From Carole Tarrant, Roanoke Times editor: Mike Gangloff, our federal courts reporter, has been the point man twice on our breaking news blog -- with the William Morva and Virginia Tech shootings. We asked him to share his blogging tips with the Associated Press Managing Editors group, which had its annual convention Oct. 3-6 in Washington, D.C. The convention included a panel on "Multimedia Lessons from Virginia Tech." I was joined on the panel by RT photojournalist Josh Meltzer, Collegiate Times online editor Chris Ritter and Richmond Times-Dispatch managing editor Peggy Bellows.

Student journalists from the University of Maryland blogged about the sessions as well.

Here are Mike's tips ...

Keep the new stuff coming: If it's a big, ongoing event, our online updates should be the equivalent of the crawler on the bottom of the TV screen -- but much, much better. Set a target of updating every 10 minutes or something and try to stick to it. Or better, beat it. In a really big event, the updates likely will be coming nearly as fast as you can post them. Don't be afraid to flood the site with info. That's what readers are coming for. On smaller events, still try to update frequently -- get readers in the habit of checking back frequently for new stuff.

Vary your pitches: The point of the online updates is not just to get the latest bulletin out there (though that's top priority), but to give a snapshot of how our community is being affected by some event. We know our community better than anyone, and this is a good place to show it. Sometimes (like much of the first day of the Tech shootings) the "this just in" moments will be coming too fast and furious to do anything else, but if there's a lull, work in vignettes from around the community that show how people are responding.

Here's an example drawn from our August 2006 coverage of a double cop shooting and the intense manhunt for the suspect, William Morva:

UPDATED noon

Downtown Blacksburg is quiet, though police are patrolling College Avenue and other areas. The ongoing search for William Morva is the topic of conversation in restaurants and coffee shops, and everyone seems to have a cell phone glued to their ear. People who know William Morva recall the stomach problems that kept him from working, his struggles to get by financially and his self-described survivalist skills. Acquaintances say he studied military tactics and talked about living in the Jefferson National Forest.

Many people said they planned to stay downtown because it felt safer than heading home.

"I called my mom and said 'I'm OK,' " said Elizabeth Spencer, a Virginia Tech junior from Richmond. "I don't want to go home because I'd be alone."

Try to find a rhythm between new info, official statements, related stuff like closings or schedule changes, scene pieces, etc. It will help show the many facets of the event. If you're coordinating reporters, consider setting up some sort of rotation of scene pieces -- let one reporter know, for instance, that by 11 a.m. you'll need a reaction piece from Roanoke College campus with some student quotes; and tell another reporter that around 11:30 you'll be looking for comments from the Roanoke City Market, etc. This will give you something to work in between more immediate news.

Make it clear what people are looking at: Remember that you have to serve the reader who first comes to the blog midway through the action as well as someone who's followed you the whole way.

Use your headline and read-in, or the blog's title and description -- the stationary elements on the Web page that won't go away as you add posts, in other words -- to describe what you're doing.

Be explicit in the title, read-in and headline. This is no time for clever, coy or terse headlines. Your specificity will help late-arriving readers but also improve your search ranking since Google is looking for those magic keywords.

Here is the read-in we finally arrived at on the day of the Morva manhunt -- readers saw this at the top of the page, below the big headline:

William Morva, accused of killing a police officer and a security guard, is captured after a day-and-a-half manhunt that prompts the shutdown and evacuation of Virginia Tech. A hectic day unfolds in a series of updates below.

Similarly, links to other content -- full stories, multimedia, etc. -- should be very clear. "Click here for a complete story about the capture" or whatever. Tell them why they should go, sell them on it.

Don't try to create new write-through stories in the midst of handling updates. You won't do either the write-through or the updates very well.

(We have occasionally assigned a different reporter to write the traditional inverted-pyramid story for online – but this is typically later in the event, when the situation has calmed down. However, it’s a No. 2 priority for online. The blog comes first.)

Be ready to rewrite or combine pieces from several reporters: You're the information hub and probably have the best vantage point on what's happening. Reporters probably will feed a mix of stuff to you, from finished mini-articles to calling in a quote and a couple partial sentences of description. It's up to you to make sense of it for the reader, and to give the presentation some sort of consistent voice.

Put the new stuff at the top: Anecdotal evidence suggests that people who are following the blog -- and this is an audience we want to cater to -- are not going to go back down the screen to see if you've added to something they've already read. So if you post at 11 a.m. that three people were rescued from a fire, for example, and find out an hour -- and many posts -- later that one of the people was a Nobel winner, go ahead and put up a new post that talks about the Nobel. Don't go back to your earlier post about the rescue and add info.

Don't panic: In a big story, heavy Web traffic will do weird things to your site. Let the technical folks sort it out and be ready to bootstrap around problems until they are solved. During the Virginia Tech shootings, we had a number of hours where our bureau office near campus could not post to our own site. We kept the updates happening by e-mailing, texting and telephoning to staff downtown who still had access.

• Share this entry
  • Digg this entry
  • Mark in Ma.gnolia
  • Tag with del.icio.us
  • Seed Newsvine
  • Post to Google
  • Add to Yahoo!
  • Share on Facebook
  • Submit to Reddit
  • Related at Technorati
• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process
• :: Comments (0)