News sites scoop shuttle story

As news broke of the Columbia space shuttle disaster over Texas last Saturday (1 February 2003), online news sites helped bridge the gap in coverage in British daily newspapers.

Many of the Saturday newspapers had already gone to press by the time the story was out and were unable to cover the story until Monday.

Deputy head of online content for the UK-based Scotsman said: "We missed the shuttle story on Saturday because we go to print early on in the day. It was covered on our web site though and was in our Sunday paper the day after."

Other dailies also had to rely upon their web staff to piece together the news that their print editions were not able to deliver.

Ryan Battles, deputy editor of London's Evening Standard said: "We don't have a Saturday edition, so had to wait until Monday to print the story.

"However, we did manage to go live with the story on www.thisislondon.co.uk on Saturday and even noticed an increase in visitors to the site. It was our top news story."

In the US, online coverage was mixed as sites either contrived to find local angles on what was essentially a national story or overwhelmed readers with information.

Writing in the Online Journalism Review, Staci D. Kramer, editor-at-large at Cable World, was also critical of the automated news sorting systems employed by Google News, CNN.com and others. "[Google News] did not have a great showing on Saturday. Its algorithms missed the magnitude of the event spectacularly at points, including the moment when you couldn't even see any reports about Columbia on the first screen."

Meanwhile NASA decided to use the internet to help its investigations into the disaster. It launched a special section on its web site encouraging witnesses to the incident to send their written accounts, photographs and video footage.

On the dark side, within hours of the disaster, NASA memorablia started to appear for sale on the eBay auction web site, including what was alleged to be debris from the craft.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/kramer/1044260857.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18195-2003Feb3.html

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