Local sites covering national events

Posted on August 3, 2007

Ryan Sholin recently wrote about how niche coverage can help your site.

“Be specific,” he says.

And I agree. Finding that niche market will make your site invaluable to your readers.

So, then, how do you handle a national-interest story that may have nothing to do with your readers’ daily lives? The Minneapolis bridge collapse is a horrible tragedy and obviously an important story to cover (the Virgina Tech shootings, as well), but where should local news sites draw the line at how much they play up the coverage?

Yesterday afternoon, I took a quick glance at how some Florida news sites (at least 1,300 miles away) were covering the story. The St. Petersburg Times devoted the top half of their page to the event, complete with graphics, video and a condolence book. The Orlando Sentinel had similar coverage. What about smaller papers? Well, The Lakeland Ledger and The Bradenton Herald did the same, too. Most were reporting the latest developments of Wednesday night’s news, not even localizing the story.

This morning, they all still were reporting the Minneapolis event, but many have finally have added in the “could this happen in Florida” angle. By this afternoon, the news has moved to a smaller mention, if any, on the most of the fronts (but not all), which leads me to believe that the public isn’t interested in this story from their local paper.

On one hand, this kind of news coverage enables the country to rally together and sympathize with our fellow Americans during tragic events. On the other hand, news Web sites have to be careful not to pick up the bad habits 24-hour national cable TV stations, which, in my opinion, are guilty of overplaying stories for ratings and to fill news holes. In doing so, local news sites are not being specific and run a risk of devaluing their importance and expertise.

Why would readers go to a local site to read AP content they could find at any other site, especially when they could go to a national news site or — even better — the local paper of the city in which the event happened to get the most up-to-date news?

Are readers really going to go to a Florida or Arizona or Oregon news Web site to find out the latest about a bridge collapse in Minneapolis?

No. They’re smarter than that. And many, unfortunately, by day two have experienced story fatigue.

Give them the credit they deserve and provide them with the latest news in their community. That’s why they’re going to your local site.

OK, so back to multimedia storytelling … regardless of my critique on how the story is played, there’s some excellent coverage out there.

Going straight to the source, the Minneapolis papers got specific and obviously busted their butts publishing interactive content. They both have boxes highlighting all their multimedia content right on the homefronts.

>> StarTribune.com has video, audio and staff and user-submitted photos of the event.

>> TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press) has audio slideshows, video, photo galleries and a user-submitted photo page (although it doesn’t have many entries at this time)