Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 90

B5 PAULINE UU WPIX Age: 37 Home: Long Beach Married to Joe BURKETT WABC Age: 33 Home: Suffolk North Shore Married to Margaret producer at CNBC Education: Columbia University master fe international affairs Columbia First Job in TV: WFSB Hartford Years in television news: 10 How long correspondent: 6 years Favorite activity: Sailing on 28-foot boat On the Air Biggest story: Katie Ban 1992 EUNA KWON WNYW Age: 35 Home: Glen Cove Married to Bill Brass-man attorney daughters Katie 5 Molly 2 Educatioo: Yale University Televisioo Jobs: Sacramento San Francisco Years la television a ewe 12 years How long LI correspondent: 6 months Favorite place on LI: Morgan Bark in Glen Cove Biggest story covered: Massapequa supermarket roof collapse 1996 Moskowitz former morning anchor for Newsl2 Education: Brooklyn College TV certification from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism TV Jobs: Elmira Albany Years in television news: 12 How long correspondent: 2 years Favorite activity: Attending summer festivals Biggest story: Blast End wildfires 1995 wired to Cablevision will turn to Newsl2 During last Westhampton wildfires 20 percent of subscribers tuned to Newsl2 during a sample 15-minute period giving the station its largest-ever rating success Its audience was slightly smaller 17 to 19 percent for blizzard In contrast WNBC4 the city station with the highest rating during the Sunday morning the blizzard began got 92 percent of the homes in the tri-state area have shown that when you offer people in-depth coverage of their neighborhoods and communities you can engender a fierce loyalty among our said Patrick Dolan vice president of news for Rainbow Programing the parent corporation of Newsl2 Nevertheless city stations still consider other broadcasters their main competition according to Bruno Cohen news director for WNBC4 On the other hand he adds cable news channels "are becoming more influential They are growing and their audiences are no wonder that WNBC began calling itself the a few months ago abandoning the long-time New slogan Cohen said he fashioned the regional approach for two reasons: First to fulfill journalistic responsibility to provide coverage second is the business need to get more people to he said get them to watch you have to go where they news directors woke up to the notion that they have a huge audience in the suburbs with big bujks These are the people who buy the television sets buy the cars buy the home computers and take the said a reporter covering LI for one of the city stations Increasingly though suburban coverage means Long Island at least as much as that accorded New Jersey which has twice the viewing audience according to station news directors many stories come out of Long Island because it is a microcosm of the region in said Bart Feder assistant news PART 2 NEWSOAY WEDNESDAY MARCH 2a 1996 LI Reporters Hit the Road office has had four blowouts and two new transmissions since he took the job as Long Island correspondent in 1990 spend more time in this van than I do in my own Burkett said in his middle of the custom topped with a 50-foot microwave director of WABC7 In the past he said TV station showed up only when there was bad news gotten a lot better at covering stories on a daily basis that crime stories or just spot Though there is no quota for stories from each region all the news directors from five dty stations WCBS2 WNBC4 WNYWFox5 WABC7 and WPIX 11 said they would have at least one story from Nassau or Suffolk in a typical newscast (WWOR9 is licensed to New Jersey and although it will use wire service copy and free-lance video to cover a mqjor story here it does not staff the Island) say there is no Long Island story today is to say we are not said Feder Island is kind of like a sixth borough said Drew Scott who was LI correspondent before taking over as news director at WLIG55 Long Island is the only suburb where all dty stations have resident correspondents WNYW assigned corre-spondent Euna Kwon in September At the same time WNBC4 which is making a big push for the LI audience added MG Perez as its second full-time correspondent He joins Carolyn Gusoff a Long Island native who moved from Newsl2 to WNBC in 1993 cover Long Island in any meaningful way without living out said Burkett who has been working and living here for six years and is known as Newton Jones to his friends do otherwise would be to cover Paris out of And just as important for a medium dependent on technical equipment each Btation now keeps at least one news van garaged here overnight so it can quickly respond to a breaking story The Long Island Coalition for Fair Broadcasting which has been monitoring local television coverage for the last decade says the amount of Long Island news has been steadily increasing