Tiffany Hudson

Producer-Storyteller

Northeast Zone Manager

While serving as a zone manager, my focus was on every story developing in 13 states and major cities like New York City and Philadelphia.  I would coordinate with Nexstar’s local stations to ensure coverage of major news events as well as inform my newsroom on the important or unique Northeast stories of the day. Unfortunately, sometimes things didn’t go as planned or news broke in blind spots. That’s when I would get creative. 

Daniel Prude’s death at the hands of law enforcement happened before George Floyd’s death, but when the footage was released to local media it became a national story. Our local affiliate WROC got a copy of the body camera video and I knew it would be a national story the moment I saw it. I pitched covering it to my team and then worked with the affiliate on continuous live coverage for our broadcast and website until our Northeast correspondent could arrive in Rochester to cover the fallout.  We were in Rochester covering the protests over Prude’s death before other major media outlets and were able to capture the emotion in real-time. I continued to lead coverage on updates throughout my time as a zone manager.

New developments coverage:  
–Probe finds Rochester mayor, city officials ‘knowingly suppressed’ Daniel Prude’s death 
–Wrongful death suit filed on behalf of Daniel Prude’s kids
–NY AG: No officers charged in the death of Daniel Prude

As the U.S. navigated the COVID-19 pandemic pre-pandemic, super-spreader events happened across the country. One of them was at Monmouth University in New Jersey. I read about the 125 cases in a rapid period on campus and thought the story had national potential. Once the pitch was approved, I worked with our Northeast correspondent to head to Monmouth for coverage and live shot possibilities. Since New Jersey was a blind spot at the time, I helped our correspondent get information and visuals to enhance his piece. 

Part of my responsibilities as a zone manager involved checking our local stations for great stories that would resonate with national audiences. This man trying to protect his pregnant wife from COVID-19 was the kind of story that epitomized 2020 during the pandemic. This couple’s story was captured by a local affiliate. I recommended we run the local station’s package on our air and later we interviewed the nurse and his wife for an update. 

For stories that were national trends like rising COVID-19 cases as winter 2020 approached, we would generally have one of our correspondents do a nationwide round-up. My role as a zone manager would be helping my correspondent get as much footage as possible from our NewsNation affiliates across the country and especially the Northeast region. In this COVID-19 round-up, we included footage from our Chicago station as well as some of our upper state New York affiliates. It also incorporated sound from New York and New Jersey’s governors which I helped provide to our correspondent.

thudsonr

, ,

Leave a comment