Daily Reveille offers model hurricane coverage

If you want a great example of how a student newspaper can cover a major breaking news story as it unfolds, just check out The Daily Reveille at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

The newspaper is covering every angle of Hurricane Gustav, from the arrival of U.S. Army and National Guard units to the booming business at the local Domino's pizza restaurant. The staff has redesigned the newspaper's home pages so that all the news "above the fold" focuses on Gustav.

Pat Parish, associate director of the LSU Student Media Office, said the radio, TV and newspaper staffs "are doing a lot of new things this fall that really exploit the possibilities of online. For Gustav, their goal is to own the LSU angle."

Much of the staff is camped out in the Student Media offices, Parish wrote in a post the College Media Advisers listserv. "It's a good sturdy building -- with upper floors to flee to, if the levee should break!"

Parish herself is microblogging the storm on Twitter. You can follow her posts at SouthLousiana.

The newspaper's Web site offers truly comprehensive coverage of the hurricane, making use not just of its own staff but campus and national resources. Coverage includes:

• Frequent news updates (posted all through the night)
  
• A live video stream showing the storm
  
• A link to the National Hurricane Center's hurricane tracking map
  
• A hurricane blog
  
• A link to the LSU Hurricane Alert Center
  
• A list of closures on campus
  
• A special multimedia section with videos about the storm.
  
• A poll asking readers if they have evacuated.
  

The Daily Reveille's coverage offers a model other student newspapers dealing with a major news event can turn to.

Breaking news right now

NEW YORK -- How do you write breaking news for the Web?

Follow the Bloomberg model, said Paul Conley, a media consultant who co-led a workshop on Multimedia Storytelling today sponsored by College Media Advisers.

Conley noted that reporting breaking news on the Web is all about speed and updates. When a news story breaks, Bloomberg starts by posting a headline, usually within seconds of the news happening.

Next, a reporter will write a two-paragraph story, which will be posted within minutes. Then comes a four-paragraph story, which will generally follow this format:

Paragraph 1: Theme – what happened and why
Paragraph 2: Authority – a quote
Paragraph 3: Details – more information
Paragraph 4: Why it matters, what’s at stake

“This is the fastest and easiest way to move to 24/7 publishing,” Conley said. “It’s possible to impose this system tomorrow on your Web site.”

Breaking news should be edited quickly, even with the editor looking over the shoulder of the reporter writing.

“It’s not quite publish first, edit later, but almost,” Conley said. “Since it’s the Web, it’s not permanent.”

Jennifer Ward, assistant managing editor, interactive media, for the Fresno Bee, said her paper covers breaking news with updates of three to four paragraphs posted throughout the day.

“Then we do a write-through at the end of the day or as the story is closing,” she said.

Reporters often file news updates and even photos by cell phone, posting material as an event unfolds. “We just had someone filing text message updates from a funeral,” she said.

Sportswriters provide brief play-by-play reports on games and update a scoreboard on the newspaper’s Web site every time a team scores.

Ward noted that Fresno Bee reporters also use their cell phones to take video on breaking news stories and are often able to post before television reporters can. Two new Web sites, Qik.com and Flixwagon.com, allow reporters to post video from their cell phones within seconds.

“It’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in a decade,” Ward said. “It’s totally changing the way we do things. We’re beating TV. We don’t need a $30,000 video truck to do live video.”

Seventeen student journalists and college newspaper advisers attended today’s workshop, one of 27 “Media Pro” workshops sponsored this week by College Media Advisers.

Some resources for learning multimedia:

J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism
An organization that "helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life with projects on innovations in journalism, citizen media, interactive news stories, entrepreneurship, training and research and publications."

J-Learning
A how-to site for community journalism

Journalism 2.0 How to Survive and Thrive
A digital literacy guide for the information age by Mark Briggs, Assistant Managing Editor for Interactive News, The News Tribune

Soundslides
A cheap, easy-to-use program for putting together audio slideshows created by photographer Joe Weiss.

Audacity
A free, easy audio editing program

WordPress
A free content management system. Some newspapers, including The Temple News at Temple University, have started to use WordPress to publish online.
(You can read about The Temple News' move from College Publisher to WordPress here.)

Drupal
Another free content management system

Northern Star helps readers find what they need

One of the things that most impresses me about the Northern Star's coverage of the Valentine's Day shootings is the way the paper has laid out its home page. The coverage is deep and there is lots of information but by listing stories and resources under categories, the Web site helps readers find exactly what they are looking for.


