Walmart

WDSU’s Student Connection School Supply Drive is a two-week initiative inviting the community to contribute donations through United Way of Southeast Louisiana (UWSELA) to purchase school supplies that will be distributed directly to the school systems.

There’s so much uncertainty and controversy about students returning to school. How is your station covering the return to school for students? How is your station promoting that coverage? However they go back, how do you have their back?

TV stations owned by Weigel, Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray, Tegna, Hearst, and Sunbeam in markets all over the country are responding to help those in need in their communities with food, toys, clothing, rent assistance and even restaurants hit by the pandemic.

At 3 o’clock in the morning in New Orleans, drivers lined up to receive free school supplies from WDSU, Hearst’s NBC affiliate there, as part of the station’s Student Connection School Supply Drive, even though the start time wasn’t until 9.

In the country’s 85th television market, El Paso, when a major breaking news story like this one happens, it can put enormous pressure on the TV stations there to adequately cover the story. Here’s a picture of how the local stations and their owners responded.