Audience Preferences in Determining Quality News Production of Backpack Journalism

Abstract

The focus of the study centered on television (TV) newsgathering techniques and if the techniques delineated the quality of journalistic presentation. College students (N = 493) were surveyed on preferences of production quality criteria associated with news stories produced by traditional two-person crews and backpack journalists (BPJs). Respondents were shown eight randomly selected videotaped news stories from a TV market that employed both traditional two-person news crews and BPJs. Each news story was judged on perceptions of pacing, camera composition, lighting, voice narration, interviews selected, and script production.