Thursday, September 10, 2015

Covering a Twitter news story

I decided to focus and keep track of a story that is still happening in my home town of Camden and that is the search of an escaped inmate from the Ouachita County Detention Center.

In December 2014, 19 year old Austin Hill murdered grocery store manager Rick Anders. Hill is facing a Capitol murder charge. Well on September 9, 2015 Hill escaped a police van that had just arrived back at the detention facility after going to the hospital for a broken wrist earlier in the day. 

KATV Channel 7 news in Little Rock sent down reporter Matt Mershon down to Camden to cover the fast breaking story. So I decided to take a look how he was covering this story on Twitter. 

At 7:59pm Mershon tweeted out that the Arkansas state police helicopter had been flying around the Camden area in search of the convict because the area in which the detention center is located at is very wooded. 

Mershon would tweet out another piece of interesting news at 8:28pm saying that  Hill escaped officers because of his broken wrist and wasn't fully shackled and is now on the loose in nothing but boxers and socks. 

And then the final two tweets of the night that I saw were at 11:04pm and 11:10pm where the first tweet was saying that authorities were acting on a tip of the sighting of Hill around South St in Camden and that guns were being drawn but no sight of him. Six minutes later Mershon tweeted out saying that it was just a false alarm and authorities continue to patrol the areas of Camden. 

At around 5:30am September 10, 2015 Mershon tweeted out that authorities were getting ready to once again go out in the early daylight in search of Hill. Authorities reacted to a tip at 10:20am on Hwy 79 near the rest stop when someone spotted a black male wearing nothing but shorts. Mershon's latest tweet came in at 11:26am when saying that authorities are searching in fields near Hwy 376 and many police units are scattered in the area. 

As of this posting Hill is still at large and authorities are continuing their search for him throughout the day. 

I loved how Mershon kept me up to date on all the action that is happening just across the river in my hometown. Great coverage on a story that has rocked this community since it happened in December 2014. It just showed a different side to me on how you can cover a news story differently on twitter than a 24 hour news or local news station can. Where as on the local and 24 hour news you may get a 3 to 5 minute segment on that story and that is it. On twitter you are getting what seems like a minute by minute update of the developing story.





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