Student journalists cover the UK earthquake
February 27, 2008 at 9:29 am paulbradshaw 4 comments
Kudos to two of my student journalists who had the nous to report on last night’s earthquake as soon as it happened, using Twitter, blogs and the website, and sourcing from forums, Twitter, blogs, and Flickr.
Quickest off the draw was Stephen Nunes, who posted a tweet complete with link to the U.S. Geological Survey (journalistic quandary: to twitter immediately without verification, or to get the facts?)
Meanwhile, Mitchell Jones was also twittering – about his scrambling for information about the earthquake.
Once he’d gathered some facts, he blogged it. In addition to the official sources and other news outlets, Mitch had also gathered some original material from blogs and blog comments.
(And the Flickr-sourced image of a bleary-eyed housemate in dressing gown watching the news was an unusual one, but in the absence of the old lump-of-debris snap it kinda works for me as a representation of what was happening across the country – and he gets credit for thinking visually).
Cleverly, he’s obviously set up Twitterfeed to post blog updates to his Twitter account too.
Within two hours the story had gone live on the Environmental News Online website, complete with tags.
Congratulations, Mitchell, on a job well done.
Entry filed under: blogging, comments, online journalism, online journalism students, twitter. Tags: earthquake, Mitch Jones, tremor, UK earthquake.
1. Being awake during the ‘quake… « Local EnGovernment | February 27, 2008 at 4:20 pm
[...] A review of the story can also be seen here: http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/02/27/student-journalists-cover-the-uk-earthquake/ [...]
2.
Martin Robbins | February 27, 2008 at 4:55 pm
A lot of the comments by members of the public on this quake are hilarious, i.e. “I was in bed in my quiet little village and i felt a big rumble, i thought it was osama coming to get us.” . See here for some more.
3.
Dave Lee | February 27, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I managed to squeeze out a post at 3am with some video footage of what I think is some bloody awful BBC coverage.
4. I pwn the h4xorZ - and we’re going public! « NewsWire | February 28, 2008 at 1:35 pm
[...] And the journalists are posting more frequently now – especially in the wake of the recent earthquake. See what Paul Bradshaw thinks of it here. [...]