Local newspapers lead the way with networked reporting of Cumbria shootings

Yesterday, as a series of shootings brought national and international attention to the English county of Cumbria, the region's local newspapers and websites put their online and social media mettle to the test.

The news began at 10.35am yesterday (Wednesday) as Cumbria police launched a search after shots were fired in Duke Street in the town of Whitehaven.

Reports of other shootings and deaths from surrounding towns and villages followed and hours later the body of Derrick Bird, a local taxi driver from the village of Rowrah at the centre of the police hunt, was found in a nearby wood. The shootings left 12 dead and 11 injured, the BBC has reported.

Local newspaper company CN Group, which has headquarters in Carlisle, was central to coverage of the day's events with its Whitehaven paper in particular covering the area of the shootings from its office in the town.

At times the group's main website for its News & Star title fell over under the weight of traffic, but the group's IT department worked to extend its bandwidth at times of peak demand, head of digital content development Nick Turner told Journalism.co.uk.

The Whitehaven News site saw a 517.2 per cent rise in unique users to 21,665 compared with Wednesday last week - an average day when the main news stories on the site included the opening of a new plant at Sellafield and plans for a new education centre. Traffic to the News & Star site was up 64 per cent to 29.561 week-on-week, while the North West Evening Mail site and Times & Star sites posted increases of 24.5 per cent to 7,608 and 70.7 per cent respectively to 3,732 over the same period.

Page impressions also soared on the Whitehaven News site, rising by 510.3 per cent to 100,655 compared with last Wednesday. Top stories on the shootings attracted between 17,000 and 23,000 views, but a series of smaller stories helped boost traffic, said Turner.

The homepage of the News & Star site has today been given over to coverage of the shootings, with a separate in-depth section set up, while reports of the tragedy dominate the 'most read' and leading story sections of the other three sites.

The group has built up a strong following on social media channels, launching a reward scheme for Facebook friends earlier this year offering free classified advertising, and utilised this network to help source eyewitness accounts and information as well as share news and police information.

"Our online condolence book has so far generated 83 pages of comments from across the UK and the world. Twitter helped drive traffic to us, but Facebook proved particularly useful in connecting to people and potential witnesses," said Turner, who said the group remain logged on to Facebook so users could contact them privately via the network's chat function. Turner also used his own Twitter account to share police information, links to news stories and updates on the situation as it developed.

For the UK's national broadcasters covering the events in Cumbria, it was a question of cooperation between regional staff and using intelligence from within that network, David Mannion, editor in chief of ITV News, told Journalism.co.uk.

"The tragic Cumbrian shootings was a fast moving story which required a significant and swift response. ITV News was able to deploy experienced, high quality correspondents and camera teams well versed in covering such terrible stories with care and sensitivity. Once again, the close working relationship between the ITV Network News and the regional newsrooms enabled ITV viewers to gain a complete and comprehensive service unrivalled by either Sky or the BBC.

"It is another example of how vital it is to preserve the levels of the combined resources of ITN and the ITV regional newsrooms in order to provide plurality of quality news and an effective alternative to the BBC. To properly respond to this tragedy ITV Network News was hugely supported by the newsrooms of Tyne Tees/Border, Granada and Yorkshire," he said.

National news organisations covering yesterday's shootings and reporting new details as they emerge, have opted for multimedia packages and liveblogs. On its recently launched website the Times is liveblogging the story and using infographics and video as part of a dedicated section on the shootings.

Channel 4 News' website has video and text reports with background information on the victims and Derrick Bird integrated within articles, as well as a well-presented timeline feature. Sky News, which also opted for a liveblog and multimedia topic page, has shared some of its footage with newspaper stablemate the Sun's website. The broadcaster has also created a Twitter list of its reporters covering the story.

The Guardian has quickly created a topic page for the Cumbrian shootings aggregating all its coverage so far and including information from its datastore on fire and shotgun certificates by police force in the UK.

But the website was criticised by readers yesterday for leaving its liveblog of the story open to reader comments - a lesson in the difficulties and dangers of rolling, live news.

"It is legitimate - and might even help save lives - for the media to seek minute-by-minute updates from people there and quickly broadcast any information that is relevant. But it does not have to be public," said one commenter.

The comment facility was later removed and editor Janine Gibson stepped in with this comment: "There are very good technical reasons to cover a fast unfolding story in this way, which are nothing to do with turning into Fox News but are to do with speed of publishing and being able to correct things quickly.

"However, we've discussed it and think the bulk of commenters are correct, it's not a particularly useful way to source information on a story such as this, so we will turn the comments off."

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