Twitter in Mississippi

Last weekend, tornadoes and severe weather was the big story throughout the day on Saturday. Many news outlets reported a tornado had hit Yazoo City, MS in the middle of the day.

I quickly checked for possible photos of the damage on Twitter, but could not find very much. I did a search for "Yazoo City" and only text reports of tornadoes came up. There were a few links to "streaming" video from some storm chaser Web sites, but those didn't seem to load or play very well.

I think this instance highlights the lack of infiltration Twitter has in some areas. While Twitter can be a good source of news in some areas, in others it may take awhile. I wouldn't think Mississippi has the same Internet connection infrastructure as a state like New York or California and this would explain the disparity in Twitter reporting.

While Twitter can usually be counted on in high-population areas, in others, like Mississippi, there may be a longer lag time. I think encouraging the use of Twitter in areas like Mississippi is an even bigger key for news organizations in these kinds of places. I think the local stations should be putting an emphasis on the ability to submit pictures to them via Twitpic and e-mail.

There is a reason some stories are undercovered and part of that may just be the lack of resources to report the news. With dedicated encouragement from the news managers in those places, the stories of the people in these regions could just be able to be told to more people.

How cool is this?

I am a big fan of the first golf major of the year, The Masters at the beautiful Augusta National Golf Club. Over the years, I've watched the coverage closely, including on the tournament's official Web site. This year, the site has taken a major step up.

The 12th hole at Augusta National. Photo courtesy golf.com

The home page of the Web site is full of the beautiful color that makes Augusta National so special. In past years, the background of the index page was a simple green and red matte.

The interactive features are extremely easy to use. The "watch live" tab on the home page has the capability to allow users to choose from five different live feeds during the tournament. Once you select a feed, you can click on the "tools" button on the lower left of the video player to bring up a leaderboard, hole & player status and picture in picture. The picture and picture is an extremely easy feature to use, allowing viewers to switch back and forth between the main and secondary video you're watching.

This is a great job by IBM to develop a site that showcases the beauty of this course and tournament with the help of the some of the best new media available.

Working Election Night

For me, last night was a completely new experience. I worked an Election Night in the newsroom for the first time. It was pretty exhilarating and fun.

It was good to have KOMU.com director Jen Reeves on hand to help with the organization of our site's reporting of election results.

Jen reminded me to tell reporters to update the scene at area election parties via Twitter and Twitpic. The campaign worked to an extent. At least one more reporter than usual sent in updates. We had a YFrog image from the site of the party for Columbia's newly elected mayor, which was great. We had hoped to create a slideshow of Twitpics from reporters, but we never did get enough in.

As results came in to the newsroom, there was quickly pressure to confirm the results and update them via our @KOMUNews Twitter account. One of the first election result reports we had was a council race that was decided, although we didn't reflect the final count on our Web site yet. The Boone County Web site did have final results and it was determined our Web site was just slow updating, so I posted confirmation of the winner to Twitter.

All of the results from Boone County seemed to finalized at around the same time, around 9:40 p.m. So I was confirming and updating as fast as I could via CoTweet. I didn't know everything would come in essentially at once.

At the end of the night, we updated our Web site with an overall election story, a story about Columbia's new mayor, the Columbia School District bond issue and the downtown camera proposition. I thought the front page looked great at the end of the night. I also linked a separate live interview we did with the new mayor to the mayor story. It served almost like a "Web extra."

This was a really fun night with a lot of important issues and races to report on. I was glad I finally got to be involved in Election Night coverage.