We had an important story break in Huntington County Friday. In a second round of layoffs of city employees, six firefighters were let go, and one of Huntington's three fire stations was forced to close.
The Herald-Press ran a crawl on their "Breaking News" saying that six firefighters lost their jobs. A short story online told readers the same thing, mentioned nothing about the fire station closing, and told readers to check in on Sunday to get the full story.
The Huntington County TAB was all over the story. The TAB and editor Cindy Klepper covered the Board of Works meeting in the morning and had a fully-detailed story online before 2 p.m. There was also a breaking story on the Journal-Gazette online that included the important information that a fire station was closing.
The people at the TAB knew how important the story was, and used all the tools at their disposal to get the information out to the public.
-----------
UPDATE:
Late Friday, the Herald-Press did post a full story online on the firefighters being laid off, perhaps due to the fact that the TAB already had the story online.
But apparently H-P writer Drew Stone never read the TAB story, because Stone has incorrect information in his story.
Stone said that the downtown Huntington fore station would close. That was initally the case, but after the meeting the decision was changed to close the Condit Street station.
Stone never followed up on his story. Makes you wonder if they'll check their facts before sending the story to press for Sunday's paper.
--------------------
The TAB is beating the Herald-Press on not only breaking news, but regular news as well. The TAB uses its online vehicle to get news out on time, all the more important at this time of instant news.
They are also whipping the Herald-Press in sports coverage. Because of the ridiculous 5 p.m. deadlines at the Herald-Press, there are no sports stories getting into the paper on time. By the time the stories of the opening basketball games at Huntington University hit the H-P, they were two days late.
That's no fault of sports editor Sean Giggy; he's doing the best he can under circumstances that are out of his control.
But the TAB had the HU stories online quickly. Sure, they only rewrote the press release sent by HU, but timing is everything. Anyone wanting to know what happened in the contest knew about it from the TAB 24 hours before in appeared in the Herald-Press.
For that matter, online readers can get sports news from Huntington North's Yahoo-based Viking Connection or on HuntingtonFreePress.com before they can in the Herald-Press.
It's hard to know what print subscribers are getting for their money from the Herald-Press, let alone those who pay an online fee? Why pay for an online product that is out of date by the time it appears.
Even the "Breaking News" crawl is a joke. When Gov. Daniels was here for the reopening of a local business, the breaking news ran a one-liner that the governor was coming. Two days after Gov. Daniels had been here and gone, the crawl was still broadcasting that the governor was coming to Huntington.
If you're going to use the Breaking News crawl, really take advantage of it.
Paxton Media can't figure out how to properly use the Herald-Press print newspaper, and they haven't figured out how to use the online news product, either.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The answer is NO. The story is wrong in the Sunday H-P I received this morning. Of course, I knew better from Ft. Wayne Tv and their web sites as well as The Tab online and this site.
ReplyDelete