How ABC News Digital Leverages Affiliate Reporting During Breaking News

By Merrill Knox 

wcvb boston coverageEric Noe, the managing editor of ABC News Digital, is featured in Mediabistro’s latest “So What Do You Do?” interview. Among other things, Noe tells us how ABC leverages social media and affiliate reporting during breaking news situations, using last year’s Boston Marathon bombings as an example:

Within minutes and within hours after [the bombs went off], we had people on the ground in Boston, and we had a digital journalist in Moscow, digging up background on the bombers’ family in Kyrgyzstan, giving us great information from there.

[…] We were able to lean on our sister company, ESPN — you know, this was a sporting event as well — and they gave us great information. Our affiliate up in Boston, WCVB, gave us great live streams. And by the end of the week, we had tremendous traffic. And I’m kind of proud to say that we didn’t have to walk back a single fact. We got everything right and didn’t have to issue any retractions, and it was a tremendous opportunity for us to show the muscle of our news division and what we can do when we [channel] it through the digital funnel.

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