From July 18th - 19th, 1998, the Rocking News Chicks got together and spent the entire day in the eyes of the media. They tracked a breaking news story through all three of the featured mediums and recorded what happened throughout the long day- including interviews with real journalists, pictures and "educational" movies.
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Mission One: In Search of a Story We decided to track a news story across the different mediums - first, cyberspace. We wanted to follow the breaking news story of a tidal wave devestating Papau New Guinea. We investigated and compared the web sites of five major web and broadcasting corporations dedicated to news online: ABCNews.com, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, AOL.com and CBS.com. On CNN, the story was posted at 9:13 am- according to the report, 71 people had been reported dead and hundreds of others were missing after three deadly tidal waves (triggered by an earthquake that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale). They expected that over 300 people were dead. This site stood out above the rest in that it offered the facts, yet also gave maps and pictures within the page to make it visually interesting. They linked to related stories and sites on the web, and also threw in facts about the country and people. |
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On MSNBC, they said, "at least 70 people" were dead, rather than using the specific number of 71. Although this site was without the graphics and maps of CNN, it had paragraph headings (such as: Most of the Victims were Children and Villagers are Hiding). On this site, we found that the earthquake was 12 miles offshore and the tidal waves hit (and demolished) the villages Sissano, Warapu, Arop and Malol. ABC News was a good source of information as well: it was complete with the pictures and maps, plus it provided interesting bits of information, like the fact that there hadn't been another tsunami in the area since 1930. CBS, on the other hand, titled its story (very tastelessly), "Giant Wave Whacks New Guinea" and did not contain too much interesting information. AOL's news updated quickly- the update that the suspected death toll had risen from 300 to 1,000 appeared there first. All of the pages credited their information back to either Reuters or the Associated Press.
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Mission Two: Chatting about News with the Experts We arranged for an interview with former MTV "Week In Rock" personality and journalist Tabitha Soren on the phone at our girlsite offices:
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Mission Three: The News in the Movies We watched Broadcast News, starring William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter, and Joan Cusak. and written/directed by James L. Brooks. A romantic, yet interesting tour behind the scenes of a correspondent's professional and personal life. This film guides you through the everyday life of a correspondent: the stress, the long exhausted hours they have to work, the unexpected last minute assigments and how they have to get used to the idea of traveling constantly and exploring new territories. Although falling in love is not part of the job, sometimes one finds love within the job. Watching the film shows you the love a journalist has for their work and the sacrifices they make to satisfied the needs of their job. This film demonstrates the positive as well as the negative things about the job, such as laying off the elderly and giving promotions to the young.
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Mission Four: Tracking the Local News Tracking the local news was really not too difficult: we watched and compared four major broadcasting corporations: ABC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN. They all seemed to be updated with their news and had the tidal wave as their major story of the day. The only difference among them was that CNN updated their news and repeated the top stories every 15 minutes, while you'd have to wait to hear the nightly news on the other stations until the 10:00 hour. Even then, they'd only go through the story once and quickly. |
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