Steve Garfield, who scooped CNN on Duncan Hunter’s announcement that he’s still in the race with a live video feed to Qik from his Nokia-sponsored phone over an AT&T-sponsored connection, didn’t bother to get any credentials at all. “Journalism by wandering around,” he called it in a phone chat.Thanks Jackson, nice report.
His live video, in turn, got edited into a piece The UpTake and pushed as a Veracifier Ground Hound segment, with the two outlets partnering to provide more coverage.
On election night I was watching WBZTV.com in Boston. They were broadcasting on TV38 throughout the night, with a live text chat for viewers to talk with the anchors. First time I've ever seen this in Boston. It was groundbreaking for Boston TV to have on air anchors text chatting with viewers. BZ even had a segment where the anchors read some of hte chat comments on the air.
It took a while for them to stop calling the chat room blogging, but they soon stopped, because each time they said they were blogging, the chat room corrected them.
A few improvements could be made to the BZ chat room. It could only hold about 35 people, so new rooms were created as each chat room filed up. The explanation given was that the text would scroll too fast with too many people in the chat. They actually need a longer chat window, so you can more easily scroll back to see the history.
Automatic warnings to refrain from personal comments against the anchors or candidates disturbed chat room participants since no one was attacking any one.
It was a fun and intelligent crowd.
Finally, the chat room shut down in the middle of Clinton's speech, leaving me upset that it was gone and desiring chat rooms on WBZ for all live broadcasts.
I hope WBZ found it successful. I know I did. I stayed with WBZ all night on TV and online. That's probably what they wanted.
