Two of the D.C. area’s leading radio station disagree on how a very fundamental portion of big-city news radio should be delivered: Traffic reports. The Washington Post yesterday reported on what appears to be a schism between glass-enclosed news juggernaut WTOP and public-radio affiliate WAMU about how their drive-time traffic news should be gathered.
For WTOP, traffic is a major news-gathering undertaking, with as many as 20 full- and part-time reporters devoted to chronicling the goings-on about the region’s roadways. “They drive in it, see it, feel it,” Jim Farley, WTOP’s vice president of news, says in the Post’s article.
On WAMU, the traffic reports in the morning come from a voice some locals will recognized—that of Jerry Edwards—but is actually being broadcast from far away. Edwards, who spent 20 years reporting on asphalt and gridlock for NBC4, retired from his television gig in June 2011, but signed on with WAMU last December.
However, since August, Edwards has been reporting not from WAMU’s Tenleytown perch, but from a home studio at his house in Sarasota, Fla., where he moved after selling his Maryland home. (And the station’s afternoon traffic guy is based in Philadelphia.)
But neither of WAMU’s traffic readers are directly employed, instead, they answer to Salt Lake City-based Radiate Media. Still, Farley is a bit put off by what he sees as an act of geographic insincerity:
At the very least, Farley says, WAMU should disclose to its listeners that its traffic reports are coming from out of town. “Not doing that is deceptive and misleading,” he says. “It’s not honest reporting.”
But WAMU says it has no plans to ’fess up about its reporters.
Still, while it would be cozy to have its traffic reporters in-studio, the way traffic information is gathered and distributed now somewhat dilutes Farley’s complaints. Road conditions and traffic emergencies are broadcast through government channels that are increasingly available to anyone who doesn’t have their radio dial tuned to 88.5 FM or 103.5 FM. Apple’s App Store alone contains scores of programs that update users with the latest information transmitted by transportation agencies, and Google Maps claims to offer near-realtime status of the gridlock in many metropolitan areas, including Washington’s.
If anything, it could seem that traffic reporting is getting more impersonal, and that the location of the person reading the data seems to matter less and less. Farley disagrees. His station’s round-the-clock operation demands constant checking of the traffic feeds and first-hand reporting, he tells DCist.
“First, we are live 24/7 so that takes a lot of bodies,” Farley writes in an email. “Second, there is only fragmented information and data available. The overall picture has to be put together with other resources, such as our own listeners who call us to describe what they are seeing.”
Additionally, Farley says, because there are no traffic cameras on federally controlled highways—the Rock Creek, George Washington and Baltimore-Washington parkways, to name a few—eyewitness accounts make up a lot of the difference. And as for all those traffic cameras favored by the D.C., Maryland and Virginia transportation departments? “A good percentage are out of service at any given time,” Farley says.
He also boasts that state police in both Maryland and Virginia have said that WTOP knows traffic situations better than highway patrols.
