rapid succession, getting quality audio and pictures is very challenging for a multimedia journalist. And consider this, if I miss your CEO’s best line because I’m panning around and trying to get my microphone in the right place, it doesn’t get on TV.

A PR person should also consider the lighting situation at their news conference. You may have a beautiful backdrop planned, but if your event is planned for the early even hours, you probably don’t want to have all of the video cameras pointed toward the west. The sun will give your talking head a nice strong backlight, turning them into nothing more than a shadow standing at a podium.

Finally, for the love of God, consider the scheduling of your news conference and the deadlines of the reporters covering it. Dayside reporters typically face deadlines at noon, 5, 6 and sometimes 7 p.m. If you schedule your news conference for 4:30 p.m., you’re pretty much forcing the reporter to “crash” on your story. Try to schedule your event for the mid to late morning hours and you’ll have a pool of happy news crews.

These are only a few tips that I have on the top of my head. But, I assure you that by focusing on THESE details and spending less time on the over-produced and expensive folder of glossy handouts, you’ll have happier clients, because their spot on TV will look and sound much better.