The Internet has changed us as a media
Reporters are adrenalin junkies. I might as well admit that right up front. Big news makes us jump and run . . . and run . . . and run.
Today, not much after noon, the police scanner in the newsroom blared news of a shooting at Central High School here in Beaumont.
That turned out not to be true, but at the time it sounded like big news. So we jumped and ran.
Reporter Rose Ybarra hit the road to get to the site. A cell phone call from me also interrupted Assistant Managing Editor Pete Churton, who is also a photographer, while he was busy taking pictures. Jemimah Noonoo, another reporter, ended up talking to Ybarra via cell phone and also headed out there, as did another photographer, Dave Ryan.
On-line producer Scott Eslinger was answering both cell and land-line telephones, posting information and listening to the scanner, while Managing Editor Ron Franscell called the shots and I ran around doing several things, mostly trying to be helpful.
Reporter Emily Guevara and Photographer Mark Hancock, who were off chasing a bank robbery story out of Vidor at the time, returned to the newsroom realize that, at least at the time, it didn’t appear to be the biggest story of the day.
By the time the situation settled, the facts included:
That it didn’t happen on the Central High School campus, but at a private residence nearby.
That no students were involved (thank you.)
That, though two people apparently got in some kind of squabble involving gun-play, it certainly wasn’t as big a story as we initially thought it was going to be (thank you, again.)
We had the story posted on our Website, BeaumontEnterprise.com within minutes after it happened.
We had photographs, we had video. We had the whole package and we did a great job gathering the real facts and images and getting them to our readers. And we pumped a lot of adrenaline while we did it.
But, it probably wasn’t a big news story. We, and the immediacy of the Internet, made it one, at least temporarily.
If I had been a nervous parent trying to find out what was going on at the school, having that quick and accurate news would have been important to me.
So, we did our job and I think we did it well, just differently than we would have done it a decade ago when we had the luxury of the time to wait and see what the real story might be.
Today, not much after noon, the police scanner in the newsroom blared news of a shooting at Central High School here in Beaumont.
That turned out not to be true, but at the time it sounded like big news. So we jumped and ran.
Reporter Rose Ybarra hit the road to get to the site. A cell phone call from me also interrupted Assistant Managing Editor Pete Churton, who is also a photographer, while he was busy taking pictures. Jemimah Noonoo, another reporter, ended up talking to Ybarra via cell phone and also headed out there, as did another photographer, Dave Ryan.
On-line producer Scott Eslinger was answering both cell and land-line telephones, posting information and listening to the scanner, while Managing Editor Ron Franscell called the shots and I ran around doing several things, mostly trying to be helpful.
Reporter Emily Guevara and Photographer Mark Hancock, who were off chasing a bank robbery story out of Vidor at the time, returned to the newsroom realize that, at least at the time, it didn’t appear to be the biggest story of the day.
By the time the situation settled, the facts included:
That it didn’t happen on the Central High School campus, but at a private residence nearby.
That no students were involved (thank you.)
That, though two people apparently got in some kind of squabble involving gun-play, it certainly wasn’t as big a story as we initially thought it was going to be (thank you, again.)
We had the story posted on our Website, BeaumontEnterprise.com within minutes after it happened.
We had photographs, we had video. We had the whole package and we did a great job gathering the real facts and images and getting them to our readers. And we pumped a lot of adrenaline while we did it.
But, it probably wasn’t a big news story. We, and the immediacy of the Internet, made it one, at least temporarily.
If I had been a nervous parent trying to find out what was going on at the school, having that quick and accurate news would have been important to me.
So, we did our job and I think we did it well, just differently than we would have done it a decade ago when we had the luxury of the time to wait and see what the real story might be.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 2:55 PM
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