Q and A with Rich Kurz, KOIN 6 News Director
You worked as a reporter and executive producer at KGW for 14 years. Then you left KGW in 2014 to become news director at KWQC in Davenport, Iowa. After having a front row seat at the Iowa Caucuses in 2016, do you have more or less respect for the process we use in picking our president? (Hillary and Bernie tied in Iowa, and Cruz narrowly defeated Trump.) Why did you choose to move back to Portland and accept the position as news director of KOIN 6?
It's really easy to look at some place like Iowa and question why they (along with New Hampshire) get to play such a big role in the presidential process. After all, it's a relatively small state and its demographics don't match up with a great deal of the rest of the country. But being on the ground there and working through the caucuses gave me a great appreciation for that part of the process. The candidates are on the ground and interacting with everyday voters in a way you just don't see in the rest of the country. Rick Perry showed up early in the process to meet with a couple of dozen members of the county Republican Party; Hillary Clinton visited a bookstore and a coffee shop in a small tourist town in the weeks before the caucus. You can't avoid answering pocketbook economic questions in those settings; the questions are far different than the interactions at $10,000-a-plate fundraisers. To me, it's a place where the middle- and lower-economic class voters can speak directly to the candidates. Again, the demographics in Iowa are not representative of the country as a whole, but that kind of on-the-ground interaction is essential to the process. It needs to happen somewhere during the campaign -- if not Iowa then somewhere else.
When I left Portland in 2014, I understood that I needed a higher level of management responsibility to continue advancing in news management. In that way, it's like coaching major college sports. You work as an assistant for a few years, go to a smaller school to take a head coaching opportunity, then hope you do well enough to move back up in market size. I had done that and had reached a point in the Quad Cities where I was ready for a new challenge. I was fortunate to have a good job there, so I was able to be selective about my next move. Just about anyone who's left Portland welcomes the chance to get back, but it had to be the right opportunity that gave me a chance to succeed in the role. KOIN has had a number of owners over the past 20 years, and that makes for plenty of challenges. But I also felt that with Nexstar, which bought the station in January 2017, and with a new and experienced general manager in Pat Nevin, that KOIN would see a level of stability it hadn't seen in years, along with increased resources to grow the station. In the end, the timing was right, the station ownership and management was right, and the city was definitely right. I feel incredibly fortunate that it all worked out as well as it has.
Tim Franklin, associate dean at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, said last year what many believe: "There's a growing consensus that the crisis in local news is the biggest crisis in American journalism."
More than 1,800 local newspapers have closed since 2004, according to the Wall Street Journal. And locally, the Oregonian's reporting staff today is less than a quarter its size a decade ago.
Worse, a study last year by the News Measure Research Project at Duke University found that of 16,000 stories published by U.S. local news outlets only 17 percent of them were about the city or town they were from. The Oregonian appears to follow this trend.
How much harder is it for a TV news director to direct local news coverage without the aid of a large traditional newspaper reporting staff to help borrow from? How much greater is your civic journalism burden now that local newspapers have more or less collapsed?
It's definitely a more challenging journalism environment overall with the decline of newspaper; the more voices in a marketplace, the better. Digital and other non-traditional media sources are replacing some of those voices, though certainly not all of them. And in a way, television stations are in more direct competition with newspapers than we traditionally have been, with both TV and newspaper competing for digital users. Different television stations and ownership groups are responding to these trends differently. At KOIN, we're choosing to continue our move toward more locally-focused coverage. Yes, it's often easier to fill newscasts with national stories, but if your audience can get that from any of the cable channels, Facebook or digital news sources, why are they going to come to watch you? If we're going to get them to pick us out of all the news options they have, we need to give them coverage they're not going to get somewhere else -- and that's local stories. It seems to be working -- our anchors do regular features on hyper-local stories, including Jennifer Hoff's Women Crush Wednesday and Jenny Hansson's Positive Vibes, along with Ken Boddie's "Where We Live" segments, about little-known or underappreciated people and places around Portland. These franchises have been really successfully, and to us, that's a sign we're on the right path with our focus on very local stories.
This year, the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that invests in local journalism, summarized the local TV landscape this way:
Local television news would seem to be in an enviable position. The average TV station now has more news employees than the average American newspaper, profits are strong and local TV news remains the dominant news source for Americans.
At the same time, the future of television is replete with challenges. There has been a slow steady loss of audience, especially among younger demographics. And yet, television news is produced in much the same way it has been for 60 or more years, even as audience habits have changed dramatically.
