Here Are Channel 19's Helpful Tips for Keeping Reporters On Brand and Focusing on Their Target Audience

Management at Cleveland 19 News, nee Cleveland Action News, knows that competition for viewer eyeballs is fierce these days. They're battling three other local TV stations on the air and on the web and it's a daily battle to distinguish yourself as the hardest-hitting, most-honest, most-fair, most-everywhere game in town. With that in mind, we're guessing, management put together a super helpful and high-minded mission statement of sorts to guide the station's reporters in their pursuit of great journalism. But because this is local TV news, it's a bit shorter than most mission statements. In fact, it's pretty brief. It's called the Getting Answers Checklist.

It starts with the basics (a good place to start!), rolls through Channel 19's target audience (white middle-age mothers who don't have college degrees!) and finishes with a bullet-point rundown of stories that would move the needle (aka: scary problems that 19's bastion of talent should fix!). It's posted in the newsroom and, should there be any doubt about the description of 19's target demographic, it's surrounded by pictures of middle aged white women doing things like sipping tea and hugging other women to drive home the point.