Who won the Barton Solvents story?
It's easier to tell who lost the local-news race to cover the Barton Solvents explosion story than to tell who won. While WHO-TV, KCCI-TV, WOI-TV, and the Register were tripping all over themselves to cover the story like it was the Second Coming (WHO-TV was still all-Barton-all-the-time for the first 12 minutes of the 10:00 newscast), nary a word about the story was to be found on the KDSM website, even after 10:30. WOI-TV didn't win a lot of points by leading online with an AP version of the story. The Register made some baby steps towards using some real multimedia tools with a Google Map link, though it's hard to be impressed after seeing how KPBS in San Diego took Google Maps to a new level in covering the wildfires. They caught decent video of some of the explosions, but it felt a little naked without any reporters doing voice-over narratives...that, of course, being the difference between news and data. In an echo of Good News I and II, the Register's original news-planes, they even got some aerial photos of the scene...but, well, where's the aerial video? Even cell phones come with video cameras now; they could've really shown that they understood multimedia by taking a Motorola Razr along and catching some of those fireballs from the air. Then again, Chopper 13 doesn't appear to have been deployed, which itself is peculiar, so perhaps the Register won the air war anyway.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Who won the Barton Solvents story?.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://desmoinesist.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/gongol/managed-mt/mt-tb.cgi/5
Leave a comment