Pam Johnston has spent nearly her entire career in local broadcast news. She started as a TV reporter at WMTW in Portland, Maine, moved into producing in Raleigh, North Carolina, then came home to Boston and spent almost 10 years at WLVI, rising from producer of the 10 o'clock news to news director before the station was sold to Channel 7 in 2006. From there she went to the social media startup Gather.com, built Lahey's first social media presence as senior director of new media, and in 2012 joined Frontline at PBS to lead audience and strategy with executive producer Raney Aronson.
When this episode of The PR Bunker Podcast was recorded in early 2021, Pam had recently become general manager of news at GBH in Boston. She and Don, two people who cut their teeth in newsrooms, talk about how storytelling has and hasn't changed, covering a year of nonstop news, and why public media's bottom line is people.
A few takeaways from the conversation:
Pam tells her team that the best stories are the ones audiences will find. What changed is fragmentation. When she started at WLVI, people sat down to watch the news at news time, and that doesn't happen anymore. Now the job is making sure the news reaches people when and how they want it, and that takes strategy so you aren't telling the same stories as every competitor in town.
Pam came to GBH because she saw a big radio station, a big television station and a smaller digital operation that were completely disconnected. Her goal was to pull the local TV, radio and digital teams into one integrated newsroom built around the audience. She says there are no more slow news days, and covering stories like January 6 was exhausting but also proof of why trusted local news matters.
Asked what was next, Pam said GBH's newsroom was going back to basics. Instead of deciding on its own what the top story is, the team planned to engage with audiences and ask what they want to know and who each story is for. Coming from commercial TV, she says that's what she loves about public media, because its bottom line is viewers, supporters, members and community.
At the time, Pam pointed viewers to Greater Boston with Jim Braude on GBH 2, Basic Black, which had been on the air for 50 years, and Open Studio with Jared Bowen. She also highlighted 89.7 GBH, Boston's local NPR station, and gbhnews.org, along with GBH's social channels.
Listen to the full episode above.
Reading is the hello. SBGA is where we get to yes.
How has TV news storytelling changed?
According to Pam Johnston, the craft of storytelling hasn't changed but distribution has. Audiences no longer gather at fixed news times, so newsrooms have to reach people on demand across platforms.
What national programs does GBH produce?
Pam listed Frontline, Nova, American Experience, Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow and children's programming, alongside GBH's own local news division.
Why does Pam Johnston say public media is different?
Its bottom line is people, meaning viewers, members, supporters and the community, so the audience has to be part of every decision about what stories to tell and how to tell them.
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