At The Independent, we’re trying to come up with a breaking news “mobilization” plan to put into place that takes into account our tools (cameras, phones, other recording equipment), our software capabilities and reporter abilities.
What? Why haven’t we done this already?
Well, it’s not like we don’t know how to cover breaking news. We do that pretty well. But it’s time to create a plan that includes social media and some staff that our 140 year-old newspaper is still getting used to using.
For example, we’re ditching our cludgy, GL-2 cameras that require tapes and take two to three hours post-production and switching to Kodak Zi8s with external microphones. We will eventually have three or four (more if we can get them) of these available to the newsroom and we will train and expect our staff to grab them when heading out on a story. Not every story will need video, but the reporters are the best judge as to which stories WILL require video to enhance them and it needs to become second nature to them to remember to grab a camera. We’re lucky to have a couple people in-house who can take that video, edit and upload it for them, but in my opinion, reporters would be smart to learn how to do this themselves. The Zi8s and Moviemaker (or iMovie) are really all you need to get something online quickly.
Our recent experiment with live tweeting has taught some of us how to use an amazing tool like the Verizon Droid to manage a whole new kind of news story. We can’t afford to buy our reporters each a Droid, but we *might* be able to invest in at least two that will be designated for newsroom use. In my wildest dreams, I want every reporter to have a Droid (or iPhone, but those aren’t available here) because I still believe they are one of the best tools a reporter could have in their arsenal. So, I’ve been tasked with coming up with a Breaking News plan that goes from news tip to the very last update. I’ve found a few suggestion online, but it’s pretty sparse. So I’m going to try my luck again with a little crowdsourcing and ask, maybe even beg for advice and suggestions from my fellow awesome journos.
Do you have a plan?
What do you include in it?
Who do you include in it?
Do you post all updates within one story with timestamps or post multiple stories each time there is an update?
Do you have someone “corral” all incoming information?
Do you flow everything through an editor before anything gets posted?
Do you post “as-is” and make corrections later?
How big does a story have to be before this plan goes into effect?
How do you handle the front page of your site? (Does the template change etc.)
Do you have a general plan or do you tailor it to your organization? Which is best?
Any help would be much appreciated. Comments are open!
Today was one of those days that makes you remember why you love this business so much. And if ever a case was made for every reporter in every newsroom having a smartphone, today was it.
When I walked into the newsroom this morning, the publisher was talking to the city editor and our temporary mobile journalist about a call he’d gotten from a local high school. His son attends the school and they were informing parents about an apparent shooting threat. They told parents they could keep their kids at home or come pick them up if they had already been dropped off. Heavily armed police officers were guarding the school and calls were starting to come into the newsroom from panicked parents.
Since we are on Day Three of our live tweeting experiment, our intrepid journo with the Droid headed up to the school to see what he could find out. As soon as he arrived, the information started flowing right onto our front page. And it was an awesome sight to behold. He was able to get in and speak to the plethora of parents who had arrived to pick up their kids and find out more information from the police and school officials.
The next thing I know, I’m getting a flood of Facebook friend requests (our Twitter updates flow to our Facebook page) from people following the story on our website. When they held an impromptu press conference to assure parents their kids would be safe to come back to class, Jack used Qik on his Droid to send it live as it happened. When it ended, I was able to embed the video right into the full story another reporter wrote when all the excitement died down.
We were able to tweet – as the words “the suspect has been arrested” as the words were coming out of the Administrator’s mouth, flowing it to our site and thus making our leap into real time news. It was incredible to behold and the best part is the entire newsroom, from my usual ‘bah humbuggers’ to the ones who’ve embraced it, could finally see all of this in action.
I think it’s one thing to talk about the Hudson River landing and Twitter’s role there, or Twitter’s role with Haitian relief to these folks, but it’s simply not going to “sink in” until they can see it in action locally like they did this morning.
It’s been an awesome morning. I will stipulate that by also saying I am terribly glad nobody was hurt and that the threats never came to fruition. My daughter graduated from this very school only last year.
Yesterday, we held an impromptu meeting to discuss some issues with this experiment and to see what could be improved. Some lessons from that – and from this morning are below:
How can we flow images and video to our own site instead of sending traffic away to Twitpic or Qik? – It can be done, but it’s clunkier than simply using the tools built into apps like Twidroid or Tweetie. I think we’d have to build an app from the ground up, which is beyond our ken. And Barbie.
Will a non-Twitter user understand how to disseminate the information we are sending into our Juitter extension? Does it become confusing to follow when the latest tweets are on top? – I think today proved that this really isn’t an issue. I have yet to hear from anyone who was glued to our coverage today complain about the order in which tweets arrived.
Reign in the ‘casual observations’ such as “I’m moving on someplace else” or “Bob left the room”. – When reporting news on our front page, we should keep it to the news and leave off the ambiance a little. This is fine for regular tweeting, but maybe not so much on our front page. I haven’t decided whether I agree with this yet. Still pondering.
In today’s big news story, when reporting real-time, avoid phrases like “I’m hearing that ….” and reporting rumors. – I’m of two minds on this. I can see that a newspaper reporting ‘I spoke to a lady who says her kids tell her students carry guns to school’ might give credence to false information. On the other hand, one of our reporters said that when you’re reporting live on the scene, the rumors become part of the story. I can see that. I think it’s a very fine line, though, between ‘just the facts’ and reporting the mood and observations of a scene like that.
RSS continues to baffle some folks. I’ll admit to not grasping the concept either once upon a time. But once I did, I never looked back, and so it’s one of my missions to make my coworkers’, friends, relatives’, and anyone else’s lives as easy as possible when it comes to keeping a handle on all of the websites people visit on a daily basis.
So, I made a simple how-to on using Google Reader. Rather than go into what RSS is, anbd how many options there are out there for using it, I picked one, showed how to use it, and called it good. I found explaining everything about RSS put people off.
So, here’s my monkey sheet, and a quick & dirty (and in a noisy newsroom) screencast on using Google Reader and RSS:
The Wonders of RSS
You will need:
A Google account
Directions:
Log into your Google/Gmail account (same thing really)
Go to: http://reader.google.com/ – This will be your RSS Reader. It will pull new posts and updates from any website feed you add a subscription to. Think of it as like subscribing to a magazine. Keep this page open for now and open a new browser tab or window.
Now, you need to populate your reader with feeds. When you visit a website, you might notice an area on it that has a little orange square with some lines on it: This means it has an RSS feed available to subscribe to.
In order to subscribe to a feed, you need it’s URL. Hover your mouse over that funky orange square and you can then right-click, then choose ‘Copy link location’ (on a PC. I dunno what happens on a Mac, but I imagine it’s a similar process.) OR you can just click the funky orange square which takes you to a weird looking version of the website, and then copy the link up in the browser address bar. It’s up to you. Either way, you need that URL.
Now, you’ve copied the link, let’s go back to your Google Reader page. Once there, on the left side column, at the top is a link or button called ‘Add a subscription’. Click it.
Paste in that URL you copied, and hit ‘Add’. That’s it.
Sometimes it may be hard to find that funky orange square. To know for sure if a website has an RSS feed, Firefox will put that box right up in the address bar. IE puts it next to the ‘Home’ button. Weird. If you don’t see it in either of those spots, then chances are the website does not offer RSS.
The beauty of using Google Reader as your RSS feed reader is that you can open it from any computer (if you are logged in, of course) and have your feeds ready to view.
Basically what the reader does is pull in updates from every subscription you add, then you can read them all in one place, at your leisure and then click to the website easily to comment or view the story there. It’s just such a timesaver and once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you got on without it.
RSS