"Newspaper" Journalism Done Live

08/19/2014 - 10h34

Starting with the technology: the first to report that the former governor was in an airplane that crashed in Santos, Folha's website attracted, in less than five minutes, a total number of page clicks six times more than the daily average per hour.

The system crashed and was off the air. For about 25 minutes, readers could not access the news and found the page without updates. Among the big newspapers, it was the last website to confirm Campos' death.

I don't believe it serves as any consolation to have had the news first - a "scoop" is essential for printed newspapers but less relevant on the Internet, a platform in which an unprecedented event such as this lasts for seconds or scant minutes.

More important is the ability to continue feeding new information, which the newspaper did not manage to do for an hour.

When the site came back online, the priority was to consolidate the reports with factual news, besides Campos' biography and political trajectory, correct precautions in the view of print journalism but which do not matter in the immediacy of the Internet, in which anxious readers migrate from one publication another with a click.

Only after this did Folha post on its "live blog" which allows it to post things in an uncomplicated, agile way, narrating events practically in real time.

Used initially to cover planned events (the Oscar ceremony or soccer games), "live blog" was soon assimilated for serious hard news.

It turned into a hybrid and singular model in journalism, only possible on the Internet: it is a "newspaper" but done live. You can add audio (like radio) or video (like TV), but the text is the anchor.

Contrary to print journalism, which is already complete from the start, partly and fully defined, the "live press" reader knows about news almost at the same time as the journalist who reports it.

The checking goes on the air in news "pills" without a singular role, and in them the important facts fit, but also (many) irrelevant ones. The priority is frequent posting, to hold the audience, and it becomes an inferior version of TV reports.

For some, this tool points to the future of journalism. For others, it is one more blow against it because, among other reasons, it abdicates trusteeship of the content.

For those more adept with digital, it is a natural extension of the use of what it already does on the web. To those accustomed to the print version, it is another appetizer for the main course, which will become colder but more complete.

Despite preferences, the two models are not mutually exclusive. The trusteeship of raw material posted on the "live blog" is normally done when the site selects the most relevant content and packages it in the format of news reports, with headlines and information according to importance.

The biggest weakness of the immediate report is the multiplication of possibilities for making mistakes, big as well as small ones, due to the lack of time devoted to verification and maturation of the news.

On the day of Campos' death (Aug. 13), the "live blog" of the Rio daily "O Globo" reported that the candidate's wife and youngest child were also killed in the accident. The information was corrected quickly, with a lot of visibility. (Folha was also limping with this in its history).

The point is that "live press" is here to stay and, bad news for media companies in crisis, its production does not seem to be giving any relief to revenues.

It still does not produce any advertising, demands major investments in technology to support big audiences and requires trained journalists capable of minimizing the risk of errors. Did anyone think it would be easier?

Translated by JOHN WRIGHT

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