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Haiti Quake: Will Local Stations Own the Big Story On Air and Online?

I found out about the earthquake in Haiti on Twitter.  The tweets cascaded across my TweetDeck, and I followed the big breaking story the way I do now:  at the computer, with the TV as backup (like when tweets advise of a pending presidential news conference).  You'd be hard pressed to prove that social media hasn't fully shifted the immediacy of a major, breaking story to the web, and away from television--especially cable news, which often can't (because of its size and structure) react quite as fast as the flood of voices I can listen to online.

But then, as the magnitude of the story sinks in, thoughts turn to the bigger story, and the need to move beyond the tweet into rich, powerful, real reporting.  And for my money, this is where local stations still--if they have the common sense to do it--dominate.  The Miami market, in particular, was somehow born for this kind of story.  Like a threatening hurricane, the quake shakes the ridiculous out of newsrooms and brings out the heart of a true local newsteam:  cover the story.  It's local to us, and we'll throw everything we have at it.  It matters.

Not to say this isn't also true for once mighty but financially gutted institutions like the Miami Herald.  But for my money, this is a time when you want to see video and to follow the familiar face of a local reporter as they get to Haiti and tell us what it's like (especially since so many of Miami's reporters have been to Haiti and know it).

But there's a risk that stations will revert to their old media ways and think about putting on the best six o'clock newscast ever, with reporters focusing their efforts on those award-bait packages, and producers over-thinking the wipes and info bars, rather than getting those reporters online early and often--and messy. Let it look rough.

This is the time for stations to make certain that they use all available platforms to own the story:  and that means driving viewers to the web for longer, more personal "liveshots" from reporters, for behind-the-scenes "what it's like to report this" stories, and other ways to really maximize the power of a station's web presence.  You can do so much.  So do it now.  And in the process, you'll send a message to viewers to remember that as breaking news migrates online, the first stop online should be that known entity:  your local station, still doing its thing, owning the big local story, and doing it better and bigger than ever.

Observation:  the highly-hyped "Locals Only" website in Miami, NBCMiami, hardly seems to be harnessing the power of the web to tell the story in a new way--unless you think giving readers the option of choosing "laughing" as a reaction to the Haiti story.  By comparison, WPLG's website, Local10.com has a special section, lots of video and true multimedia.  Still, I'd like to see more true local content jumping off the page away from the Reuters pictures and AP content:  a local reporter's Haiti blog that I can check on, and rough FlipCam-style video posts that might let me feel that this was a real raw story unfolding, and that I had a trusted reporter giving me the very, very latest.  I think even the story of getting to Haiti after the quake would be fascinating this morning. (The Miami Herald website does have a link to follow its Haiti correspondent, Jacqueline Charles, as she covers the story, but by noon Wednesday the only tweets were "Getting ready to leave. 2 hrs to PAP" and then, an hour later: "Leaving 4 haiti now ffrom MIA")

By comparison, check out Anderson Cooper's post on CNN. A reporter at heart, he captures the "as I'm seeing it" style well:

Have a look at the Miami websites and let me know what you think.