Michael Rosenblum, once described as the "guru of one-person television journalism," is the mastermind behind what's known as the video-journalist revolution, which has been employed widely for the last five to 10 years by the likes of cable television (Trauma: Life in the E.R., for example), the BBC and filmmakers. But aside from niche bloggers and industry folks who follow these sorts of things, few realize that Rosenblum's experiment is beginning to gain traction in television news too. And the ground floor of it all is happening right here in Nashville.

Nashville's third-rated local news station, WKRN-Channel 2, is the first newsroom in the country to move to a comprehensive "VJ" model, wherein the TV news staff is told, as Rosenblum puts it, "to forget everything you know or think you know about television because everything you know is wrong." Videographers who were once responsible only for shooting film are now charged with reporting stories, often even nuanced public policy news that they've never before needed to understand in any sophisticated way. Conversely, reporters who have never shot film in their lives are given cameras and laptops and trained to shoot as well as report, edit their own packages, etc. It turns conventional TV newscasting on its head.

Rosenblum, in Nashville this week conducting ongoing training for WKRN staff, tells the Scene that there's been "enormous resistance on the news side for doing this." But, he says, at Channel 2, "I think they're delighted—unless they're all lying to me."

Yeah, about that, Michael...they are.

"I feel like the station hasn't thought this all the way through," says one Channel 2 photographer. "I feel like my job is hard enough. Now, I'm missing things. My photography is suffering because I'm worried about trying to get the facts. And the reporters are so busy composing shots that their notepads are on the coffee table."

That's not to say that this kind of fear or grousing trumps the groundbreaking nature of the new format. Both Rosenblum and WKRN general manager Mike Sechrist make a compelling case that scrapping conventional newscasting has been due for a long time. ("Rosenblum has an answer for everything," one Channel 2 reporter says.)

Until just recently, WKRN had six camera crews to document the news every day. "That's kind of like the equivalent of a newspaper having only six pencils to make the paper with every day," says Rosenblum, who, at the tender age of 30, left a plum producer position at CBS Sunday Morning to stumble into founding this sort of democratization of television. "As a journalist, if you had to book the pencil crew every time you wanted to go do a story, it would drive you crazy. And that's exactly the way television has functioned." When WKRN's training and transformation is complete in a few months, 35 cameras, instead of six, will document the news of the day.

Some Channel 2 staffers aren't wholly resistant to the new format, but they do question why more fundamental issues haven't been addressed to improve the newscast and, thus, ratings. "We've never invested money in the bad signal, and we don't promote stories," one reporter says. It's been long known that there are places around Nashville where News 2 crews can't get a signal—"blind spots all over Middle Tennessee."

Morale is in the gutter, newsroom staffers say, and three valued staffers have fled the station in the last few months, among them reporter Lilla Marigza and weekend anchor L.J. Moody. "If everything was going fine here, they would want to work here. It just gave them an excuse," one reporter there says.

What's more, they wonder whether the motive for a wholesale transformation of the newsroom has been driven by station owner Young Broadcasting's financial health. The owner of 10 stations nationwide, Young reported its worst quarterly loss in more than a decade earlier this month.

GM Sechrist says it's not about the money, that it would be folly "to do things the same old way and expect them to come out differently." Moreover, he says, the station has invested in 30 new cameras and nearly 20 Dell laptops and is considering buying a new fleet of cars for staffers. "This was not a money decision. It was a decision based on looking at the way news looks now."

For now, viewers can expect some jarring dispatches from newbie VJs, awkward voice-overs and ill-advised camera angles. Yet to completely shake out is whether, in spot news situations when timing and staffing are crucial, some semblance of the traditional model will survive. Sechrist says it will, but staffers are more skeptical.

In the meantime, Rosenblum sees better ratings on the horizon. "This thing is going to roll across the country in the next few years."

Odds and ends

WSMV-Channel 4's Larry Brinton has "reported" what is perhaps his most bizarre segment to date. A recent "Word on the Street" asked viewers, "Have you heard the rumor? It's big, and it's sweeping through town like wildfire." Brinton never says what the rumor is, only that it is "an untruthful attempt to harm someone." Bottom line: unless you were one of a handful of reporters or editors like Brinton (and this writer) who were "tipped" on unsubstantiated, rumor-mongering trash about Police Chief Ronal Serpas—that he was having an affair—or unless you were among the few spreading the rumor, Brinton's piece was like watching news in a language you can't comprehend. That is to say, it was meaningless. Brinton tells Desperately that he was simply trying to dispel and "slow down" false and hateful gossip. He's probably the only guy in town who could get away with reporting (or not reporting?) about a dubious report. Oh well. He's probably earned it.... In a span of three weeks, two of former Tennessean business editor Bill Choyke's reporters died. Now business editor at The Virginian-Pilot, Choyke had no sooner eulogized Mike Davis (also formerly of The Tennessean) last month than another of his reporters passed away. "Tough times here," Choyke wrote Desperately in a recent email about the tragedy. But he hasn't lost his sense of humor: "Hope you are doing better than I—or is it me?" (It's "I.")

Darts and laurels

Kudos to The Tennessean for thinking to give readers, in a recent two-part series, a broad and thorough report about the Ford family dynasty in Memphis. But in the end, the best part of the series was a sidebar of photographs of former state Sen. John Ford's siblings (about which many impolitic thoughts come to mind). The three most relevant members of the family—the aforementioned notorious shyster; his brother, former Congressman Harold Ford Sr.; and Harold Sr.'s son, current Congressman Harold Ford Jr.—were conspicuously silent, declining to talk to the newspaper for the stories. It was a good effort by a solid reporter, but the execution was, all in all, a triumph of mediocrity.... Speaking of the Fords, WTVF-Channel 5's Phil Williams ran circles around the state's motley crew of Capitol Hill reporters when he had the bright idea of fishing around in John Ford's desk after the senator was indicted and resigned from office. Williams reported that in addition to a collection of religious messages handed out by other lawmakers, the desk drawers that Ford once used contained notes "passed to the Memphis Democrat by lobbyists during Senate debates," some of which directed Ford how to deal with particular legislation. More damning were notes from Omnicare, "the TennCare company that has admitted paying Ford more than $400,000 and finds itself at the center of a growing criminal investigation." Not only did Williams beat the rest of his colleagues to the story (the Scene included, by the way), he thought to look where even the feds neglected to search. Williams tells Desperately that he contacted investigators after the story and turned over all the materials he found. Meanwhile, he says the apparently unread religious messages were his most ironic discovery.... Tennessean Capitol Hill reporter Brad Schrade and colleague Trent Seibert have relentlessly pursued stories about document shredding in state sex harassment cases and the prevalence of toy badges that are handed out at the state level the way mayors hand out keys to the city. The stories have been thorough and workmanlike, but the recent Sunday badge opus in particular was a mostly empty harrumph that hung on the fact that a couple of chuckleheads tried to get out of traffic and drunk driving charges by flashing their honorary badges. Not exactly the most pressing issue of the day. "I think my badge is in a box at the bottom of my closet," one badge holder says. "I've gotten at least two tickets from state troopers in the past year, which I'm sure wouldn't have been forgiven, badge or not." In fairness, Gov. Phil Bredesen halted, at least temporarily, the issuance of the meaningless pieces of metal while the state could look into it, which could be interpreted as a Tennessean victory. But, equally possible, the governor, who has important things to do, decided that the issue was so insignificant it cost him nothing to interrupt the practice....

Email tips, gripes or comments to lgarrigan@nashvillescene.com.