First Posted: 2/27/2011
There I stood Friday, in the middle of Judge Richard Warren’s courtroom, staring down at my smartphone. On that phone, I looked down at an almost-live image of myself, looking down at my cell phone.These are the moments I realize I don’t work for a newspaper anymore; I work for a news-gathering organization providing content for a multitude of platforms.That difference will never be as obvious as it is this week. The trial for Dr. Mark Wangler begins Monday with jury selection and could run for several weeks. It’s a highly anticipated, highly emotional, highly publicized case.That’s why I spent my Friday afternoon in the courtroom with two cohorts from our photo department, making sure our live video setup worked correctly. For the first time, we’re trying to share live coverage from inside a courtroom with our readers.We’re pairing that live video up with tweets from veteran court reporter Greg Sowinski, who will offer summaries of testimony instantly to our most interested readers on LimaOhio.com/live.It’s hard to believe that, when I broke into this business, I felt excited to hold a genuine reporter’s notebook. It measured 8 inches by 4 inches, the perfect size to slip into your pocket when you’re done with an interview. Then you sprinted back to the office and, sometime before the end of your workday, typed your observations from the day into a loud-clacking keyboard.Technology has changed all that. We can transmit stories from anywhere with a mobile phone signal. We can share photographs instantly from the scene. We can offer live video now (albeit with the occasional interruption of commercials). The first draft of history is now available moments after the events unfold.We’re trying things we’ve never tried before, presenting the news in ways we’d never imagined before. We’ve done some of these things, such as updates throughout the day of a trial, before and can feel confident they’ll work. Others, such as the live video and the tweets from the courtroom, are new territory that worked in testing but might not in practice.It’s a terribly exciting time, but it’s also a terribly terrifying time, knowing that things can go wrong at any point. We’re jumping without a parachute, hoping the winds of progress keep us from an embarrassing crash. I pray everything works well, and I pray for mercy from our readers if it doesn’t.The centerpiece of our coverage remains our end-of-the-day stories Greg will file for LimaOhio.com and the daily newspaper. Perspective and balance remain key ingredients to great news coverage.We’re easily motivated on these new ways of presenting news, though. Our faithful readers expect us to tell them what’s happening in an unbiased way, and we can think of nothing more honest and unbiased than letting you watch them unfold.These innovations aren’t limited to the courtroom. Daytime reporter Bob Blake recently started posting updates from our police scanner onto the webside. The limalandlog can be found on Twitter and at the bottom of the LimaOhio.com home page, showing you where accidents and other events occurred throughout the day, seconds after the dispatcher sends someone out to the scene.We’ve seen similar innovation from our colleagues in the sports department, who are now posting quarter-by-quarter updates to basketball games on LimaSports.com. Photographers trade in their still cameras for video ones at halftime, sharing highlights from selected games throughout the tournament. Our sterling sports staff steps in front of a camera to help you understand how different districts will break down for the boys tournament.A week doesn’t go by that a friend or relative doesn’t ask me about the death of newspapers. Perhaps some will die, for lack of innovation to keep up with changing technologies. I’m convinced that, as long as we strive to tell compelling stories as well as we can, adopting new technologies as we go, we’ll be fine.News travels at the speed of life now. Fortunately, The Lima News is doing its best to keep up.
