When it Comes to Breaking News All Eyes Are on the Web

Wednesday was filled with breaking news. We had local, national and international breaking news that we had to get posted to the web.  News kept coming through the wires from the shooting on West Adams, to George Zimmerman being charged with second degree murder, to a 7.0 earthquake that struck Mexico City. 

The morning was pretty hectic as we scrambled to get details regarding the deadly shooting on West Adams, that killed two USC international graduate students. Throughout the day we continued to update the story, as more details were being released by LAPD. 

Not wanting to repeat the same mistakes I made last time I was web producer, whenever I needed help I asked for it. All my web teammates, and extra volunteers that came in really helped lower my stress level. Working with the web and social media really allowed us to cover multiple angles for this story.

For our "more coverage" section on the shootings, we posted seven stories by the time the newscast aired. We covered everything from the shooting to reaction from USC's Chinese community.

Social media played a big part in our coverage for this story. Most of our photos came from our reporters tweets, and we even scheduled interviews by reaching out to people who were tweeting about the incident. Most importantly, once the names of the victims were released we used Facebook to get photos of them for the website. Also we were able to tweet out the newest updates, and let USC students know where they could go to receive counseling services.  

Today was the last day that I will take on the role as a web producer, and I couldn't have asked for a better way to end the semester. Thanks to our successful and extensive coverage we got thousands of hits on our website, and hundreds of more followers on twitter. Today we proved once again that we are USC's first source for news.