Shake, rattle, and wait

By: Randy Dotinga Newspapers slow to put local angle on quake online by randy dotinga
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake rattled Southern California journalists out of their beds early Saturday morning but apparently didn't keep most of them awake long enough to go to
the office.
Nearly 10 hours after the 2:46 a.m. earthquake, only one of Southern California's major daily newspapers had posted an extensive staff-written report about the quake on its Web site. The others relied on Associated Press dispatches or didn't post any news about the temblor at all.
Even The Sun in San Bernardino County, where the earthquake was centered, and The Press-Enterprise in nearby Riverside turned to the AP.
It wasn't that there was little news to report outside the earthquake strike zone. Radio reporters covered the quake immediately, talking to authorities who were bombarded with calls from people worried about sparking power transformers and fearing aftershocks. In San Diego and other cities, fire stations went on earthquake alert, and firefighters moved all fire trucks out into the open. Power went out in neighborhoods across the region.
While its competitors were asleep at the switch, The Orange County Register ran a sidebar about local damage and power outages along with an AP story on its Web site (http://www.ocregister.com). Among other things, the local report said a hospital was operating on backup power, 16,000 Orange County residents had lost power, a refinery suffered a spill of a petroleum-based chemical, and the Disneyland Hotel had been evacuated.
Gary Robbins, a science writer at the Register, told E&P that he rushed to the newspaper's office after the quake woke him up. A Webmaster at the newspaper was close on his heels.
"This happened before that day's newspaper had hit the stands, and the earliest we could get something in the paper was the following day," Robbins said. "But this was a big story. It was felt all over Orange County." With the help of other reporters, Robbins put local information about the quake online by about 5:30 a.m. He also talked to scientists about what the earthquake's impact would have been if it had hit closer to Orange County.
"When news happens live, we need to cover it live," Robbins said. "We're trying to build a natural response on the staff among reporters, editors, and photographers that when something large and public is breaking, we put it on the Web right away. It's a cultural change."
The newspapers that relied on the AP for earthquake coverage as of 12:30 p.m. Saturday included the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and The Press-Enterprise.
Richard Core, deputy editor of latimes. com, said the Web site posted a wire bulletin about the earthquake within 15 minutes after it hit. Later on Saturday, the Web site posted a package including links to several sites about earthquakes.
The newspaper didn't post staff-written reports because the earthquake did not cause extensive damage, Core said. "If we find ourselves in a situation where we've got a serious quake and damage is widespread, you can expect to see staff-written stories coming on to the site. The fact that it was a Saturday also played into it. We staff our site lightly on the weekends."
Among smaller papers, The Sun also relied on AP reports on the day of the quake. The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, based in the city of Ontario, east of Los Angeles, posted a six-paragraph story from "staff and wire reports." The story had no information about the quake's impact locally. The Desert Sun of Palm Springs ran an online staff-written story that relied largely on AP and TV reports.
Meanwhile, the Ventura County Star, which runs news on its Web site, had not a word about the quake on its main Web page, even at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
Another Southern California paper with a circulation near 100,000, the North County Times of Escondido, does not run news on its Web site.
The two daily newspapers that were closest to the epicenter, the jointly run Daily Press of Victorville and Desert Dispatch of Barstow, both post news on their Web sites. But they posted no information on the quake as of Saturday afternoon.
Communities in Nevada and Arizona also felt the quake. The Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Review-Journal ran AP stories Saturday on their Web sites; The Yuma Daily Sun in Arizona ran nothing. Its Web site is only updated on weekdays.
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(copyright: Editor & Publisher September 11, 1999) [Caption]