Thursday, September 20, 2007

You've seen the video; now read the story

Millions have seen the "Don't Tase me, bro" videos of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer heckling John Kerry at a forum and then being subdued with a Taser by campus police.

Now you can see how the Independent Florida Alligator covered the story.

The newspaper's coverage began with a breaking news story that went up shortly after the incident. Within a few hours there were more than 60 comments on the story from outraged readers.

Over the course of this week the newspaper also ran:

One thing I didn't see, although it may have been there somewhere, was a link to the video. And it would have been nice if the paper packaged the stories together on the Web site so readers could follow the developments and look back at previous stories.

Still, overall, the coverage was deep, rich and thorough--a great example for college papers of how to cover a big breaking/developing news story. Kudos to the Independent Florida Alligator for a job well done.

We'd love to hear from Alligator editors about their experience with the story. Post a comment here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pauline Millard at Editor & Publisher liked the Alligator's coverage , too. Read her comments at the E&P Web site at http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003643068

Megan Taylor said...

Oddly enough, we do have a package up. :)