courtesy of WGN America
It’s a little amusing that the novelty of a news program would be that it’s...news. “It’s just that in this time slot, on cable, in primetime, that’s an anomaly, because it’s consumed by talk and opinion,” starts Joe Donlon, the St. Louis native who’s one of the weeknight anchors of WGN America’s soon-to-premiere cable news program NewsNation. “[Commentary] does well, and it has its lane. We’re going to try to occupy a different lane. ”
Another cable news program? In this media landscape? NewsNation is going up against the likes of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News—and it’s banking on a middle-of the-road, no-opinion model to set it apart from the TV news giants. To accomplish this, NewsNation will be working with 5,400 journalists in 110 local newsrooms across the country to source stories. The hope is that the result will feel more like a local newscast than The Rachel Maddow Show or Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Donlon got his start in journalism as an intern at KMOX (now KMOV), thanks to sportscaster Paul Alexander. He did stints at stations in Corpus Christi, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; and Portland, Oregon, before boomeranging back to the Midwest in 2018 to anchor the nightly news at Chicago’s WGN-TV. When the cable network announced an ambitious new project—a three-hour nightly newscast—Donlon threw his hat in the ring.
At a time when the public might question whether journalists can set politics aside and simply report, Donlon thinks NewsNation will appeal to viewers who are looking for information, not affirmation. “I’ve heard from a lot of people who say, ‘Just give me the news. Don’t tell me how to think,’” he says. “One of our other challenges isn’t how we cover stories, but it’s the stories we cover. People say, ‘Why aren’t you covering this story?’ ‘Here’s something you’ll never see on the news.’ There isn’t some big boogeyman telling us what to cover, like a lot of people think. We all go into a daily meeting and figure out the biggest stories of the day. That’s the starting point for what we’re doing—without opinion.”
Now 57, Donlon thought he was going to finish his career in Portland and retire, and though he was content with that plan, he feels that NewsNation is a chance at a second act. “I never really felt like I needed to get to the network to consider my career a success. I was happy,” he says. “But I’m living proof that there is life in this business after 50. The back nine have been very good to me.”
FYI NewsNation premieres 7 p.m. September 1 on WGN America.
