Saturday, August 11, 2007

Rapid Decisions

Friday night we had an action packed night of news. Things got busy very early on in the evening and stayed busy through the 11pm newscast.

First, we had a church in Vance County go up in flames. It appears to have been struck by lightning although as of the writing of this blog entry that has not been confirmed.

The second story that developed a short time later was the weather damage in Goldsboro, NC. As heavy rain and winds moved through the southern region of our viewing market we immediately began receiving tips and callers from people, like you, who witnessed what many of you described as a “funnel like formation.” The NWS has yet to say if it’s an actual tornado or not. Usually, these things end up being a microburst. I won’t begin to explain a microburst. I know who can though…Wes, our Chief Meterologist.

With both the stories developing we simply make some quick decisions and set a new plan in motion. This means we have to consider what crews are unassigned? Who is already the closest to the breaking news location(s)? Can we afford to give up the present story or stories that that reporter/photographer is/are on?

How do we answer all the above questions?  All the managers and producers for the tv and web come together at the multimedia content coordination center and get debriefed. From there, rapid decisions are made and crews are notified of the changes.

The whole process takes mere minutes and in some cases….seconds to set a new plan for covering all the breaking news stories into motion.

KUDOS: David, Brad, Kerry, Sergio and Fred for a great hustle last night.