Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.
Verify: Homeless camps (4/14/17, WFAA-TV): Across the country, local TV stations owned by TEGNA have been rolling out a segment in their newscasts called “Verify”.
(I say this, in full disclosure, as a TEGNA employee at WXIA-TV in Atlanta.)
I have seen this segment be successful in many forms, but I have never seen it as compelling and relevant as it seemed here, in this piece from WFAA-TV in Dallas. Reporter David Schechter and the Verify team respond to a viewer question by bringing along that viewer to find the answer.
Something about this just … works. Maybe it’s because of the buy-in of the viewer, Felecia, who grills her city councilwoman while developing more perspective about the homeless camp by her neighborhood. Maybe it’s because of the chronological, peek-behind-the-curtain nature of the storytelling. Mostly it’s because this segment took an issue many stations won’t touch (homelessness) and made it engaging in a new way.