WCBS New York’s Digital Content Creator Maggie Cole on laying the path for a new role
Local television stations all across the country are asking what they can do to draw in younger audiences. To answer that question, Northeastern University’s Reinventing Local TV News Project (RLTVN) placed four fellows in newsrooms across New York, Chicago and Boston. These fellows create content exclusively for the stations’ digital platforms including streaming channels and social media.
Maggie Cole was RLTVN’s 2024 fellow at CBS News New York and hired by the station as Digital Content Creator when the fellowship ended. They were drawn to this role for its emphasis on local news, appealing to younger audiences and ultimately the excitement of a new perspective.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What’s the process like to edit an entire piece together for TV and then flip it over to work on social media?
I think that trying to transition a piece from a [broadcast-style] piece to social media is one of the hardest things you can do. I had a four minute piece on [broadcast] and now I have to do a 1:30. Also, another thing that no one thinks of except for people who work social media is that everything needs to now be vertical. So when I’m shooting, I’m constantly trying to envision the Instagram video too. I shoot it horizontally so it can be used for streaming, but try to keep it so that this is what’s gonna be on Instagram.
Everything is in chunks. So, if all of my interviews were sitting with me on a Monday morning and I needed to get it all done, I would say I’d be done by like Tuesday or Wednesday, like sitting down and really working. Because the other thing for me is if you’re creating a story, a full storyline, you can’t do it in an afternoon.
What has been your experience with collaborating with the other fellows and your co-workers?
Towards the end of our fellowship, [Chicago fellow Angela Chen] suggested that we do a video together. Our goal most of the time is to go viral, to be seen, to have our video exposed. And so if we were to make a video, our initial reason to do it was if we make a video with all three of us that’s being exposed to three different markets, which gives us an even greater chance of going viral.
The way that we planned this out was [Boston fellow Leanna Scachetti] wrote out a shot sheet of things that we all needed to do. So, we all needed to get a shot of our coffee, like pulling away from it or zooming into it. And then I came up with what are the things that we need to compare? So, I was like, okay, we all need breakfast, an activity, lunch and a dessert there so we all could compare the same thing. It was very much like a lot of pre-planning and figuring out how we’re all gonna stay on the same playing field, but in three completely different cities with different resources and different abilities.
It went incredibly well. I also had more people in the newsroom come up and talk to me about that video, I think than any other video that I made for the whole year. Everyone was like, “Oh my god, this was so cool. Where did you find these people?” And then more people were asking about the fellowship and so it really brought a different level of visibility to what we were doing.
You just got offered a permanent position at CBS News New York, what does that mean for you and your work?
I think what it means is that big companies like CBS are understanding that social media is a form of currency and that your grandma in West Virginia has a better chance of seeing a video that I upload to CBS’s Instagram than they do of seeing something on our CBS broadcast. And that’s just the truth of the world that we live in. And it’s not that local news can’t be broad and big, it can be, but the internet is so much stronger than broadcast TV. I don’t know anyone my age with cable or younger than me.
I think CBS realizing that the reach on social media is far broader and wider, I think was a huge hump that we had to get over. But in doing that, it like, like I said, laid a path for the role that I now have, which is a Digital Content Creator. But, I think it also proves that the work that Northeastern and Mike [Beaudet] has been doing for the last five years or so is tangibly successful.
Any final words or advice for people interested in this project?
People should continue to support local news and continue to support young people in local news because it is revolutionary and it’s truly crazy what a fresh set of eyes can do.
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