Are you losing audience share? What can you do to attract younger audiences when surveys show that fewer than 18 percent of them are even watching local news?
As the answer above makes clear, we're in the midst of a huge change in how news and information is disseminated and consumed in this country. Traditionally, the younger demographics started consuming more television news as they settled down and had families. The deeper the roots, the more people wanted to be up to date on what was happening in their community. Will that be the same going forward? That's certainly an open question, though my gut tells me it will be. In the meantime, I look at our mission the way many marketers in other businesses do -- we need to be where our consumers are, when they need us. And that means our website, that means Facebook, that means streaming video. That also means offering new kinds of content -- we've been doing a lot with podcasts and other digital-specific kinds of content. News organizations are going to need to be nimble and responsive to make sure they're meeting their users' needs. It's also worth noting that video consumption on digital continues to grow, and video is what television journalists have been producing for years. That puts us in a good place -- as long as we keep putting it where our users want it, both on-air and online.
Where does KOIN rank against its local competitors -- KGW, FOX 12, and KATU -- in terms of ratings/market share?
Portland is a very competitive market. Depending on the ratings period, the year and which part of the day we're talking about, at least three different stations (including KOIN) can lay claim to leading newscasts. That said, there's a lot of potential at KOIN that we're working to realize and to build on. The company and our station leadership agree -- our vision for KOIN is going to take some time to build properly.
The Knight Foundation, in its report, Local TV News and the New Media Landscape, had this to say about the sometimes partnership of TV and social media:
There's a love/hate relationship with Facebook, which is helping drive a lot of traffic to TV news websites. Stations aren't making much money on it, but it's clear that social media is driving viewers. On days when social media engagement is higher, newscast ratings are also higher.
How do you grow the digital relationship with social media? How do you better monetize it? What innovative methods are you using in news delivery to attract younger viewers?
The Knight Foundation gets that conundrum right -- you need to be competitive on Facebook to make sure that its massive audience is seeing your material, but it's tough to monetize. Down the road, we're going to have to learn how to walk that line between making sure that we're getting our content on Facebook so that we catch as many potential viewers as possible, but also driving them to our website, where we can actually make some money when people view it. We also need to have a good synergy between what we're doing on-air and online, so that we can push broadcast viewers to the web, and digital viewers to on-air. In terms of news delivery, it's both trying new kinds of content (podcasts, streaming shows, etc.) with making sure we're putting it where people are looking for it.
Will the growing relationship between Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and television eventually drive millenials toward local journalism and civic affairs?
I'm optimistic on this, though I see those social platforms as more of a vehicle than as a driver. I think the nature of people is that they're going to want information, they're going to want to know what's going on in their community, and they're going to want to know the very latest weather. In broadcast, we used to see that each generation got more invested in its community as they settled down and laid roots in a place. I'm not sure that part of it is going to change, but where they search out that info will -- a generation used to getting entertainment and news about their social circles on those social platforms is likely to use those same platforms as gateways for news, too. It's worth noting that some of my optimism is rooted in my experience working with millennials both here and in Iowa. Many have been newsroom leaders, with a thirst for highlighting issues and informing the public.
Studies on the quality of local TV journalism usually lead with the following recommendation, this one coming from the Knight Foundation: "Drop the obsession with crime, carnage and mayhem. And focus on ways to connect with the local communities through issues such as education, the economy and transportation."
This seems to be a common complaint of local news. It's always the same -- fires and carnage followed by a feel-good animal story. Why this formula, which causes serious news viewers to tune out? Is this what the numbers show most people want to see? When does journalism and civic obligation override ratings? How often do you discuss this with reporters and editors, and what are your conclusions?
There are a lot of reasons for this, starting with the need for balance in a newscast. Just like you won't see all city council meetings in a newscast, you also won't see all crime -- at least not in one of our newscasts. A couple of things are going on with crime stories. First -- is my neighborhood safe? If so, why were there all those police cars down the block or in downtown Portland? The other part is that people are drawn to crime stories -- look at all the true-crime shows and "Law & Order" and "NCIS"-type shows on the air. If there wasn't interest, you wouldn't see so many of those shows. That said, we work every day in our twice-daily story meetings to make sure we're comfortable with that balance -- we don't want our viewers to think that's the only thing going on around the city, and we also want to focus on the things that really impact their lives. That's crime in some cases, traffic and in-fill development or school budgets in others.
Last year, KOIN reporter Dan Tilkin broke the critically important story of George Soros' hidden million-dollar cash infusion into the Washington County DA race. Here's a sample of your headlines: "Operative tied to billionaire Soros involved in local DA race;" "One day till election: Wall won't reveal secretive donors;" and "Unprecedented money flows into Washington Co. DA race."
