NEWS LIVE COVERAGE IDEAS – FROM JRC IDEALABBERS

New Haven Register

The NHR citydesk has done livestreaming from the (New Haven) Mayor's State of the City Address last
week; in December we streamed from a forum on education reform where a reporter was on a panel of
journalists who were live-blogging along with Mayor DeStefano and a state rep; and Mary O'Leary and
the reporter streamed from a discussion on a state proposal on health care reform.
 
Tweeted using our "NHRLive" handle on Twitter at the education and health care events. Livestreaming
from the governor's budget address and tweeting from a press budget briefing earlier in the day. Gov.
Malloy announced proposed tax increased Monday, so he's definitely got people's attention.
 
It helps when the topic already has some buzz and the public is familiar on some level; also it's really
essential to promote it - web and print - in advance.

The Reporter

Some WINS at The Reporter recently were: Live video of a Sarah Palin speech; CoverItLive chat during
the State of the Union Address (with invited guests, including the Lansdale mayor and cooperation of The
Mercury as well);

Live webcam videos of the recent snow storms provided by readers.

Live video of meetings does NOT draw a crowd (but might yield some footage if something interesting
happens),

The key to CoverItLive of events like the Grammys, Oscars, or other regional/national stories is to try
and get community participation arranged BEFORE an event, from experts, officials or other community
members. Invite other sites within or outside your cluster to participate. Then promote the hell out of it.

Delco Times

A weekly news show called "Live From the Newsroom" where reporters, editors focus on a hot button
issue in the community.

Live streams every time a politician comes into the paper to meet with our editorial board.

As far as twitter: the concept has thrown up on our Web site.... but that's OK. Rather have too much than
not at all. Once everyone gets a true feel for the purpose of Twitter (which is not to saturate the audience
with link upon link upon link upon link) then we'll be better off.

The Daily Freeman

* Press conferences are a WIN. You get a person that doesn't move much, good audio and plenty of time
to promote it. - http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2011/02/15/news/doc4d59e32f14b28012843000.txt

* Regular gov't meetings are a bust.

* Promo your livestreams! I had a one-on-one with Ken Burns and almost nobody watched it because it
wasn't promoted anywhere online or in print http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9953795
* Montly livestream with the city's mayor. Asking people to ask question live and in advance.

* Live tweet stuff like #grammys and other award shows. Check your local twitter streams, plenty of
people tweeting during those events. You can add streams to site or Storify later.

The Oakland Press

Press conferences, trials and board meetings, if they're controversial or particularly newsy.

Special live coverage of events too — several days covering the Woodward Dream Cruise in August,
we've done live shows covering two elections on election night and most recently, we spent a whole week
at the North American International Auto Show livestreaming for three hours each day. Extended live
coverage usually comes with a pretty extensive plan — in situations like that, you can't just turn the
camera on and let it roll. We'll have staff scheduled to be on camera, guests, etc. For the November
election, we partnered with a local community access channel, which gave us much better quality and the
ability to switch between several camera feeds (we had one camera dedicated to election results updates, a
second camera focused on the host and guests, and cameras in the field where we used Skype to get
reports from staffers at election parties, etc.) That got picked up better a large local channel, which was
pretty cool.

Favorite live coverage is when it's breaking news, and though the opportunities are rare, it's totally
worthwhile. Earlier this year, we were able to go live from the scene of a fire. The entire newsroom was
hooked on the live feed; it was so gripping — the reporter talked with the homeowner just after he arrived
on the scene and found out his dog did not make it out of the fire.
Here's a link:
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2010/12/10/news/local_news/doc4d023cdd9c7fa566448935.txt

Depending on the situation, we'll need 2-3 people for live coverage — one to run the computer, one to run
the camera, one to be in front of the camera. In situations where you can set it up and let it roll, only one
person is generally needed. If you're moving around, though, you definitely need three people.

The Register Citizen

Our main live event is our daily newsroom meeting. We’re also livestreaming all of our classes, which are
hit-or-miss on participation. Some are full of participation, others have none.

SPORTS LIVE COVERAGE – FROM JRC IDEALAB PEOPLE

Oakland Press

1. Live audio podcasting. We do a minimum of one game per week, where we provide play-by-play audio
coverage of a high school basketball game (football in season), hockey to come. The potential for this
from an advertising standpoint
is tremendous. We have partnered with the MHSAA as an affiliate member which gets us in the door for
future playoff championship games at the state level.
2. Weekly live video chat: Columnist Pat Caputo and sports editor Jeff Kuehn talk sports every Monday
at 12:30 p.m. We give prizes away to the person who submits the best question.*
3. Live game twitter feeds: Several reporters (Paula Pasche, Pat Caputo, Dave Pemberton and Matt
Mowery) engage with readers during games on Twitter. We find this is much more interactive than live
chats on the home page.
4. Live video chats have also been conducted with Lions beat writer Paula Pasche and Pistons beat writer
Dave Pemberton. We will be setting up video chats with Tigers writer Matt Mowery as spring training
moves along this week and beyond.

*A series called "Caputo and his boss" (sports) for a really long time now. It's very popular — kind of like a live
sports talk show.
Here's a link to our most recent one:
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2010/12/20/sports/doc4d0f82f1e7225354868635.txt

The Reporter

CoverItLive football championship coverage with posts from three writers, photos from tw photographer
and lots of score updates

Live high school sports action video is pretty labor-intensive considering the small number of viewers
that are drawn in. Championship games are an exception, but at least around here they get cable TV and
PCN (state TV) coverage at the upper levels. Plus the schools often cover games as well (maybe try to get
those feeds?) and broadcast them on access TV.

The Delco Times

3. We have been live streaming a "Game of the Week" every Friday night since September doing High
School Football and basketball. Usually one person is the play-by-play broadcaster (me) and the beat
writer covering the game acts as a color analyst of sorts, chiming in during timeouts to give opinion and
update stats.

4. We created the "Fancast" where fans come up and talk to us on camera live from a bar during baseball
and football games (professional). We took the show on the road in the playoffs and did it live from the
tailgate outside the stadium... in January. Yes, I froze my butt off.

Still, we tweet updates live from every professional, collegiate and high school game we cover. Our pro
writers have individual accounts and are well followed. Between myself, Ryan Lawrence and Bob Grotz
we have more than 8,000 Twitter followers. I have also linked my Twitter account to my personal
Facebook page (which is viewed by another 1,000 "friends") and allows me to update that in real time. I
have also changed the way I write on game nights to allow me to spend much of the game interacting
with the audience. This has brought my following into the top 20 among hockey writers in the United
States - including more than many of the writers from major market dailies (More people follow me than
the Philadelphia Inquirer for example). Not to shabby for a suburban newspaper, eh?

The Register Citizen

Our sports department is starting to have live coverage by livetweeting games, and using the tweets as
their notes for the majority of what happens. I know the sports editor wants to also start doing
liveblogging stories on the website during games, and generating participation from readers with specific
hashtags, but the department is still getting used to the tweeting of games, so they haven’t started the
other pieces yet.