The Flame That Tested Bay Area News Media
I just happened to be picking someone up from SFO on Wednesday as the Olympic flame took a breather from its crazy day playing stealthy spy before flying off to its next possibly hostile destination in South America. And here is a quick video of the news vans parked outside the international terminal. KRON4's Chris Murphy was the only one set up outside though, and he apparently hitched a ride in the Marina from one of the competitors.
Today was a huge and historic day for so many reasons.
For the news media, it was a test of new technologies allowing them to bring up to the minute coverage of the day's events. Watching coverage on TV, reporters were scrambling to chase the torch as soon as it appeared on Van Ness. KRON4, fortunate enough to have its studio on Van Ness, had not directors and interns out on the streets reporting by calling in and sending back photos. CBS5/KPIX actually had video from a cell phone, not sure if it was streaming video or not.
As the relay route seemed to change by the minute, communicating with reporters on the ground was important to have them be as on route as possible.
Stations and even SFGate were asking for people to send in their own videos and pictures from the day since their reporters couldn't be everywhere. Things were taking place all over the city, from all along Embarcadero to the growing crowds on Van Ness and in the Marina. What better time to test new technologies and the growing participatory nature of the internet and news organizations than today's hectic turn of events.
For me, it seemed to be a pretty successful day for everyone but the protesters even though they still got the chance to get their message across, although not on the scale they probably wanted.
The torch relay was able to still take place, the runners were able to enjoy their time and honor of running the torch, the City and Gavin Newsom are no doubt taking pride in them one-upping the protesters, and KTVU, KNTV, KRON, KPIX, and KGO all managed to still provide complete coverage of the events despite them being completely disadvantaged and clueless about almost everything. CNN also has KRON and KGO to thank for the feeds all during Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room.
It was an historic day, and an crazy one for all involved.
Today was a huge and historic day for so many reasons.
For the news media, it was a test of new technologies allowing them to bring up to the minute coverage of the day's events. Watching coverage on TV, reporters were scrambling to chase the torch as soon as it appeared on Van Ness. KRON4, fortunate enough to have its studio on Van Ness, had not directors and interns out on the streets reporting by calling in and sending back photos. CBS5/KPIX actually had video from a cell phone, not sure if it was streaming video or not.
As the relay route seemed to change by the minute, communicating with reporters on the ground was important to have them be as on route as possible.
Stations and even SFGate were asking for people to send in their own videos and pictures from the day since their reporters couldn't be everywhere. Things were taking place all over the city, from all along Embarcadero to the growing crowds on Van Ness and in the Marina. What better time to test new technologies and the growing participatory nature of the internet and news organizations than today's hectic turn of events.
For me, it seemed to be a pretty successful day for everyone but the protesters even though they still got the chance to get their message across, although not on the scale they probably wanted.
The torch relay was able to still take place, the runners were able to enjoy their time and honor of running the torch, the City and Gavin Newsom are no doubt taking pride in them one-upping the protesters, and KTVU, KNTV, KRON, KPIX, and KGO all managed to still provide complete coverage of the events despite them being completely disadvantaged and clueless about almost everything. CNN also has KRON and KGO to thank for the feeds all during Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room.
It was an historic day, and an crazy one for all involved.
Labels: flame, KGO, KNTV, KPIX, KRON, KTVU, Olympic, San Francisco, SFO, torch
posted by ... at 12:41 AM
1 Comments:
I think that this dday helped see how technology, even though is not always working and can have down sides, has incredible advantages. Reporters of TV stations, who didn't know what was going on and couldn't be everywhere were able to still get stories in and videos and photos thanks to people who happened to be at the right place at the right moment and took pictures with their cell phones or digital cameras. Who knew this would be the type of journalism we would have, 20 years ago???
I think in that sense it's really great because we are able to pick up on things that we couldn't if we didn't have that technology.
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