Blogger helps newspaper cover storm

Florida's Pensacola News Journal took an innovative approach to its news coverage of Hurricane Ivan, using Blogger to produce much of its coverage. Meanwhile, traffic soared and thousands of people e-mailed the newspaper asking it to check on their homes. In this account for CyberJournalist.net, Juan Ortega, a copy editor for FLORIDA TODAY, describes why the news site turned to Blogger and how it helped save the day:

During Ivan, Blogger made it easier for the paper to immediately post an array of items – lengthy news articles, briefs about where to find emergency supplies, lists of insurers' and distributors' phone numbers – that hopefully helped online readers. The paper's Web site became its main source to publish information during the hurricane. During its peak, the site received 12 million visitors.

Reporters, editors and online producers from other newspapers came to help the paper. But because they were unable to immediately gain an account to the News Journal's newsroom messaging system, they instead began e-mailing news items to a designated "for-the-Web" account. (Gmail, where the account was created, acted as a virtual messaging system, because the page automatically refreshes when e-mails arrive.)

Because of Blogger, only one person updated the site while others prepared widely viewed photo galleries or a dominant presentation photo for the front page.

If you visit pensacolanewsjournal.com, you'll notice the majority of the links on the front page lead to Blogger-created Web pages. Cool.

On some nights last week, I was the person who posted news entries for site. It has been an enriching experience. Here's a screen capture of the Blogger screen for the paper's postings.

Yes, our minute-to-minute updating, simplified with Blogger, led online readers to expect something new most of the time they revisited the News Journal's site.

That, coupled with the useful hurricane information, made them more involved in what we were publishing.

At the News Journal, Blogger contributed to creating an "I wonder what will be posted next" feel, making readers not want to miss the soon-to-come news.

Oftentimes, Randy Hammer, executive editor of the News Journal, was focused on keeping readers in the loop of the paper's every move. People are going through a lot of hardships in Pensacola, and he wanted to ensure readers who craved information know the paper is trying its best to deliver it."

Here's a good example of the type of posts Hammer wrote:

Thousands of people are e-mailing the newspaper....Many people who evacuated the Pensacola Bay Area are sending e-mails and asking us to check on their homes. We're trying.

For the past three days we've been working to respond to each e-mail. But the volume now is so heavy that we simply can't keep up. We're going to keep trying to respond to each e-mail, but the folks who run our Community Announcement Desk now realize we may not be able to.

Part of the problem is that many of the people who have been working on this have been sleeping at the newspaper since the day before Ivan hit. They've literally been working around the clock. Some of the staff members are now taking a day off to get some rest and check on their own homes. They physically and emotionally can't go another day and night without some extended sleep.

So if you don't hear from us, it's not because we're ignoring you. It's simply that we can't keep up with the volume.

So here's the plan for today and tomorrow:

We're going to run as many aerial photographs of neighborhoods as we can. I've told the online staff and photographers that our goal is to post every photograph of a damaged home and neighborhood that we take.

Photographer Katie King took two trips yesterday and snapped more than 400 photographs. We've been posting those photographs and others nonstop on the Web site.

We're trying to get back up in the air now to take more photos, but because of President Bush's visit today, airspace over the city, as it should be, has been restricted. As soon as we can get back up in the air to take photographs, we will.

If you don't see photographs of your neighborhood on the Web site, that may mean it wasn't one of the worst hit areas. I want to be careful and not give some people a false sense of hope, but if you don't see photos of your neighborhood or subdivision, keep your fingers crossed.

We've taken aerials from Perdido Key to the grassy airfield just east of Navarre.

Again, I'm sorry we may not be able to answer each one of your e-mails.

But I promise you this: We're trying.

We know how important this is to you.

That's what makes it important to us.

We will never quit trying to reach each and every one of you.

Now that's community journalism! Made possible only by technology....

September 28, 2004 | BY JONATHAN DUBE