WLS-Ch. 7 delivers the best newscast at 10 p.m. in Chicago, according to a survey of local television news by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The study rated the newscasts of 53 stations in 17 cities around the country. Part of the study analyzed the content of four weeks of stations’ newscasts during sweeps and non-sweeps periods, said Project for Excellence director Tom Rosenstiel.
Channel 7’s 10 o’clock newscast, rated No. 1 in Chicago, was No. 18 among stations in the survey. WHDH-Ch. 7, an NBC affiliate in Boston, was the top station. WMAQ-Ch. 5 was rated No. 33 in the survey, and WBBM-Ch. 2 was 34th. Chicago was eighth out of 17 cities surveyed for news quality.
The Project for Excellence is a media think-tank affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Its survey used local-news experts’ criteria for what a station’s news reporting should provide a community.
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Story focus, viewpoints and the expertise of sources in news reports were among the guidelines cited. Chicago stations graded poorly in developing enterprise stories.
Stations’ newscasts generally have failed at consistently localizing the impact of such stories as the war on terror and the downturn in the economy, the study found.
“TV news departments are struggling to meet all the obligations set out for them with the resources they have,” Rosenstiel said. “As citizens have sought good information and a way to better understand a complicated world, local TV news has missed a real opportunity to bring viewers back.”
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