Barn fire coverage shows breaking news evolution

Credit: Christofer Machniak/Hartland Patch • Hartland Area Firefighter Jim Brake scrapes the charred ground as Fire Marshal Mike Bernardin takes pictures Saturday in the area where the animal barn once stood until a fire Friday night at Spicer Orchards Farm Market and Cider Mill, 10411 Clyde Road, in Hartland Township, Mich. The building that contains the farm market, winery and bakery stands in the background.

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Because of how the semester evolved, we didn't do a breaking news assignment as planned, but I still want to provide some insight into how this is changing the nature of journalism.

The example I'm going to use is from Hartland Patch, where on Friday night I began to report about a fire at a well-known farm and cider mill — Spicer Orchards (A photo from my follow-up story is above). What's really important to note is the first news of the fire wasn't even published by me on my site — it came from a user named Mary who broke the story in our activity stream (See below). After I saw that, I immediately checked to see if other media had anything and I found that the countywide newspaper, the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus already had a brief story and pictures. So, I engaged the audience by responding with what I knew at that point, correcting her report that it was a "large" barn and to explain that we now we're working on the story (also below).

I also linked to the Press & Argus story on Hartland Patch's Facebook page. In this new world of journalism while I still see myself competing with the paper for stories, my philosophy is to also link to their coverage whenever it's useful to my audience, especially on stories that are breaking or that I know Hartland Patch won't be doing. This could be called the Kriss Kringle strategy — in the holiday classic “Miracle on 34th Street” where Santa earns the trust of shoppers by sending Macy customers to rival Gimbel's because it makes sense and is the right thing to do. This is basically the same except I'm trying to build credibility with users as well as make Hartland Patch the place to go for hyperlocal news.

Report: Print beats online where you'd least expect

Editor's note: I'm writing this as a news aggregation without opinion to provide another example for this week's upcoming assignment. I included the question at the end in an effort to encourage an online dialouge, but that wouldn't be necessary in a basic aggregation. I just thought it fit here.

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — College students favor their printed version of their campus newspapers vs. the online product, a recent PoynterOnline report says.

The article quotes several professionals who help oversee student publishing saying student prefer the dead-tree version and cites a survey that says 63 percent of students classify themselves as light or frequent readers of the print editions.

“My experience is that if something is free and it's convenient to get and whatever is in it is relevant to them, they have no qualms about printed versus non-printed,” said Kevin Schwartz, general manager of The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the article. “A college newspaper, if it's done right, is all of those things.”

Who would have thought or is this all wishful thinking based on anecdotal reporting?

My journey shows trend

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — As promised, here’s my take on this week’s readings (feel free to post a comment, but it’s not required. We'll keep the graded discussions on Blackboard):

A year ago, I was in graduate school and teaching two journalism classes with not much hope of finding a professional job in journalism because of the economy. Now thanks to the bet of AOL (which owns Patch) on hyperlocal journalism, I'm back to work, traveling out of state to learn about my new job and employer. Part of the reason I got the position was because I've continued to upgrade my skills, especially in the digital environment where telling stories can be done through social media, audio, video and slideshows.