Comparing news coverage

I've been trying to find a good story to write about but every time I get the newspaper the news is always a day late and the rest of the entire media out there has moved on to the "new" news. So anyway I have yesterdays paper and I'm going to focus on the oil leak in the Gulf.

The newspaper is The Ogdensburg Journal and it is dated Thursday, July 22, 2010. The front page has a side bar about the oil spill. It is titled Oil May Leak Again. The lead is about the tropical storm that was moving into the Gulf from Florida. The author of the story tries to hook the reader by saying a tropical rainstorm threatened to shut down the sealing of the well. The story then goes on to the results of what would happen if the area in the Gulf would have to be evacuated. If they leave the area above the cap, they will lose some data that they have been monitoring since BP placed the cap on it a week ago. There is no way to monitor the pressure and the sea floor for cracks from the shore. So The biggest shock to me about this news is it says: "If storms keep them from seeing the cap and getting those readings -- for up to four days, Allen said -- BP could reopen the well to avoid missing signs that it is buckling." Can you believe that?

So I went to my preferred online news outlet and they do not mention anything about the storm threatening the effort. On the homepage of the site is the headline is about politics. Conservative, Liberal Bloggers Hold Rival Conferences in Sin City. So, I searched around the site and the only news I could locate about the oil spill is the headline: Rig Worker: Fire Alarm System on Gulf Rig Disabled Before Oil Spill. To my surprise there was no news about the storm in the Gulf.

Next, I went to the TV and tuned in to my favorite news channel and I barely caught just a quick blurb about something like the storm in the Gulf is moving away from the leak sight. Nothing else. That is why I said "something like." It was so quick that I didn't even have time to absorb the information. All I saw was a graphic that showed the storm drifting north.

My summary about this comparison is: the most coverage about this specific story was in the newspaper. Which is not really too surprising because the news in it is a day old already. The strength of the paper is it is more in depth about the storm and some of the issues with it. The weakness is it is old news by the time the readers get it.

The website: After I think about it I'm not too surprised that the news of the storm was not really there. The news on the internet gets updated so soon and so often that the storm is really old news. So, the strength of the online news is it is always up to the minute with breaking news. The weakness: If someone like myself was trying to learn more about the storm in the Gulf on this website it would be a very cumbersome activity, not worth the effort. I'll just stick to the newspaper then!

The TV: It is just about the same as the online news, even faster. After researching the news for this assignment, I was pleased to even see a blurb about the storm on TV. The strength is it is even more current with breaking news taking up the entire broadcast. So, old news such as this storm in the Gulf is ancient news on TV when Lindsay Lohan is the breaking news. The strength is also the weakness, if you did not see the news about the storm in the Gulf when it was breaking news on TV then the odds are you will not see anything about the storm at all... unless it is a blurb.