At NECN, documentaries show depth
NEWTON -- Three frozen images of Governor Deval Patrick stare back at Beth Kidwell inside the quiet, dark editing room at NECN.
There's Patrick chatting on a radio show, riding in the back seat of a car, and patiently waiting as his wife adjusts his tie before his inauguration last January.
They are slices of the governor's first months in office and one of hundreds of images that Kidwell, the regional cable network's lone documentary editor, will weave into a one-hour piece called "The Education of Deval Patrick: The First 100 Days." The show will air May 31 at 8 p.m.
"You will see the public and private side of Deval Patrick," says Kidwell, whose back is turned from the half-moon of monitors down the hall from the gaggle of news reporters and anchors working on daily stories. "That's more news-oriented with crunching and crushing deadlines. It's a faster pace. We are open-end ed with the documentaries."
Traditionally documentaries have been the realm of the networks and national cable channels that have the money and resources to invest months, even a year, on long-form storytelling. Take for example the History and Discovery channels and PBS. But at NECN the documentaries have grown into a professional hallmark, a way for the regional cable news outlet to stand apart from its more heavily watched local news counterparts.
The investment is beginning to bear fruit. The station has racked up several prestigious national and regional awards for its documentaries. Two of NECN's four documentaries from 2006 are finalists in the New England/Emmy awards, which are handed out tonight.
One of them, titled "Katrina," follows NECN anchor Karen Swensen as she heads back to New Orleans to report on the aftermath on the hurricane in her old hometown. The other, "Hidden Wounds," chronicles how post traumatic stress disorder affected three soldiers and their families after the men returned from Iraq.
The documentary unit evolved informally, producing one a year early in the station's 15-year history. This year NECN plans to produce five documentaries on major topics that producers say would be difficult to sum up in a minute or two on the local newscast. One upcoming documentary will profile a blind and deaf couple who were affected by last year's industrial explosion in Danvers. Another will examine how global warming affects New England.
"They are the topics of our time. We pick topics that have power and resonance," says Charles Kravetz , vice president of news and station manager at NECN. "One of the things I believe NECN has is the abundance of time. We need to use that to our advantage. This seemed like a great area for us to distinguish ourselves in."
Other local stations are engaged in long-form journalism. WCVB-TV (Channel 5) has been producing its news magazine show, "Chronicle," for 25 years. WHDH-TV (Channel 7) and WBZ-TV (Channel 4) produce investigative stories that air on their evening news programs.
What makes NECN's work different is that the documentaries run a half hour, an hour , or 90 minutes -- a luxury for news organizations -- and they air several times a week in various time slots.
"In many ways, it bucks the trend," says Mark Jurkowitz , associate director for the Project for Excellence in Journalism research group in Washington D.C. "In the Boston market, a number of the stations like to pride themselves on their investigative units. Anything resembling a documentary is rare in local television, and that is something that NECN should be applauded for."
In last year's "Hidden Wounds," NECN executive editor Iris Adler chronicled how trauma from serving in Iraq affected three New England soldiers as they tried to return to civilian life. That documentary won a regional best news documentary Edward R. Murrow Award this year.
"We do feature pieces, political pieces , and cultural pieces," says Adler, who has been with NECN since it launched . She and Kravetz created the network's documentary unit in 1996-97, with a story called "Look for Me Here: 299 Days in the Life of Nora Lenihan," which followed a breast cancer patient and the friends and caretakers who supported her in her last year of her life. NECN became the first regional cable network ever to win a George Foster Peabody Award for that documentary.
"We run the gamut, but we want to do stories that are deeply moving and important, to give more depth and substance," says Adler, who is working on another Iraq-related documentary for this summer on how the deaths of soldiers affect families in New England. "Most stations do their one-minute stories. You can't tell some of these stories in 2 1/2 minutes. People crave more depth."
As do the reporters.
On a recent weekday, NECN political reporter Alison King plops herself in the hallway of the newsroom surrounded by newspapers. She's looking for articles on Deval Patrick to use as visuals for her documentary on his first 100 days in office. She had close access to the governor, often riding with him in the back of his car on the way to news conferences and events.
"It allows us to go deeper than we are allowed to dig on [regular] television," says King, who previously produced a documentary on Senator Edward Kennedy. "You can sink into something which is so rare nowadays, something you don't get to do on local news."
Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com. 
