Planning on Breaking News?

Team Thursday has had two weeks with big stories – on Oct. 1 we covered the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and on Sept. 24 we dedicated the first part of our show to Pope Francis’ visit to the United States.

There are two different types of big stories: planned events and breaking news. Breaking news can happen at any time, which brings excitement and stress to the newsroom. When covering breaking news, we need to focus on getting accurate information in the 6 p.m. show. With the community college shooting, we kept getting different information from the wires, which made it challenging to keep the script up to date. With the Pope's visit, which was a planned event, we were able to focus on getting a local angle because we didn't have to worry too much about uncovering the news.

It’s especially important to flesh out different parts of the news when covering big stories. With both of team Thursday’s big stories, we had to rely on CNN video and couldn’t send a reporter into the field to film the main story. Yet, we were still able to utilize reporters and explain the big stories through other elements. For the Pope story, we sent multimedia journalists to the local Catholic church to talk to a priest and community members. For the community college shooting, we utilized social media so we could get reaction and original photos and videos from the scene.

I definitely think team Thursday has successfully covered big stories. In the future, I think we need to focus on the very first videos and tracks the audience hears. The preshow, cold open and welcome need to be written before the first story. By the time the audience hears the first story, the information should be more in depth than just the basic facts. 

For our next big story, I hope we can bring in a relevant live guest. We haven’t had a guest on our show yet, and that’s something that will bring our show to the next level.