Why was the El Segundo shooting story primarily reported on this blog?

As I’m sure you probably are aware, the days of newspaper reporters heading out to an event, taking notes, returning to the office and writing a story for the next day’s paper are over. We are all adapting to the fast world of the Internet and its effect on print journalism.

We started the blog a month ago, and so far it has been a successful addition to the Web site.

Here’s how this worked Friday night and into Saturday morning:

The phone rang just after I finished watching the Laker game on TV Friday night, Our copy desk had received word that a cop had been shot in El Segundo. So ended my vacation.

I changed my clothes and ran out the door. I got to the scene in about 10 minutes.

I crossed through the stopped traffic on Rosecrans, and hurried to the front of P.F. Chang’s. I immediately started interviewing customers and searching for any witnesses. Police were too busy at that point to talk to me.

As you can imagine, all of this happened after our nightly deadline for the morning newspaper.

A copy editor called me looking for info to put something – anything – in the paper. I had little to report at that point, but provided what I could. (Photo editor Chuck Bennett took a picture and transmitted it to the office.)

That short article was put on page A4 at the last minute. It was too late to tear up the front page. The article also was placed on the top of the Web site with a message that more details would come later on the Crime and Courts blog.

Here's why.

In the past, I would have gathered what information I could and gone home because there was no place to put it. I'd write the story Saturday and turn it in for Sunday’s paper. But no more. Now we have the Internet.

But even with our Web site, our staff does not work overnight. Even if I wrote a full story in the middle of the night, which would take some time, there would be no one to edit it and post it on the Web site. (I could make some sarcastic comment here about editors getting a good night's sleep, but that would be too easy.)

That’s where the new blog came into play. Denise and I have the ability to post information here 24/7. All we need is an Internet connection. The information doesn’t have to be written in typical story form, which makes it all much easier to report the news fast.
 
Out at the scene, I interviewed a police lieutenant about midnight and stayed at the crime scene until about 12:30 a.m. I drove home, typed up my notes so they made sense, and posted them sometime before 2 a.m. The blog entry says 1 a.m. on it, but I think that’s when I opened the file and got started. (I also spoke on the telephone with a colleague of mine who had received some additional information from a source.)

I went to bed about 2:30 a.m., but didn’t get much sleep. About 8:30 a.m., sitting at my desk in my bedroom, I called El Segundo police and the Sheriff’s Department and tried to get an update. No information was available, but I began receiving comments to post and emails from witnesses. I blogged what I could over the next four hours  – an update here and an update there. (One update said there was no update.)

Shortly after noon Saturday, the Sheriff’s Department finally issued a press release that didn’t say much. Instead of rewriting the release as a story, I simply posted the statement word for word on the blog for you to read yourselves.

My colleague Josh Grossberg, who was working the Saturday shift, went out to the theaters and gathered what he could. He wrote a news article that was placed on the Web site in the afternoon. It ran the next morning with a few changes in Sunday morning’s paper.

While he did that, I kept in touch with him on the telephone and went about the rest of my weekend.

I later received an email from Managing Editor Toni Sciacqua. She told me that the blog received more than 3,000 page views on Saturday. That's amazing. Now I'm hearing it might be 4,000.

This is a new era in news reporting. You’ll see more of this as time goes on. This is a great place to report breaking news, and do it quickly.

Thanks for reading the blog and making this all worthwhile.