Print journalists weren’t the only ones at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who shifted with the developing story of the West Virginia miners this week.
Matthew Kennedy spent the night and early morning running the paper’s online coverage of the tragedy unfolding at Sago.
"Our Web site had been reflecting the course of the story," Kennedy said yesterday in a phone interview. "We had been saying that reports were that there were 12 miners found alive Everyone was just swept up and overjoyed that there was such good fortune, that the miners had survived, and it all literally fell apart in minutes. And we had to essentially turn the story around 180 degrees, since that sort of thing doesn’t happen very often."
The paper’s three-person Web team that night -- Kennedy, Lizabeth Gray and Curt Chandler -- raced to switch the message on the screen from miracle to tragedy as Kennedy, assistant managing editor for content at post-gazette.com, coordinated the team’s efforts with those of the paper’s news and photography departments.
"We have an integrated approach at the Post-Gazette, so we were working with our colleagues who are more focused on the print product. Those are folks who work in the local news operation and photography department," Kennedy said.
While the print and online operations of the paper are constant partners on a daily basis, he said, the of-the-moment coverage of the Sago Mine story solidified the relationship between the two media.
"One of the things that it really demonstrated for us is the real strength of an integrated approach to both print and online," he said. "We were able to share information back and forth pretty rapidly on what was occurring in this particular instance, and try to make the best possible choices for our reports in both media."
While that kind of 24-hour live reporting is not common on post-gazette.com, deputy managing editor Mary Leonard’s team has tried its hand at the approach with stories like 2002’s Quecreek mine disaster and last year’s Hurricane Katrina.
"We’re not pursuing a story minute-by-minute like this overnight unless it’s a story of some magnitude," Kennedy said.
"We do breaking news stories that occur in the evening, whether they’re a sports event or a major news development at that time, but in terms of tracking a story moment by moment, we generally have done that in more selective circumstances That’s when we really try to do our best to integrate what we do online with what we’re trying to accomplish with the print newspaper as well."
The idea, Kennedy said, is not to force one medium to drive another, but rather to give readers the most accurate story possible at the best possible time.
"Primarily, our effort in the newsroom is meant to share with our audience the best reporting and journalism we can by the staff of the Post-Gazette. Our medium happens to be online. And other times, it’s in print. But we’re pursuing an integrated approach, in which we start with the strongest journalism we can possibly put together," he said. "We’re trying to start with the journalism and go to the media from there."