"The latest" in the top right hand corner guides readers to news of the most recent developments, as well as important university resources, such as the Northern Illinois University's list of counseling services and the official university memorial page. Readers who want to participate in a vigil can find one easily from a list under the latest developments. And if you want to find earlier stories, they're all there on the home page in the "coverage archive."

News not related the shootings -- entertainment, sports, other campus coverage -- is still on the home page, but you have to scroll down to find it.

Student newspapers that find themselves in the middle of a news avalanche would do well to follow the Northern Star's lead.

The paper should also get high marks for the thoroughness and timeliness of its coverage. The Northern Star proved itself this week to be a truly professional-quality news organization that served readers near and far.

When a student paper becomes part of the news

When a major news event, like yesterday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, hits a college campus, the student newspaper often becomes part of the story. Here are some articles about the Northern Star, NIU's student newspaper:

* The Herald News
* Arlington Heights Post
* CBS2 Chicago

Here's a column from a NIU alum who worked for the Northern Star and now writes for The Gazette in Iowa City.

And here's how the Collegiate Times, the student newspaper at Virginia Tech, editorialized about the Northern Illinois University shootings. Last April a man gunned down 32 people and then took his own life at the Blacksburg, Va. campus.

Northern Star covers NIU shootings

The Northern Star, the student newspaper at Northern Illinois University, has done an impressive job covering yesterday's shootings at the DeKalb university.

The first story went up on the newspaper's Web site at 3:59 p.m., less than an hour after the incident began, according to Jim Killam, adviser to the newspaper.

Today the staff came out with an 8-page paper without any ads. But Killam noted that with classes cancelled today and through the weekend and some students going home to their families, many people won't see the paper until next week. The Web, as is usually the case with a major breaking news story, is the primary vehicle for reporting the news.

The Northern Star's online coverage includes video reports, breaking news updates, a list of events (such as scheduled news conferences and event cancellations) and a message board where people can share their thoughts.

Daniel Parmenter, who worked for the Northern Star as an advertising representative, was one of six killed in the shooting.

The Northern Star's coverage can be seen as a model for what student media can do in the event of a crisis.

The Advocate faces ethical dilemma

The Advocate, the student newspaper at Contra Costa College in Richmond, Calif., had a difficult ethical decision to make yesterday.

One of the newspaper's photographers got a shot of a campus police aide, a student, who had been shot just minutes before. The powerful image shows the young man lying on the ground with other police aides gathered around him.

The photo was ready to be published within an hour of the shooting, but the young man's family had not been notified. The editors had a tough decision: Should they run the photo immediately, wait, or not run the photo? The student editors decided to hold off until the victim's next of kin had been notified about his injuries. The newspaper posted the photo on its Web site later that day, after authorities had notified the family and confirmed the victim's identity. (By that time the editors also knew the victim was still alive but seriously injured.)

Though the editors held the photo for several hours, the newspaper ran updates on the story throughout the afternoon and evening, including a report on the manhunt for the gunman and another on the cancellation of classes in response to the shooting. The Advocate's coverage is an excellent example of how a weekly college newspaper can cover a big breaking news story.

Do you think the newspaper editors made the right decision? Should the paper have held the photo? Should the photo have been posted to the Web immediately? Post a comment here.

Update on Andrew Meyer Coverage

The Independent Florida Alligator coverage of the Andrew Meyer Tasing incident has gotten even better!



A single Web page, accessible from the newspaper's home page, now brings together all the stories, photos and slide shows and provides a link to the video (noting that the newspaper didn't shoot it).

This package provides a terrific model for what to do when a big story breaks on your campus. Great work, Alligators.

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:

• Follow-up news stories about Meyer's release from jail, the university's president's "damage control" news conference, the state's investigation into the campus police's use of the Taser on the student, a press conference with Meyer's attorney and reaction from students.
  
  
• A slideshow on the incident.
  
  
• A slide show on reaction to the incident.
  
  
• Stories on campus protests on Tuesday and Wednesday.
  
  
• A piece about how the university was handling the unwanted publicity.
  
  
• Editorials about the incident and about the Taser policy.
  
  
• A feature on another University of Florida student named Andrew Meyer.
  
  
• A story and photo showing a police officer's memorial that was tagged with the line, "Don't Tase me, Bro."
  
  
• Several columns and blog posts about the incident.
  

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.