Writer's Block

Tsunami scramble

Update:  I've got a full plate of stories to work on today, so no new blog post Wednesday, 3/25. Sorry!


I came in to work yesterday morning, dropped my purse under my desk, turned on my computer to check Twitter, and before I could even pour myself a cup of coffee -- Gah! Tsunami! Run for the hills!

The local Twitterverse was buzzing with updates on the possibility that a tsunami may have been generated by a magnitude-7.5 earthquake near Tonga earlier that morning. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had issued a tsunami alert about 45 minutes earlier.

A killer wave may have been rolling toward Hawaii, but for the moment, I had bigger worries: getting the information posted on our web site pronto. We were already playing catch-up.

People were still trickling into the office, so I immediately turned to the tsunami center's web site to get a copy of the release announcing the alert. While the information may already have been available second-hand, I had to see the original for myself before I could write something for publication. Unfortunately, the tsunami center's web site was so overloaded, it took about 15 minutes of trying just to get to the announcement. Gah!!! I felt my blood pressure rising as I waited for the page to load, knowing it was already old news to my friends on Twitter.

Release in hand, my fingers raced across the keyboard, typing a quick bulletin. My boss walked in the door. "Tsunami alert!" I panted. "I'm writing something for the web right now."  "Okaaaay," he sighed, not showing nearly as much panicked urgency as I seemed to be feeling.  "Filed!" I shouted as I hit "save," dashing over to his desk to hover.

I stood over him while he edited the story and started the tedious process of navigating our admin page to post it as "breaking news." Click this button, open that folder, compose a headline. Time seemed to slow down. It was like waiting for a pot of water to boil. All the while I was imagining how uncool, how behind-the-times I would seem when I sent the link to our story to all my Twitter friends. I mean, by then the story would be -- let's see -- a whole 25 minutes old!

It's of the conundrums of the "new media" for us old-school journalists. The same process that gives traditional news gathering real value -- fact-checking, editors -- makes it impossible to match the minute-by-minute "news" cycles of networking sites like Twitter.  Nobody would care or remember if a bit of gossip spread on Twitter turned out to be wrong, but they would remember if we got it wrong. Being a small news organization makes it even harder to keep up with the frantic pace, since we don't have the same human resources as larger papers to monitor emergency services scanners 24/7, or drop other stories to write, rewrite and rewrite updates for the web.

Finally my story was online, at the top of our page, complete with a bright yellow "breaking news" banner. I logged onto Twitter to join the conversation and link to our story -- better late than never.

That's how I learned the tsunami advisory had just been canceled.