This fall 2010 has been a busy one for the Index. Well, pretty much any news outlet in the country — it was election season. And we had been prepping all semester for our Nov. 2 live coverage of local and state elections. Tuesday was quite a hectic night.
On top of putting together our usual 20 pages of content, we were developing a special basketball preview section and covering election results (in nearly real time!).
Now, the Index doesn’t do much real time coverage. Even breaking news takes some time to get out to the masses — and we don’t just shovel breaking news onto the website without thoroughly editing it first. But this was as real-time as the Index has ever been. Reporter Kaitlin Davis, who was stationed at the Adair County Courthouse throughout the night, brought the election results packet back to the office around 9 p.m. From that point on, we were updating results from that packet and from state-wide election results found on the Secretary of State website, for a good two hours.
It was an adrenaline filled evening, and my first experience with live coverage of an event. Here are some things I learned from our 2010 Election Day coverage.
1. You better be 100 percent sure.We didn’t have time to carefully step through each line of the results packet we received. We had to quickly and accurately interpret hundreds of statistics crammed into 20 pages. Myself or our News Editor Andrea Hewitt would read off results, type them into a Google Doc, and our Online Editor Patrick Gross updated the website with our around 40-word updates. This happened every few minutes for about two hours. And we didn’t have the option of being wrong. We had to be sure that what we told Patrick was absolutely correct — otherwise hundreds of people would read incorrect information before we realized it needed to be changed — and the last thing we want to do is misinform people.
2. You better be willing to run, not walk. We worked with News 36 and KTRM throughout the night, and several times I sprinted down the halls of Barnett to their offices, trying to figure out which outlet had live interviews with candidates, confirming things sources had announced live on air before placing it on the Index website and sharing information with them as it was passed along to us. And that is part of live coverage in any medium. I burned my calories that night, and it paid off. We caught some amazing quotes from candidates interviewed on-air, because we knew when they would be on. It also helped because our reporters roaming about weren’t able t talk to all the candidates that night.
3. Sharing can be good — but be sure you trust the middle man. Because of our small staff and our inability to be everywhere at once (especially because all editors had to be in the office to put together our normal print edition), we did receive some information from News 36 and KTRM. However, as we were listening to a live phone interview with candidate for the Missouri Senate District 18 race Brian Munzlinger, I thought I heard him say that incumbent Wes Shoemyer had called and conceded to Munzlinger. However, I had been doing about 1oo things at one time and wanted to be certain I’d heard what I thought I’d heard. So I sprinted down the hall to the radio station to get a confirmation from someone who had been working in their control room. Unfortunately, no one in the KTRM office had been listening to the interview. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t get a confirmation right away, since there were at least three people in KTRM while the interview was happening, but I realized it is also important not to rely on other news sources for information. We heard the confirmation later, but I wish I could’ve gotten it then and there.
I’d say overall the coverage went smoothly. I’m happy with how hard everyone on staff worked last week, and while I’m grateful every week isn’t election week (phew!), it was an exciting night.
Hope that is an interesting peek into a crazed night at the Dex.
Keep on readin’,
Brenna
