We have some exceptional reporters like Kay Watson at WBIR and Hayes Hickman and Michael Silence at the News Sentinel.

But we also have some of the dumbest reporters in the entire country.

How difficult is it to read a map to know where West Knoxville is or know what office some elected official holds?

Will Ragsdale serve another term? That is the most clueless comment yet. Will he run for Governor? Where do they find these people?

Meanwhile more trouble for a troubled middle age man:

(link...)

So far, the vast majority of people responding to the poll want Mayor Mike Ragsdale to resign. Looks like the phone call from Mike Arms has not gone out yet.

I am told that the reporter who was blissfully unaware of term limits is someone new at WVLT.

I am told that the reporter who was blissfully unaware of term limits is someone new at WVLT.

Is she pretty? Just kidding.

As many clueless mistakes as the news rookies have made you would think a handbook would be created to bring them up to speed. Or maybe they could use the library or the Internet. Most of what a reporter needs to know is on the City, County, and Election websites.

Or they can just learn as they go. Which seems to be the preferred method.

I think about this ouster suit the same way I think about the effort to recall Victor Ashe. It's a waste of time. By the time it would move forward, Ragsdale will be out of office anyway (same was true with Victor).

I'd advise people to put their energy into finding and supporting good candidates for 2010 instead.

YMMV.

Knoxville, for TV news, is a mid-level market, typically the second job for someone post college. Field reporters, for the most part, are relatively young, inexperience and not looking to put down roots (nor are they paid particularly well). By the time they get their bearings, they're most likely gone.

My personal favorite, however, was the WATE reporter who asked me where 4th and Gill was.

In the case of Knox County government and its myriad of insanities, I would doubt very seriously that KNS would send out a new reporter, but you never know when something is going to break and what everybody else might be up to. Nonetheless, it is traditional for television reporters, especially ones who are new to the market, to ask ill-informed questions. It doesn't surprise me, or even sadden me anymore, that they do so. The surprise is when the TV folks are full of intellectual and situational sparkle and shine.

In a perfect world -- or even a somewhat better world -- any reporter who was sent out on an assignment would have the basics down. We used to get clip files from the newspaper morgue (the clip library for non-news types) and read them before covering something new. We would talk to any and all folks in the newsroom who had background in that area regarding what to look for and the most important things that might possibly occur. Back in the newsroom after the reporting was done, there was more debriefing. All of that saved me considerable embarrassment over the years. That's not to say that I never made mistakes, but the big ones were few and far between.

When I was covering a beat, I only knew a couple of local TV reporters who were always truly prepared and knew the history as well as the range possibilities. It was refreshing. TV reporters, based on my observations, sometimes are mistakenly under the impression that just because they only have three minutes to fill that they don't need to know everything. Truth is, I believe, that the tighter the writing, the more you need to know, and the more carefully you need to write. I can say some of that from experience having spent a few years doing commentary on an NPR affiliate.

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut