How do you break a national news story?

For a journalist, breaking a national news story is the ultimate coup. For some it comes early in their career and others after many years of work.

On election night 2010, one student at the Department of Journalism at the University of Sheffield discovered a story. Through a combination of speed, contacts and Twitter we made her story go national – and this is how we did it.

Let me set the scene

The journalism postgraduates at Sheffield University work together for one week in the second semester to produce news output of the highest standard possible. I help the web MAs with the website – how to populate with content and organise it, how to attract an audience and keep the site fresh. What I love about this week is that the adrenaline is flowing, stress levels skyrocket and the output is absolutely top drawer.

Output from the students

Print: Two editions of a newspaper (Thursday and Friday)
Broadcast: Hourly radio news bulletins plus an extended final show and two TV bulletins (Thursday and Friday)
Magazine: Work for several weeks beforehand to produce a 60-page magazine
Web: Liaise with all the groups to put the best content online on the JUS News website, as well as populating the site with local, national and sport news. The website is also able to stream the news bulletins and showcase the TV packages.

Spotting the story

Print student Anna Macnaughton noticed a friend’s tweet saying she’d been waiting in a queue for two hours to vote. Anna decided to head over to the polling station to investigate. She had her journalistic instincts firmly engaged:

• Is this new?
• Is it interesting?
• Do I want to know more – and are there several points of view I can gather?

Anna popped into the multimedia newsroom (where the web team were stationed) to pick up a camera and tell us where she was going. We decided to run the story and Joey Close (the day’s web editor) started writing it up from tweets he found using the search function. Anna promised to call us with more details once she was at the polling station and rushed off, tiny kodak video camera in hand.

Just a few minutes later, Anna called up with more details and to let us know she had pictures and video. Joey was able to file the first version of the story, which he pushed out to Twitter using the @JUS_News account.

Knowing who to look for on Twitter

Neal Mann, Sky News journalist, had been in the department the day before to help out. Neal graduated from the department a few years ago and we’d spent a few minutes catching up. We talked about how Twitter is today’s essential tool for journalists and how helpful it is to him as a journalist as Sky strive to be first with the news.

Knowing Neal (and Sky) would be interested in the story, I sent a tweet that we would have video from Ranmoor polling station shortly and were they interested? (Incidentally, I’d seen Neal say he was going to get some sleep as he was on shift in the early hours of the morning, so Broadcast Course leader Marie Kinsey suggested we tweet Sky journalist Niall Paterson.)

A few minutes later we had a message from Hazel, Sky News online journalist/producer asking for video/pictures.

Bingo. Once we had uploaded our fresh pictures and video we sent the information to Hazel. And once Sky were running our stuff, other news agencies saw it and wanted it!

Other news agencies come running

Soon enough we had spotted our story (and several incoming links) on the Times Online, the BBC, Channel4 and the New Statesman (see the screengrabs below).

By this time, a couple more student journalists had gone to join Anna with a stills camera and video camera to get better quality content. Reuters paid the student who took the camera footage £150 for using her video and picture agency Picture It Now used the images taken by Colin Shek.

So, how DO you break a national news story?

Assuming you are in the right place at the right time:

• Have a smartphone that can take pictures, video, audio, even type up text
• Be quick! Others might be doing as you do so your aim is to file first
• Be connected – follow journalists. Who will want your story? Is it local, national or special interest?
• Use Twitter to tap into the contacts in your network quickly
• Be trustworthy: Report the facts, don’t omit anything – and did I mention checking your facts?

We also hashtagged all our tweets (whether from our own accounts or the @JUS_News one) with #jusnews to help others following us see what new content we were putting live and also to cross promote the other output the students were producing. See the #jusnews tweets.

Further reading: In the students’ own words:

Anna Macnaughton: Blog: Getting the story at Hallam polling station

Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy: People denied the right to vote at Sheffield Hallam polling station: link round-up

2 Responses to “How do you break a national news story?”

1. Student story makes national headlines « Ones to Watch says:

   May 20, 2010 at 1:04 pm

   [...] For all you Journalism students out there, Crocstar Media has used this story as an example of how to get your student story published in a national. Definitely worth a look. [...]
2. Recommended Links for May 21st | Alex Gamela - Digital Media & Journalism says:

   May 21, 2010 at 7:46 pm

   [...] [from cward1e] How do you break a national news story?- Crocstar Media [...]