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Wildfire forces newspaper into enlightening blogging experiment

By Kirk Caraway
Internet Editor, NevadaAppeal.com

There is a wildfire raging out of the control on the edge of town, threatening thousands of homes. The reports coming into the newsroom, from writers in the field and the police scanner, change by the minute. The people need information, and they need it now. What do you do?

As the Nevada Appeal found out during the recent wildfire in Carson City, Nev., you blog.

It wasn�t planned that way. We had all of this information coming in, important information that the residents of this city needed to know right then. We couldn�t wait to write stories.

What resulted was what we labeled the Waterfall Fire Reporters� Journal, where minute-by-minute reports were filed and moved online. Features Editor Kelli Du Fresne became the traffic cop for all of the reports coming in from the reporters and photographers on the scene, as well as checking out information received via the police scanner and television news. She assembled these quick reports, a sentence or two, and forwarded them to Caraway to put online. In the meantime, I was busy working with the photos and trying the keep the website up and running under the strain of heavy traffic.

It went down a few times. We eventually had to strip down the front page and ditched just about everything on the site except for the fire info because of all the people logging in.

The format we set up was simple and blog-like. It had some teasers at the top to give the basic information about the fire, with the ongoing journal entries below. Changing the headlines with most updates also helped inform readers that there was something new happening.

The staff of the Nevada Appeal, a 17,000 circulation seven-day daily paper covering Nevada�s capital city, worked almost nonstop from Wednesday, July 14 when the fire started, through Friday, July 16, when firefighters were helped by light winds and the danger subsided. At times, the website was being updated every five minutes, as reports came in of houses burning.

We had people on the ground, watching these homes burn. We knew that some of these homeowners were checking our website to find out if they still had homes.

The response they received from their readers was nothing short of astonishing.

The Appeal received dozens of letters thanking them for their coverage, noting how the constant updates were better than even the television coverage. Comments came in from many others who used the website to find out what was going on, including Gov. Kenny Guinn.

One of our guys was talking to a television reporter at the command center, who told him that whenever they wanted to know what was happening, they checked out website.

�Not only did I receive numerous phone calls from readers and city and state officials, but I also received a surge of e-mails from people all over the country in praise of our news team,� said Appeal Publisher John Dimamabro. �In the 23 years I have been associated with community newspapers, I have never seen a news team rise to the occasion with such an engine of conviction and uncontestable dedication to the community as the premier source of information as news unfolded.�

In addition to the blog format of their reporting, the website readers gravitated to the photo galleries that were set up, and left messages on the Message Board of Hope that was set up to allow them to offer a helping hand.

After the initial scare was over, all of the more than 75 online stories were collected on a permanent web page, which gets new additions each day as the city recovers from the fire.

Starting a blog had been on our agenda, but we weren't so sure how people would accept this kind of journalism for a local paper online.

This erased all doubts. This was the best way to get information out to the public, and they loved it.

A lot of credit goes to the entire Appeal team, who in the middle of the disaster, came up with quick plans for circulation, marketing and news coverage. Special rack cards were printed, extra issues delivered to those who had been evacuated and the 2,000 firefighters who came to battle the blaze, and plans were made for a book chronicling the Waterfall Fire.

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