TY - JOUR T1 - Implications for hybrid newswork from the activities of local US television journalists during COVID JF - Journalism Practice Y1 - In Press A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Keren Henderson A1 - Kian Loong Lua A1 - Raghav Raheja AB -

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, many local television (TV) newsrooms decided to have employees work from home (WFH) or from the field rather than from the newsroom, creating a kind of hybrid work characterized by flexible work location. From a review of research on telework and WFH, we identified possible impacts of WFH on work and on workers, with a particular focus on news work and news workers. Data on the impacts of hybrid work are drawn from interviews with local television news directors and journalists in the United States and observations of remote work. We found that through creative application of technology, WFH news workers could successfully create a newscast, albeit with some concerns about story quality. However, WFH did not seem to satisfy workers’ needs for socialization or learning individually or as a group. Lifted restrictions on gatherings are mitigating some of the experienced problems, but we expect to see continued challenges to news workers’ informal learning in hybrid work settings.

ER - TY - Generic T1 - ReelFramer: Human-AI Co-Creation for News-to-Video Translation T2 - CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Y1 - 2024 A1 - Sitong Wang A1 - Samia Menon A1 - Tao Long A1 - Keren Henderson A1 - Dingzeyu Li A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Mark Hansen A1 - Jeffrey V. Nickerson A1 - Lydia B. Chilton AB -

Short videos on social media are the dominant way young people consume content. News outlets aim to reach audiences through news reels -- short videos conveying news -- but struggle to translate traditional journalistic formats into short, entertaining videos. To translate news into social media reels, we support journalists in reframing the narrative. In literature, narrative framing is a high-level structure that shapes the overall presentation of a story. We identified three narrative framings for reels that adapt social media norms but preserve news value, each with a different balance of information and entertainment. We introduce ReelFramer, a human-AI co-creative system that helps journalists translate print articles into scripts and storyboards. ReelFramer supports exploring multiple narrative framings to find one appropriate to the story. AI suggests foundational narrative details, including characters, plot, setting, and key information. ReelFramer also supports visual framing; AI suggests character and visual detail designs before generating a full storyboard. Our studies show that narrative framing introduces the necessary diversity to translate various articles into reels, and establishing foundational details helps generate scripts that are more relevant and coherent. We also discuss the benefits of using narrative framing and foundational details in content retargeting.

JF - CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CY - Honolulu, Hawai'i UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.09653 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Video for ReelFramer: Co-creating News Reels on Social Media with Generative AI Y1 - 2023 A1 - Sitong Wang A1 - Samia Menon A1 - Tao Long A1 - Keren Henderson A1 - Dingzeyu Li A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Mark Hansen A1 - Jeffrey V. Nickerson A1 - Lydia B. Chilton UR - https://youtu.be/WQZcbdp5yJQ ER - TY - CONF T1 - Communicating with the masses from isolation: What happened when local television journalists worked from home T2 - Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences Y1 - 2022 A1 - Keren Henderson A1 - Raghav Raheja A1 - Kevin Crowston AB -

In response to the COVID-19 crises, many local TV newsrooms decided to have employees work from home (WFH) or the field rather than from the newsroom. From a review of research on telework, we identified possible impacts of WFH on worker effectiveness, conceptualized as including output, individual satisfaction and growth, and group well-being. From a case study of a local TV newsroom and interviews with news directors, we found that WFH was successful in creating a newscast, albeit with some concerns about story quality. However, WFH did not seem to satisfy workers individually or as a group. The current lifting of restrictions on gatherings might mitigate some of the experienced problems, but we expect to see challenges to news worker learning with continued WFH.

JF - Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences CY - Virtual due to COVID ER -