Every once in awhile you run across something so thoughtful it makes you rethink what good looks like.
That’s what Washington, D.C. CBS affiliate WUSA has done in producing the series “Survived By: One Year After the Capital Gazette Shooting.”
On June 28, 2018 a gunman walked into the to the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md. and killed Wendi Winters, Rebecca Smith, John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, and Gerald Fischman.
“For the past 2 months an amazing team of journalists have been spending time with some of the family members of the victims,” WUSA creative director Skye Beitler told TVSpy. “Mostly we just listened. We let them share their stories.”
That stripped down style, letting the victim’s loved ones tell the story instead of reporter or anchor narration, with images framed by DSLR cameras to give the stories depth, is exactly what local TV needs more of. Have a watch.
The show aired commercial free at 7 pm on the anniversary of the shooting, Friday the 28th.
Something worth noting, four of the main contributors to the doc are women. Chief editor Haleigh Purvis, director of photography Tiffany McNeil and digital producer Sam Kubota who did the story on the website. Jenna Converse produced the social videos used to promote the piece.