Eventually, other local media outlets, such as KEX and OPB, followed your coverage and Dan Tilkin's reporting.
What drove Tilkin's coverage? Why were you and KOIN so committed to seeing this serious local story through?
I'm proud of the reporting we did on that story. The decision to follow it was a combination of factors. First and most importantly, we're lucky at KOIN to have someone like Dan Tilkin, who has the experience, knowledge and doggedness to tackle this kind of assignment. Digging into campaign finance reports and knowing what to look for is a skill that you can only develop if you have a passion for reporting on government and following the money. Dan has that. Second, he and I share a belief in openness in both government and in the electoral process. Voters should know who's giving candidates money, whether it's a race for president of the United States or for Washington County DA. Who has an interest in getting a particular candidate elected, and why? Our station motto is "Watching out for you." We make it our mission to get the facts out in front of voters so that they can make as informed a decision as possible.
Recently, Seattle's KOMO News station took a chance on a three-part documentary, and twice aired the hour-long third segment from their award-winning reporter, Eric Johnson. To date, KOMO's controversial documentary, "Seattle Is Dying," about the opioid and homeless crisis in Seattle has received over three million views on social media.
What do you think of their documentary, the controversy and the progressive pushback it has created? What is the cost of an hour-long feature like this? Do you plan for KOIN to produce similar kinds of material? What other formats are you developing for people to watch news over their mobile devices or online?
I've read about that documentary, and it's on my list to watch, but with a new baby, I don't get to watch much outside of KOIN news. That said, it was clear to me when I moved back to Portland early in 2017 that the homeless issue had changed. It was always noticeable, but it felt like it had grown exponentially in the three years I was in the Midwest. I think it touches on a lot of separate but related issues that are the core of who we are as a city and as a community -- Portland and Seattle continuing to shift toward becoming even bigger metropolises, with all the traditional big city problems. It hits the challenges of affordable housing, of Portlanders who see themselves as compassionate towards others but don't want people camping along the Springwater Corridor behind their homes, and of the ability of the community -- both government and the private sector -- to find meaningful solutions. These are really who are we as a community and where are we going.
At KOIN, we recognized the scope of the problem and put together a five-part series last May, reported by main anchor Jeff Gianola. Jeff has been in Portland for decades and is as connected with the community as any anchor anywhere. Jeff went out and visited the homeless camps, revisited a similar story he did decades ago, and visited a homeless shelter in San Diego funded by private money to see if it could be a model for Portland. It's worth noting that we very deliberately chose not to include elected officials in that five-part series. We wanted to focus on those most directly affected by the issues, and those working to find new solutions. Our series did well on-air and on digital, and seems to have sparked conversations across the city. I'm also proud that it was nominated for a Northwest Emmy Award.
The documentary approach is one way to get more people watching on digital streams; just about any kind of unique, local content will work. That said, we're excited about some of the streaming opportunities for live content. During the Blazers' playoff run, we've been streaming a 15-minute pre-game show featuring sports reporter/anchor AJ McCord, called "Courtside Chats with AJ." It airs an hour before the game and includes insight from both Portland and opposing media. It was AJ's idea, and we had it going within about five days of when she pitched it. We have some great ideas, and some great people coming up with them -- KOIN is going to try a whole lot of them to see what resonates with our audience.
You have twice qualified and finished the Boston Marathon? Why? Is endurance training helpful in preparing for work on the "the crisis in local news"?
When I started focusing on running marathons, it was strictly an outlet for my competitive side. The more I got into it, and the further I advanced in management, the more I realized what great mental training it was. Marathons teach you that there are no shortcuts -- you need to put in the work to get the result, and you need to do it over a long stretch of time. You also learn that you're going to have good days and bad days during training, but that if you have a good plan and follow it, you can achieve your goals. That's a huge point to me -- you're going to have bad stretches, but you also build an experience base to know that you can work through them and come out stronger on the other side. That's critical in management -- it helps keep you from being knocked off track when things get rough. I'm certainly a better manager because of my marathon experience.
One last note on that -- I had been finished with my second Boston Marathon for about an hour when the bombs went off on in 2013; I was a block away from the finish line going to meet a friend when I heard the explosions. As marathoners, you work to control everything you can -- your pace, your shoes, how many calories you eat, how many hours a night you sleep. That experience taught me very quickly that you can't control everything in life -- sometimes things just happen. It's grounded me tremendously, and really reminded me of just how lucky I am, in so many ways.
