Since April 20 and the first word of an explosion on the BP drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, it has been all hands on deck for Gulf Coast media. News organizations are being tested each day on how they are reacting to a constantly changing story, one that has no apparent resolution.

it is a story that has an insatiable appetite for viewers too. Pew Research reports again this week the oil spill is top of mind for 49% of American news viewers, followed distantly, 13%, by coverage of the struggling economy.

WKRG in Mobile, AL is in the heat of the battle and has devoted countless hours and resources to coverage of the oil spill crisis. Mike Rausch is the News Director there agreed to answer a few questions about WKRG’s coverage.

Q: How has this story been different than other big stories you have covered in your career?

Rausch: This ‘oil event’ is challenging on multiple levels. It is extremely bizarre in the way it has placed the entire gulf coast and news organizations in a state of suspended animation. When is the oil going to get here? Where might it come ashore? What will be the impact? There are many uncertainties and even more fears relating to these issues. We’ve all heard the old Army phase, “Hurry up and wait.” At WKRG News 5 we went after the story in a big way the first weekend it appeared that doom was headed our way. We called in our main anchors and the entire staff to blanket the ‘hurry up and wait’ event. Only we didn’t know we would still be waiting today. Our newscasts have gone from an ‘all oil—all the time’ format to about 50% ‘Coastal Crisis’ stories. We haven’t seen any sign of viewer fatigue just yet, but it has to be coming.

Think of it as a hurricane that just sits off the coast spinning with no destination or an asteroid orbiting your market. Where’s Bruce Willis when you need him?

Q: How has the use of new technologies played a role in your coverage?

Rausch: Obviously our website has played a key role in getting information to the public. Although we have carried daily news conferences live on-air, we have also streamed many more live on wkrg.com. We created a special page for all information and our webmaster crafted a special oil spill widget that counts how much oil is going into the gulf (multiple estimate options included). It’s being picked up by other websites around the country. At the same time, we developed an embeddable news widget that allows sites to connect directly to our multi-daily oil/weather report updates. SEO has been important, too. If you search Google for ‘ Gulf oil’ WKRG-TV will be well represented in the top listings.

In our continuous news role, we post stories as soon as possible, although the basic completion time table still revolves around our newscasts. I would love to get smart phones into the hands of our reporters for faster and easier web and Facebook updates. I have a specific concept on how to implement that tool (but, don’t have them yet).

Fundamental journalism and creating exclusive story elements still drives the majority of our efforts. All of our reporters have computers or netbooks with air cards and that has helped considerably. During our first plane flights over the Gulf looking for oil, we actually shot the video with the Kodak Zi8 HD pocket video camera simply because it was most effective at getting the shot out of the airplane windows.

Another valuable tool has been Skype. We have utilized Skype on a regular basis to get interviews with distant experts. Using Skype, we were on the able to interview experts on the questionable oil estimates long before the networks and newspapers picked up on the story.

This is now almost a month in the making, what are the plans moving forward?

Rausch: Due to the oddity of this story, we have been making it up as we go. Our core agenda is to continue to dominate the story as we have from the first days of the disaster. That said, everyday is different. Some days there is new and important information and other days it falls to features and fears. All story elements run under our ‘Coastal Crisis’ banner and we pull information and video from whatever source we find. CBS news has been covering it everyday from Louisiana and occasionally they offer something of value. But, the network is mostly about covering this for the evening news and taking what they can from us. Sharing isn’t much of a priority for them. Interestingly, CBS was the first with really great video of thick oil floating in the gulf. I asked for as much of it as possible. It was funny to hear how that wasn’t possible until I mentioned how much they needed our daily satellite uplinks and suddenly the video was made available.

Q: Have you been able to use social media in your coverage?

Rausch: We have pushed changing events and info out to our Twitter, Facebook and text message followers. We have also benefited greatly by following all oil spill comments on Twitter. Twitter provides a flood of information. Most of it is of little value, but there are gems of good information that can come from anyone/anywhere. Our web traffic has fundamentally doubled since the spill began.

Q: What is the one thing that surprised you most during this time?

Rausch: The greatest surprise has been the simple fact that we believed oil landfall was imminent and now there’s no way to know what will happen. Doing oil tracking updates in the weather segment seems almost normal now. Our daily ‘Oil Tracking’ weather reporters posted on our website have had 600,000 hits during the past month.

Q: The staff there covered Katrina heavily, how is this different?

Rausch: This event is different in more ways than it is similar. As mentioned, this has become a waiting game of fear and trepidation. The interest is substantial, but it will impact people in many different ways. Although many local businesses could be catastrophically impacted from a financial standpoint this is not an event that takes lives or destroys homes. The coast is a major part of life here in southern Alabama, but most people can and will live their normal lives even if the coast is covered in oil. For the staff, this story is an unrelenting energy and idea drain, but it’s nothing like days of wall-to-wall coverage demanded by a hurricane that impacts everyone in the most frightening ways possible. We’ve drifted – just like the oil – into what I might call an oil normalcy.

At this writing BP and the US government are trying to determine the best method for stopping the leak. Once the  leak is stopped, this story will continue to develop as oil settles and coastlines along the Gulf are impacted. We will be sure and keep you updated on the efforts of media in the region.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.