“It may not be the traditional way of broadcasting, but it is still getting information out there,” says Morgan Wolfe, TV reporter for KSL in Salt Lake City.
Morgan Wolfe, a reporter for KSL, Bonneville International’s NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City, has reached over 7 million views on TikTok with close to 60,000 followers through her posts of news stories, mostly related to the Gabby Petito case, who was killed by her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, in August 2021.
Wofle says she started posting her reporting about the case seven months ago on TikTok after seeing some misinformation spreading.
“It was a terribly sad story that had a lot of twists and turns,” Wofle says. ”People across the world became captivated and I felt a responsibility to share information. But not in a traditional broadcast story type of way. I ended up making a series of 60 or more videos around Petito.”
She says she got the idea to put posts about the Petito story on TikTok because Petito herself “loved lifestyle blogging, so why don’t we share all that information with the people that are her age that are following this story? I made my first video and it went crazy, 700 views on that first video.”
Wolfe says many national news organizations have launched their own TikTok accounts, “but there is a total gap with local TV not understanding TikTok. Local TV stations still think it is this app for people that do dances and comedy skits, and it’s not.”
Wolfe says she’s submitted some of her TikTok postings in the innovation category for an Edward R. Murrow award.
“It may not be the traditional way of broadcasting, but it is still getting information out there,” she says.
Wolfe says TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform and stealing people from every other platform. “It is not going to be slowing down any time soon, and I just don’t want local news to miss their opportunity.”
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