Breaking news via email - how are the locals doing?
It’s hit or miss out there - mostly miss - if you’re trying to stay on top of the news while you’re otherwise employed.
I’ve been trying a few different local newsletters - unfortunately, the quality of true ‘breaking news’ is illustrated by the Breaking! News! alert I just got from the Tribune in email (three times over, no less) a minute ago:
Cause of Northeast Portland church fire still undetermined, investigators say.
Uh, okay. Get back to me when you have something really newsworthy to share, won’t yoU?
OregonLive’s daily newsletter arrives mid-day. KGW can’t separate out local news and national news, and had a field day when poor Anna Nicole passed away. (I’m still cleaning out my inbox over that one…) KOIN? They don’t even try - whether it’s email or RSS, (Although they do seem to have an overly convoluted wireless option…???)
Amazingly, the one who seems to deliver local news updates - and only local news updates - in a timely fashion is KATU. They’ve told me when school openings were delayed, when highways were closed, and just informed me that the woman who let the 12 year old drive the car that he ultimately crashed and was killed in has now been arrested.
Where do you get your dose of local news when you’re supposed to be working?
Related posts:
Call me biased, but I always check Blog Town!
http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown
I made my own Portland news glommer page that I look at from time to time: http://news.cockahoop.com/ It’s based on RSS feeds, but for whatever reason I don’t want to have all that stuff cluttering up my feed reader.
By the way, does KGW have an RSS feed? I found a page (http://www.kgw.com/rss/) on their site that ostensibly discusses the topic, but none of my browsers can find an actual feed.
I also read Blog Town — it’s the only “news” I read in my RSS reader, although it’s no more newsy on most days than WWire. That said, WWire is much less interesting.
It’s nice to know that their newsletters are as relevant and up-to-date as their broadcast counterparts. One of my wife’s biggest pet peeves is the tendency of our local affiliates to over use the “breaking news” bits to give you absolutely no new information. For instance, the last time Mount Saint Helens fell off the wagon and had a little smoke, some of the local affiliates (I believe KPTV was the worst…) would interrupt regularly scheduled programming in order to tell me that the mountain still hadn’t erupted, then would continue to talk about how there wasn’t another interruption until well into Judge Judy.
I do feel bad for them, though. They’ve had to very rapidly adjust the pace at which they’re expected to deliver news and to do so without the deep pockets of the networks.
Justin: The whole point though is that they are DELIVERING! But it isn’t news. (:
FYI, the RSS feeds are back on kgw.com at: http://www.kgw.com/rss/
The gremlins kidnapped them from the page for a while, but order has been restored!
Frank Mungeam
Site Manager
kgw.com