MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Need to interview someone while staying six feet away? Attach your microphone to a broomstick. Need a home teleprompter? Set a piece of shiny glass to face a tablet or phone. Need to record a voice-over without a sound studio? Toss a blanket over your head.
These are just a few of the ways Madison television reporters are adapting their work to the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has all but put an end to broadcasting staples like in-studio anchors and man-on-the-street interviews. Many are now delivering their daily broadcasts from their home offices and conducting interviews by video chat, while engineers work their technological magic behind the scenes. The result may not be as polished as before, but with TV stations still the most relied-on source of local news, viewers depend on them for accurate information during these challenging times.
Capitol press corps goes home
For Victor Jacobo, who covers the statehouse for Milwaukee’s WDJT CBS 58 and Telemundo Wisconsin, a usual day would consist of meeting with legislators and working out of the busy Capitol Press Room alongside state government reporters from other outlets.
But following Gov. Tony Evers’ “safer at home” order, the Capitol closed to the public, legislative committee meetings were put on hold, and Jacobo found himself working primarily from his downtown Madison apartment.
On April 14, Jacobo returned to his usual home base to cover the extraordinary session in which the Legislature would take up a COVID relief bill. “I was very grateful for that opportunity… to kind of bring back a sense of normalcy,” Jacobo told The Capital Times.
“But that was a very surreal day… A building that’s normally hustling and bustling with lots of noise … was dead quiet, with the exception of legislators funneling into the chambers.”
Jacobo hasn’t been in the Capitol since. “Things have obviously come to a standstill, in the country and globally, but the politics of the situation definitely hasn’t slowed down,” Jacobo said, and neither has his work.
He’s still tracking politics, including spring election results and the debate over reopening the economy, but he can no longer track down politicians in the Capitol halls.
“It’s tricky because we naturally want a lot of access,” he said, crediting the lawmakers who have made themselves available.
He now does most of his interviews now through video calls, though he’s also done a few in-person interviews, including one with Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. Some reporters might have boom microphones - the kind that are mounted on long poles - but Jacobo didn’t, so he taped his handheld microphone to a lighting stand, and he and Barnes took turns stepping up to it.
“Hanging by a thread”
Perhaps no reporter’s job has changed so fundamentally as that of sports reporters.
“There are no sports right now,” said Melissa Kim, a sports reporter and anchor for Madison’s News 3 Now.
When she spoke to the Cap Times on a recent Monday, she was looking ahead to that Thursday’s start of the NFL draft, one of the few sports events still moving forward, and to Friday’s scheduled reopening of golf courses. “We’re kind of hanging by a thread right now,” Kim said.
Even without sports, there are still sports stories. Kim spoke to a Middleton volleyball player who had used the time to set new records, and she learned that some of the women from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s cross-country team were staying in shape on their families’ farms by using logs and rocks as shot puts.
“A lot of people are having to try and find new creative ways to stay in shape to practice their sport,” Kim said, “so it’s really given us an opportunity to kind of showcase a different side of a lot of these athletes.”
“We’re all on the same level of life right now, almost. You know, we’re all stuck at home. We’re all trying to figure out ways to stay positive and be mentally sane while everything is going on around us.”
Bringing their work home
Across the country, TV reporters and anchors have been taking their work home - literally.
For Kim, at her home near Camp Randall stadium, that meant turning a bedroom into a TV studio. There she anchors the sports segment two days a week from her iPhone, held by a tripod she ordered on Amazon. Ring-shaped lights, placed just off-camera, illuminate her face. Behind her, a bulletin board displays dozens of press badges from the long lost days of live sporting events.
It’s a big change. “Usually when I’m in the studio, I just put a mic on,” Kim said, and professionals move the cameras or lights around her. At her home studio, that’s all her job. “Like yesterday they were like, ‘Your camera lens is really dirty. You need to clean it,’” Kim said.
Marisa Wojcik, a multimedia producer for PBS Wisconsin’s Here and Now, knows how to use everything from mirrorless cameras to audio equipment. So when the station directed staff in mid-March to stop coming to the studios in UW-Madison’s Vilas Hall, she hauled her gear home and cleared out her east side home office.
It’s now the site of her weekly live webcast, Noon Wednesdays, which she sends to the station through a special video camera attachment.
Over the last two years, her team had adapted its production to allow for remote work, she said. “We didn’t know we were helping ourselves to be prepared for what’s happening now.”
But these home broadcasts wouldn’t be possible without engineers, who produce feeds for broadcast, set up hosts’ home studios, and help them troubleshoot their technology. When PBS Wisconsin opted to prioritize news coverage during the pandemic, engineers who might usually spend much of their time producing broadcasts of concerts or events shifted to fast-paced news production.
Eric Schwierske, a media production engineer for PBS Wisconsin, said each new production challenge comes with a little bit of anxiety. Here and Now does a Q&A session each Friday with the governor, and on April 10, Schwierske engineered the first of those sessions to be fully remote - no PBS staff would be in the room. The recording finished, seemingly smoothly.
But in those situations, he said, “everyone’s holding their breath still until the show airs a couple hours later.” He doesn’t “let his guard down” until he gets an email from the operations crew shortly before broadcast saying all is well. On that day, he did.
But in-person reporting hasn’t stopped completely. When Victor Jacobo reports in the field now, he works with his one designated photographer, part of a station-wide move to limit contact among staff.
But even when his reporting is all video calls, he knows it’s a key part of today’s TV journalism. “As TV reporters, we place a lot of value on visuals and the quality of those visuals,” Jacobo said, “but what’s most important is the information, obviously, and the goal is to get that out there.”
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