on the city newscasts Its annual study of the 6 pm and 10 pm news shows that in the past 10 years the percentage of time given to LI news has grown from 3 percent to slightly less than 10 percent A 1995 study conducted by the Economic Research Bureau at the State University of New York at Stony Brook shows that for the summer weeks examined WNYW5 had the most stories about the Island and WNBC4 had devoted the most time 12 percent of its show to the Island More importantly the stories are beginning to mature beyond the crime- and headline-of-the day approach according to Abby Keningsberg executive director of the coalition The 1995 study showed a decrease in crime accident and fire news although those stories still dominated coverage The study showed an increase in stories about the environment business minorities and human interest city stations have really done some excellent journalism and are making a contribution to understanding what is happening out she said However Keningsberg said many stories still lacked perspective is still a tendency to show the astonishing thing and move on think anyone handled the Roosevelt schools stoiy well It is the real story of a breakdown of society and community The television reporting needed that For most stories reporters for the city stations say they must convince producers in New York that the story will have broad interest throughout the metropolitan area And often an important Long Island story swivel chair in the $300000 white van mast All of the correspondents say they like their lives here Burkett has a clause in his contract barring reassignment from Long Island without prior approval When MG Perez moved here from San Francisco Manhattan colleagues warned him Long Island is a different world Perez recalls being told about string of murders and crazy However Perez said he enjoys it here have to struggle to find news out here and it keeps me a safe distance from The correpondents are fiercely competitive and they keep tabs on each other monitoring radio transmission and pumping sources to find out who else is coming to an event even though often they wind up covering the same story But despite the rivalry move around together a lot and most of us are actually friends on our time said Pauline Liu of WPIX Salaries for city station reporters can start at the union scale of $60000 and exceed $150000 Salaries at Newsl2 begin at $30000 and because it is nonunion a lot of free-lancers are used The cable-news operation has eight full-time reporters and two who share reporting and anchoring duties With as many as a half-dozen news vans criss-crossing the Island and all winding up at the big event the electronic media inevitably create a sideshow of their own like the circus coming to said Doug Geed East End bureau chief for News 12 who has been with the cable-news operation since its inception in 1986 Matt Jablow said Long Islanders still act and when the dty correspondents arrive treat them like they were said Jablow who has been covering the Island for six years are the home-town people the However all the reporters share the challenge of making a story interesting to a wide audience I wonder if something that happens in Mineola has any interest to someone in said Geed there really is a sense of being a Long Islander and an interest in the different places Ciolli Burkett has all the comforts of a drab office prefab module A hook for his jacket (a coat would scrape the floor) and a place to tape up a picture of his Scottish terrier Six television screens stacked in two columns form the rear wall of the van and a travel bag contains the tools of his trade: notebooks cell phone Rolodexes an extra pair of socks and a can of hair sprqy the Island is a difficult place to cover You are almost always a half hour away from the he said distance and the traffic become the real But life in the van is not without its costs: The cellphone bill for example averages $1500 a month Or its hazards: The logo (a circle around a 7) was painted over after it became a repeated target for BB-gun enthusiasts The other TV correspondents who cover Long la-land have offices in Plain view or bureaus in Mineola Still most of their day is spent on the road dress down to go to said Jennifer McLo-gan of WCBS a former NBC network news correspondent who left the prestige and grueling travel schedule behind bo she could live in the suburbs and raise her three children Long Island you are always out in the elements snow drifts floods During the January blizzard after she filed a live report on the conditions McLogan did eight more live for other CBS stations around the country want you to Btand still while talking I had to keep walking through the snow drifts and at the same time try to keep the earpiece in and look elegant in the middle of a Please see NEWS on Next Page.