live event coverage tips, tactics and more
TRANSCRIPT
WE’RE GOING LIVE!Tips, Tactics For Breaking News
Presented at CUP 78, Friday, January 8, 2016
Why Do Live Event Coverage?
It’s incredibly important to your most engaged audience
It will grow your social media following
It can be your notes
What To Do Before?
Prepare, prepare, prepare some more
Lean on other sources
Plan if you can
Know your tools(practice makes perfect)
Making A List… Checking It TwiceThings to prepare can include:
Twitter lists
Important urls
Fact sheets. Names, dates, other important pieces of information
Prewritten stories
Graphics, photos
Challenges?
It’s hard to do well
Balancing live coverage and your responsibilities
Accuracy. How do I know this is right?
How To Set Your PrioritiesYOU HAVE A NEWSROOM:Is it a big story? YES? EVERYONE works on it.
Break it down into manageable pieces
Priorities:Social platformsWebsitePrint
ON YOUR OWN?Prioritize! Be ruthless
Do one thing at a time. Slow down.
Lean on other journalists/sources
Priorities:Social platformsWebsitePrint
TwitterStrengths:Short format makes it perfect for breaking news
Can be used for web stories after very easily
Live video solution is pretty good
Good with photos
Great for crowdsourcing
Weaknesses:
Limited reach (not many people are on Twitter)
Bigger events can have a lot of noise, can be hard to filter out
FacebookStrengths:
Widest reach
Live video will get better
It sticks around
Good with photos
Weaknesses:
The newsfeed algorithm is weird for breaking news
Format is hard for breaking news where things change, develop, info drips in
Other PlatformsThink video:
Periscope
Facebook Mentions/Live Video
Ustream
YouTube
Or...
Photos (Instagram?)
Audio? (Soundcloud, etc.)
???
Great Examples Of Live CoverageGuardian’s Paris Attacks Liveblog
New York Times’ GOP Debate Liveblog
Using Slack to power part of your liveblog.
Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.Live coverage has dramatically changed in the last few years
Think mobile first
Practice Makes Perfect
Livetweet something ‘unimportant’ (a Leafs game, a TV show you’re watching, a movie at home)
Learn your tools (download apps, try them out, shoot video and photos, record audio, livestream)
