Breaking News Updates

I'm not quite sure want I'm supposed to be writing about for this assignment but I'll give it a go anyway. I've been tracking all the breaking new emails sent out by both the Anchorage Daily News and Channel 2 News since January 5. I've received approximately 27 emails from ADN and about 13 from Channel 2. After looking through all the emails I have come to believe that ADN is a little trigger happy when it comes to sending out breaking new announcements. They sent out more than DOUBLE the breaking news announcements send out by Channel 2! There is something to be said for staying on top of things but in this case its clearly overkill.

I guess it really comes down to one questions, "what is breaking news?" To me breaking news is limited to natural disasters like weather warnings, criminal activity such as escaped felons, car chases, ect, or health hazards/warnings like volcanic ash, or bird flu epidemic. I don't consider the Anchorage city budget shortfall worthy of a breaking news email. I guess since I periodically check the ADN website throughout my work day I am perhaps a little more picky than your average subscriber. However, some say familiarity breeds contempt and I think that the saying applies to the number of breaking news emails. When you are receiving like four or five emails in a span of a few hours you tend to start ignoring them. Then what good are they?

Of course there is always an exception to the rule, and this occurred January 14 through the 16th. It was really wonderful to have all the weather and road conditions, and school closure updates sent out at regular intervals. It was a great to not have to search around for the info on the web. Channel 2 also did a great job getting out important updates during this time. I think Channel 2 does a good job overall with sending out their breaking news updates. The only criticism that I have for them is that in many of their email they don't include anything in the subject heading which I find rather annoying.

The only other thing I can think to talk about takes me back to basics...'Journalism 101' if you will. Fact checking...fact checking is super important whether your story is breaking or built on months of research. I understand that sometimes not all the facts may be in at the time of posting (or emails being sent out) but getting a million correction emails is totally lame! I appreciate that it is important to get the corrected information out there, but at the same time it makes me question the validity of the rest of the article or information.

**Interestingly enough I haven't received a single breaking new email today from ADN or Channel 2. Slow news day I guess...