“Every phone has a weather app on it. So where do you add value, layer in expertise?”
Weather has long been a staple of local TV news. But as climate change makes extreme weather events like droughts, blizzards, and fires more frequent and severe, weather is becoming an even bigger part of people’s daily lives — and local newspapers see an opportunity.
Some news outlets are leaving the “bring your umbrella”-type daily forecasts to the TV meteorologists and “rain starts in 15 minutes” to the weather apps, aiming to add value in deeper reporting. Others are seeking to compete directly with the meteorology departments that have been a staple of local TV news.
The San Francisco Chronicle had long sought to do more science-backed, day-to-day weather coverage. Wildfires and air quality problems in the Chronicle’s coverage area underlined the need. “We were still going to outside experts, getting in line with other media organizations when we needed a scientific explanation for a complicated matter,” said Tim O’Rourke, the VP of content strategy for Hearst Newspapers, which owns the Chronicle.
In 2020, the Chronicle hired a new editor-in-chief, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, who’d been at The Washington Post — home to the Capital Weather Gang (more about them below). Ruiz and O’Rourke talked about “how valuable it could be for a local news audience to have a similar model with a science-backed team.”
Recent research also suggests that weather coverage is a way to build audience trust. One recent YouGov survey found that more Americans view The Weather Channel as trustworthy than any other news outlet.
+ info: NiemanLab
