Chicago. Philadelphia. Phoenix. Atlanta. Tampa. Detroit. Washington, D.C. Boston.
TV stations across the country have set up pool agreements -- the sharing of video crews to cover routine, scheduled events. The driving force behind this cooperation among competitors isn't love, it's money.
As ad revenues drop., stations cut staff and salaries, mandate furloughs and impose hiring freezes. But if they cut the newsroom population too deeply, stations can't produce sufficient fresh material for newscasts and Web sites. So where's the next place to find relief? The pool -- a single crew that covers selected news and sports events and feeds the same TV dinner to everyone in the news family.
News directors are putting the best face on it. Veteran news director Budd McEntee of Atlanta's WAGA-TV told the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "How many times have you seen a (press conference) where you've got six cameras lined up all with the same shot? In a thriving competitive environment it's really wasteful. This frees us up to really expand our coverage of the news with stories that are our own."
I've known (and liked) Budd for a long time. He;s a hardcore newshound, and I trust he'll do his best to live up to that ideal of expanded coverage. But Budd -- and every other leader of a pool-ified newsroom -- must manage more than the mechanics of sharing. They need to wrestle with pooling's risks and unintended consequences.
So, consider this one of those "danger" signs you see posted at public pools, warning everyone to take precautions before they jump in.
Here are six hazards of pooling...
