Student reporters vs Local newspapers

As part of my degree, my class is expected to work as if we’re part of a real life newsteam. Each week two people are given roles as online editors, the rest of the class work as reporters for the week, finding stories and writing them up, then on a Friday we spend the whole day producing copy for our online news website (StaffsLive). The Friday is a chance for us to react to breaking news, as well as continuing with work we’ve been doing during the week.

Last Friday was one of the best examples we’ve had of reacting to breaking news. I was online editor for the week and when I got into uni at 8.45am on the Friday, there was a press release waiting for me from Staffordshire Police. It told us that there had been a car crash, a 19-year-old man had died and his 19-year-old friend who had been driving was in hospital with serious injuries.

Within minutes, we got a piece online outlining what the press release had told us, it was short but gave the basic details of what we knew at that time. We then sent a reporter and photographer down to the scene of the accident and had two reporters searching Twitter and Facebook to see if we could identify the deceased.

This was a more challenging task and had to be done with a lot of care. We noticed a few tweets from the area with RIP messages in them, but we couldn’t make any assumptions so one of our reporters had to reply to them and ask if it was regarding the crash. Obviously she had to do this in a very sensitive manner as she was dealing with someone who had very recently found out their friend had died. I’m really pleased to say she did this amazingly, and even joined some of the groups set up on Facebook in memory of the guy who died. This meant she was able firstly to identify the guy who was killed and also to speak to a number of people who were friends with both of the men involved in the accident and got some great tributes for the next piece we put online.

Shortly after this piece had gone online, the reporter we had sent out came back with some exclusive quotes from the friend that the men had been driving to see when they crashed. And the photographer brought some pictures of tributes that had been left at the scene. Although our reporter admitted that not everyone at the scene was happy that he was there, he got some great quotes from some of the people who had turned up. That made another brilliant online piece and we put some of the pictures from the photographer into a slideshow.

Meanwhile, our local paper were obviously covering the same story. We spotted on their website that they had put a piece up about the accident and I kept an eye on their coverage all day to see if they had any information that we didn’t.

Interestingly, the piece on their website didn’t change all day. They reported the crash but didn’t seem to be doing any work towards identifying the victim. A very interesting tactic when they knew that we’d be reporting it as we went along. Of course, details of the crash did appear in their weekend edition, with use of quotes lifted directly from our articles, I hasten to add. But they had nothing extra to add on what we had already reported.

This got me thinking. What is the future of local newspapers in areas where student journalists are reporting the news before them? Please let me know your thoughts, comment here or send us a tweet @wannabehacks

ms_hack

The difference is you had three reporters and one snapper on the case all day. The local paper would have had one reporter and maybe one snapper covering the story briefly and the reporter would most likely not be able to go to the scene of the accident and would be tasked with writing several other stories that day too. They would have written their full story later in time for the paper deadline using information then available. The fact they lifted your quotes shows they were pushed for time. It is not the right thing to do, although nationals lift the quotes of locals constantly, but it does show that they trusted your copy. Given you are still students that is quite impressive.

kj_corcoran

it doesn't have to be so aggressively opposed. facts are that students just have less time and resources to do stuff than local papers, so will usually lose out. but on the odd occasion that my student paper pips the locals to something, it's quite co-operative and we'll help the others out as we have quite different readerships. if we help the local paper they'll sometimes collaborate with us or slip us a good story.

Natalie Clarkson

@kj_corcoran I'm not sure if you've misunderstood what I'm saying in the post or if I'm misunderstanding your comment, but just to clarify, our news site is kind of different to 'student media'. It's something we do as part of our journalism undergrad degree, and isn't really aimed specifically at students (we have a separate student magazine and radio station that does this). As such, our readership is very similar to that of the local paper and we're finding that we're 'in competition' (for want of a better phrase) with them.

This is just my experience of this, I completely understand that other places may have a better relationship with their local media.

kj_corcoran

My bad, you're right that I didn't understand who your site is aimed at; and that does change the dynamic quite a lot.

I suppose, in relation to your question then, the answer isn't really what I had posited, ie) that it can be mutually beneficial because you cover the same stories for different people.

If students genuinely were consistently outdoing local news outlets in stories their readers deem really important, then that could be bad news for them. But my instinct in most cases is that this won't really happen. Looks like you did this story better than your locals because they didn't think it was worth the news resources you did, so it's a bit of an anomaly. To really measure up you'd need to compare total news output over period of time, or not much will change.

wannabehacks

@HenryCTaylor In a world of online news I'd argue that speed is important. Obviously accuracy is most important but speed still counts. ^NC

HenryCTaylor

@wannabehacks comp agree. Interestingly, on work xp heard many reports of nationals lifting regional stories in same way your piece mentions

HenryCTaylor

I'm sure this happens a lot, but I recently spent a week at a major newspaper in Northampton town centre and my experience couldn't have been more different.

When a major news story came in early on in the week, most reporters were constantly managing Twitter and social media streams to keep on top of events and that was on top of all their other stories. One reporter spent the entire day down at the crime scene in the freezing cold, constantly sending back information and quotes.

It's easy to point out that students - who we should perfectly well expect to be fully versed and faster users of modern reporting techniques than older reporters, just like older reporters' shorthand and media law skills are far more versed than ours - may be more on the ball when it comes to breaking news, but the simple fact is that students have more time.

Anyone can pump information out as fast as possible in 140 characters, but regional reporters will be the ones safely checking the facts, avoiding legal slip-ups, utilising more important contacts and following the story up for weeks afterwards.

ed_walker86

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Pretty good, as they don't just report on a Friday for x number of weeks. Your newsdays are there to 're-create' a newsroom, but it's not the same. You're learning those skills (getting quotes, tracking people down, finding tributes) which you'll use regularly, and sounds like you did a good job of, as part of your role as a reporter. Did you dedicate all your resources for the newsday to this story? Or were you following up other stories as well? Did you have to produce something for the next-day paper? Be useful if you linked to your story/rival paper's story as well so we can see what was produced.

Natalie Clarkson

@ed_walker86

Thanks for the feedback. On the day we had 2 reporters in the newsroom working on this story and 1 reporter and a photographer at the scene. The rest of the reporters (about 15 of them) were working on various other stories and follow ups.Our content about the crash can all be found here:http://staffslive.co.uk/tag/scott-fairlie/

As for the local paper, on the day, all they had was this: http://bit.ly/uuaGhZ

Then, more than 24 hours later, they added this: http://bit.ly/sN0zcF

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