It seems they’ve taken up this suggestion although it doesn’t make them that much more watchable.
The news from the regions must be taking a few days to filter through to SCA news HQ in Hobart. They reported on the mass vaccination centre planned for Wollongong tonight… four days after Gladys announced it. 
They are probably getting the newspapers in the mail.
Can’t even buy a subscription to the Canberra Times website? Their budget must be very tight.
Just saw another one in Canberra…
My wife summed it up perfectly with this comment as the update aired “you should probably learn how to pronounce the place names before you go on TV because you sound like a complete idiot”
Update that just aired talked about the Westfield shopping centre evacuation that happened yesterday morning, then followed up talking about voting locations in Belconnen, Gungahlin, and Tuggeranong, where the presenter mis-pronounced the name of every single suburb she read out.
Oh boy….
Was just about to post about the same thing. It was pretty awful and there was really no need to read out the locations - especially if you can’t pronounce them -just direct people to the website for voting locations.
The third story was yesterday’s Canberra Raiders match followed by the NSW weather map.
10 News Local - First with yesterday’s news.
Do these people doing these reports have access to the internet. You can get more current news online than the crap they’re serving up. Does SCA have a subscription to AAP? Can they use the news wire copy to inform their scripts. It’s not like they’re on the ground in Canberra and other places scrounging up news content.
Everyone here is being very harsh on all the presenters only a few days into a new job, they’re still learning.
But high school students at 6 news Australia are doing a better job.
I’m not having a go at the people… just the content and presentation.
While I agree that we shouldn’t be so critical of the presenters, fresh out of uni, etc., I think the criticisms expressed would be reflective of what ordinary viewers think, and first impressions matter.
Mispronouncing place names is a smack-in-the-face obvious problem to viewers. It’s one of the issues with centralised/remote presentation of news, and why it will always be inferior to a locally-produced product, but financially it is so much cheaper (cheap n nasty comes to mind).
Similar criticisms were made of 9News regional bulletins when they started.
I think these complaints should rightly be directed at SCA management who have basically dropped these unexperienced people in the deep end.
Sounds like they should be putting phonetic spelling on the autocue.
That assumes the script writer knows the correct pronunciation
I think once it’s on a mainstream commercial network, it’s open slather. It would be different if we’re having a dig at a community station as you’d expect the production quality to be low. 10 viewers would expect much better than this I think.
Not being critical of the presenters - appreciate they are under resourced - but it is a basic to know how to pronounce place names for the market you are broadcasting, as is reporting news that is somewhat current and accurate.
Inexperience and needing on air practice is totally understandable but ‘learning’, especially the basics is what Uni is for, not actual news updates.
These updates are pathetic - but, yes, largely the fault of SCA management, not the presenters.
it was posted in this thread a few days ago that these presenters are not necessarily newbies
Organisations like AIR News who broadcast primarily on community radio pride themselves on their pronunciations. This is when you have experienced staff who excel themselves on turning out a quick and deadline driven professional product regardless of the intended audience.
Yep, I agree.
We don’t expect a flawless, Peter Overton-like delivery from fresh out of uni presenters on Day 1. But surely competent broadcasters would do basic pronunciation checks during the rehearsal/dry run stage? I’d be surprised if SCA weren’t doing test updates (that obviously wouldn’t have made it to air) during the week or so before July 1!
I actually don’t blame these Journalists in some ways although it’s pretty obvious they need to brush up on the pronunciations, even Google is helpful for a lot of them.
I’d say the main problems is the leadership. Do they have a Producer in charge of them? If not they should. Just waiting for one of them to cover some court or legal story and getting sued for defamation or contempt of court.
Its possible it’s just been lumped in with 7 Tasmania News and it’s now an extra responsibility with no time or resources for it.
I will add that WIN News Updates in Northern NSW/Gold Coast seem to have near flawless pronunciation for Presenters based in Wollongong. They’re also shorter and punchier. Goes to show the difference in cultures.
Exactly, almost all have come from regional reporting gigs and are from the area in which they’re presenting about.
Heck, I’d probably mispronounce difficult suburb names in regional Queensland even though I’ve lived there most of my life.
Fair game that the content of the updates is rubbish, but the assertion that these are fresh University students is simply not true.
That’s 9. With 9 they’ll take 36 weeks of annual leave a year, so that’s an extra 1 to cover leave assuming they don’t overlap. So realistically an extra 2 to cover annual and sick leave - even if not full time.
Tough comparison. 6 news have multiple people putting together one bulletin a day.
SCA’s staff are each working on at least a couple of dozen updates a day.
Completed study in December 2020. 6 months in Tamworth this year and some short stints of intern work in Melbourne in 2019. No connection to SNSW.
Graduated in December 2020. Minimal work at Hot Tomoato as a Journalist. Other work just short stints as an intern.
I don’t know for sure but I presume they might reassign a couple of the 7 Tasmania Reporters to do Presenting in cases to cover leave, plus the updates will shut down over most of December/early January.
Yes these Journalists have zero connection to the areas they’re covering. It’s even possible they’ve never gone to Canberra or Townsville even for a holiday.