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By Matt Chittum, data delivery editor The Roanoke (Va.) Times and roanoke.com
WE’RE FOND OF QUOTING EISENHOWER around The Roanoke Times newsroom: Plans are useless, but planning is everything.
But what planning would have helped on April 16?
From the first dribble of news - a bland posting on the Virginia Tech Web site - it was a story developing by the minute. It drew the nation’s attention and left our own community aching and stunned.
The story demanded everything this paper had, plus things we didn’t know we had in us. Adaptation was the order of the day, and the week.
Our tested methods for online news reporting were put to a new and strenuous test. |
The Internet, the most modern of mediums, required a revival of a forgotten newsroom role: the rewrite man.
Print reporters converted on the fly to videographers and producers. A skilled multimedia editor humbly culled tips from his broadcast news brethren.
A Web producer realized her work transcended the technical. She was indexing the historical.
And in the end, we all recognized that even in the constant deadline world of the Web, the same things matter most for a paper like ours: knowing our community, and telling its story the best way we can. * |