With Friends Like the AP...

Almost a century ago, the Associated Press saw broadcasting, in the form of radio at the time, as a threat to its newspaper members. The standoff between print and electronic media led to something called “The Press-Radio War” of the 1930s. It peaked in 1933, when the AP went so far as to actually ban radio outlets from using the news wire as a source for their news broadcasts.

Things eventually settled down a few years later, and the AP recognized that it was better to have a wider membership, so it allowed radio stations and networks to join the cooperative and in turn created “the radio wire” in 1941, just ahead of the United States joining the Second World War.

Though, to be fair, radio (and later television) were always treated as a bit less-than-equal members of the AP. They were referred to as “associate members” of the cooperative, which remained newspaper-centric for decades that followed. But radio and television stations would pay subscription fees to have an AP teletype machine on hand to deliver the latest news headlines from around the world to their respective newsrooms.

This was why many radio stations would subscribe to the smaller and cheaper competitor, United Press (renamed United Press International, or UPI, after a 1958 merger) until 1999, when UPI ceased services to broadcast clients, leaving the AP to be the sole provider of news wire service to the nation’s broadcast newsrooms, which it continues to be today.

We were reminded of this history today when we spotted an article from the AP via its LinkedIn page that highlighted the work of a trio of online volunteers known as “Nashville Severe Weather.” In the paragraph highlighting the full article, there was this provocative sentence:

“Their hyperlocal focus allows Nashville Severe Weather to fill a niche left open by the local TV meteorologists who have to report on dozens of surrounding counties.”

Well that seemed to us like a bit of a shot towards our colleagues in the local television station newsrooms that serve the nation’s 26th largest market. So we opened up the full story on the AP’s website.

In his story that is headlined “Prepared, not scared: Dedicated volunteers in Nashville relay calm, straight-talk info during storms” AP reporter Travis Loller opens his profile of the three men behind Nashville Severe Weather with a frothy reference to the television show “9-1-1 Nashville” by suggesting that anyone who has watched an episode of the show could be forgiven for thinking that the place is “constantly beset by tornadoes.”

By the time we arrive at the article’s third paragraph, we get this lofty characterization of Nashville Severe Weather: “It’s a service that evokes the early promise of the internet, before the rise of the influencer.”

Which is followed in the very next sentence with this pronouncement: “This is happening at a time when many people no longer watch local news and weather reports.”

So it is pretty clear that the focus of this profile is to highlight the work being done by the online group and how they are somehow a calmer influence than the trained meteorologists who are seen on local television. No less than the Executive Director of the Tennessee Academy of Physician Assistants proceeds to call out the local TV coverage of severe weather as “a little over the top.” She adds about Nashville Severe Weather: “They’re a little more calm and telling it to you straight,” she says. “They don’t get people overly excited.”

Let’s make it clear here that we have no axe to grind with the folks at Nashville Severe Weather or any other online streaming weather coverage. We absolutely think they have every right to compete for an audience looking for local weather coverage, particularly during severe weather events, which are seemingly increasing in frequency and intensity in many locations, including Middle Tennessee.

And we also know that severe weather coverage has become a mainstay of local TV news outlets, with various approaches to that coverage, ranging from professional to a bit more dramatic than some folks might care for.

Our issue with this AP story is that it wants to put all severe weather coverage on local television in one box, and then proceed to tell us how wonderful this online service is because of its hyperlocal focus on just two most populated counties in the market. “One of the things that Nash Severe can do that even the TV stations have trouble doing is really bring it down to intersection level, school level, church level to let people know where the danger and the threat is.”

That quote is from Tom Johnstone, a veteran meteorologist who joined Nashville Severe Weather after 33 years with the National Weather Service. On the group’s website, their self description contained in the “About Us” section does contain a legal disclaimer from one of the groups’ founders who happens to be a lawyer: “We are not meteorologists. When we call ourselves tweeteorologists or media-orologists, we do not mean we are meteorologists.”

Of course the AP article includes the now seemingly obligatory reference to changing habits of local news consumption, with Kevin Trowbridge, a teacher at Nashville’s Belmont University, highlighting that in his informal survey of students in his strategic communications course, “many are turning to Nashville Severe Weather.” Just to underline his point that for college students, “their source of information is that handheld device.” Trowbridge then adds, “It’s not turning on a TV. And it’s not even looking at a traditional media outlet’s online presence. It’s finding sources that provide them quick information when they need it.”

At this point, we wonder why the four television stations in Nashville don’t just turn off their transmitters and call it a day.

One might suppose that the 47 other counties that are covered by the meteorologists working in their weather departments might have to hope that there are some dedicated weather hobbyists ready to start providing the vital severe weather coverage they might need to be “Prepared…not scared.”

(We’ll note here the irony that the first time we ever heard that phrase was from legendary broadcast meteorologist James Spann down in Alabama. He even used it in the title of his 2021 children’s book about weather than can be scary: “Benny & Chipper: Prepared..not scared.” And if you were looking for an example of a TV meteorologist who always strikes the right tone in telling folks about severe weather, James Spann would be role model that many working in the field would point to.)

To wrap this up on a positive note, let us state again for the record—we are happy to hear about the success of Nashville Severe Weather, as we are for all of the folks who do online coverage of severe weather in a reliable, professional manner. We believe that any way people in the path of the storm can be informed to take the actions needed to protect themselves is worth having. We recognize that social media’s advantage of connecting those people in a community where they can have a dialogue is a good thing.

We don’t think that has to be at the expense of the local broadcasters who have been serving those communities for decades, and do so without any ask for support via subscription fees or patreon donations. Let alone what they have to pay each month to be a member of the Associated Press.

In recent years, a small, but growing number of radio and TV stations have decided to drop their AP service and go without that support in their coverage. They’re not alone, in the past two years, the major newspaper groups of Gannett and McClatchy stopped using most AP content.

After reading this particular offering from AP.org, we can only think of the quote from the legendary comedian Joey Adams, who left us back in 1999.

“With friends like that…who needs enemies?”

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