Oregon Media Insiders

I second that. This is a huge loss. One of the nicest guys working in t.v., and a great reporter.

"Why is Tracy Barry covering the G8 summit?"

Because she's qualified to cover that story or any other she might be assigned to.
She's a true professional and has consistantly covered both top news and feature stories for years.

I never said she wasn't qualified. I just asked why she was there.

On her Thursday report I observed she was wearing a Christian cross on her gold necklace. Was this a slip up...that is did Tracy forget to remove and her producer missed it too and KGW decided to go with it?

On Friday's report Tracy appeared to be wearing the same neck chain, but the cross was gone.

What is the etiquette/norm/law regarding anchors or reporters displaying religious symbols either on-air or in the field?

Or when displaying such symbols while on the job (in studio or on assignment), but when not on the air or when not being photographed?

Any constitutional or labor law, state statutes or FCC rulings apply here? And if so does it matter if footage was shot on foreign soil?

Maybe I have not been very observant but I have never noticed a anchor/reporter display a cross. Not that it bothers me. Just curious. Nor would it bother me if a reporter displayed a Jewish, Islamic, Wiccan or other symbol. As long as the playing field is even. But I doubt many station owners would approve of such.

In the HD broadcast last night the aspect ratio for Tracy's report seemed to be off. It was almost like it was shot 16:9 on DV and then formatted 4:3. It made everything look a little "skinny". The image quality also sucked.

I wonder if KGW's lousy image quality came because they're too cheap to buy satellite time to feed it back.

That's what they pulled when the Iraq war began.. but force Pat Dooris and his photog to compress their video and feed it back in chunks over the internet.

The quality stunk. Meanwhile other media on board the very same aircraft carrier fed back much better looking stuff. But KGW's too cheap to do it right.

KGW explored several possibilities for getting video back to the station... The preferred method was obviously the uplink. For some reason when it was priced out, a 15min sat window, from Japan, cost $700.00. So the photographer Scott Williams was trained on their new Final Cut Pro laptop editors, took their Sony SxS camera and off they went to Japan and are FTP'ing their stories back to the station. Quality had to suffer a little bit to keep file size down so his package could be transmitted back to the station in a reasonable amount of time. once he returns to the stations I'm sure their will be a little debrief and another look at the configuration to make the system/quality better.

KPTV considered going but then found out very few Japanese are abusing meth.

Here's another one.. the ratings from last night's 11pm newscasts:

KPTV 4.6
KGW 4.3
KOIN 3.9
KATU 3.4

May '08 - 11PM

KOIN 5.7/16
KGW 5.0/14
KATU 4.0/11
KPTV 3.3/9

One night is not a victory - not even a trend.
You're last at 11PM
#2 in the morning
But hey, you're winning at 4PM (barely)

Each night they introduce Tracy as being a "guest of the Japanese government."

I'll bet that means the Japanese picked up the tab for the trip too. Ethics schmethics?

The sentence refers to the invitation not the cost of the trip.
The Japanese only invited a few U.S. TV stations to cover the event.
The trip is costing KGW a bundle and they're paying every dime themselves.
Nice try though..

Will he still be in Portland?

Well actually you don't have to imagine because those were real numbers. Granted it has a long way to go to compete, but it's doing better than it ever has. As for the afterthought comment... actually a lot of thought went into that show. You tell me, what's more of an afterthought... developing new graphics, a new format, mostly new stories OR.. simply reracking the same show you did at ten.. because that's what KGW does most nights. And this really shouldn't be in the Dave Northfield thread, but someone else started it. Good luck Dave.. we'll miss you too. You're a great guy and reporter.

Best of luck to Dave -- he'll be missed.