Individual journalists like me are learning we have a currency value beyond our stations.
It’s easy to hide behind a station’s call letters. After all, the station holds the prestige and built in audience, right?
At least it used to. But we as journalists aren’t giving ourselves and the skills and personal brands we’ve built, enough credit.
I spent two decades building a brand as a major market investigative reporter and anchor, most recently in Atlanta and Detroit. But at nearly every station I worked at, I used to rely on the station and its footprint to share my “gets.” How else would my work get seen?
But recently, I started breaking stories independently. I still used the same formula that made me known in many markets for my exclusives: knowing a good tip, working sources, making calls, hustling and getting it first.
What I found was that when breaking something big, today’s fragmented media universe provided me an unexpectedly bigger and more captive audience than I ever had on a traditional TV or radio station. The fact that audiences are getting their news elsewhere has worked to my benefit.
This has opened new channels for showcasing my individual reporting skills with or without an employer.
Exhibit A: In March of this year, Air Canada Flight 8646 crashed upon landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. It happened just before midnight on a weekend. Newsrooms had probably gone home for the night except for a few late shifters.
I’m an airline and aviation buff and have a lot of back-channel sources in that area. Long story short, I was among the first to break the story. On X, I continued breaking new details long before any traditional media got on the air with it.
The algorithm (and social media users) did its work, and my posts got over a million views by morning.
I did all that from my couch on a Saturday night thousands of miles away from the scene; not in a newsroom and without any of its resources.
When I used to anchor the 11 p.m. news, our audience numbers averaged about 90,000-100,000 people, probably less now. One X post in my underwear saw a bigger share.
Exhibit B: Two months later, on the night of May 20, using those same channels, I was among the first to share the story of an Air France flight from Paris to Detroit that was diverted to Canada due to an Ebola scare onboard.
As soon as I got the tip, I knew it was a top story. And a national one.
I reported it again on X hours before any traditional media were able to confirm it. By morning, it was the lead story on nearly every local and national newscast.
My X posts were viewed by more than 2 million and shared by tens of thousands. They helped launch an online discussion about U.S./Canadian aviation protocol on both sides of the border.
I broke that story, again on my couch, by waking up an Air France executive in Paris in the middle of the night to confirm the details. I also used my investigative reporting skills to track flight data and nail down more details from inside the cabin in real time.
My attempt here is not to boast, nor to dismiss the tremendous value traditional media still holds. Rather, it is to show that we as broadcasters (whether in between gigs, going independent or currently at a station) can leverage our individual skillsets to our benefit, to break news on any available platform and reach millions anywhere at any time.
That’s a new power I never knew I had until recently.
I have read a handful of news outlets are now encouraging their reporters to build out their personal brands to reach new audiences. This is the opposite of the old way of doing things, where the currency stayed with the station. Good on the local stations cultivating this ability for those still working there.
In a time of media consolidation and shutdown, keeping skills and value current and, more importantly, mobile is paramount.
In my orbit, as local stations cut their way to profit, and put more of an emphasis on live streaming shows, I’ve noticed a real lack of veteran investigative reporters who know how to break news.
These new avenues allow people like me to still reach large audiences, despite local news’ declining appetite for what we do.
Let me be clear; I am not a doomsday “traditional media is dead” guy. I still support and believe in traditional local news and may return to work in it again. But when I left my last news job last year, I was determined not to leave my equity as a top anchor and reporter at that station or any station.
I own what I’ve built. And so do you.
Jonathan Carlson is a multiple Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist with more than two decades of reporting experience in newsrooms across the country. He is based in Detroit.