120606

Meta News Reporting

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel blogger Tim Cuprisin covers TV and radio news coverage of a massive propane explosion at Falk Corp. in Milwaukee this morning, which injured at least 25 and killed at least two.

Chanel 4’s Streaming Video
Streaming Video
Channel 12’s chopper is up
The injury figures
Channel 4: A cause?
The coverage continues
Channel 4 breaks in

The JS website is accessible from anywhere in the world. Blogging makes literally minute-by-minute aggregate news coverage possible. And online video puts anyone with a computer right there on the ground with the reporters.

That’s great for news, but there are a few problems with it, all technical:

• There’s no un-complicated way to combine all this information into a single digestible item.
• There’s no un-hack-y way to combine archives of the streaming video and audio coverage with the text-based updates from the Journal Sentinel.
• And related parts of this breaking story will become buried by the end of the day as Cuprisin continues to blog about other news items, making it harder for evening readers to find.

The Journal-Sentinel’s newspaper story