Wednesday, June 23, 2010

In the crazed aftermath of disaster

There was an earthquake today, and I MISSED IT.

A 5.0 earthquake rippled out from an epicenter somewhere north of Ottawa, as far south and east as Quebec City and NYC, and as far west as Milwaukee and Chicago (as confirmed by my dad, who was at work downtown).

How you miss an earthquake, I cannot explain, but everyone upstairs skipped down claiming the building shook and maybe we should check for explosions. Turns out it was just some intraplate action. No big deal.

I stumbled upon this live blog set up at the Globe & Mail website, (at the bottom of the article) and for 2 1/2 hours I found it both fascinating and entertaining. The main first chunk is mostly comments from readers, with some interaction from the facilitator, but eventually they interviewed a couple of geology professors, fielding questions from readers. As one of the commenters put it, "The ability to talk to each other and talk to experts in tandem is exactly what's been missing from real-time coverage."

I don't know if this is a common tool for the media, and it's probably the most useful for extreme weather occurrences like this one, but is live blogging widespread? I'm sure people sit on message boards during World Cup games or red carpet events or political speeches and spout outrageous opinions and pick fights-- but what about events that benefit from the perspective of an expert? And the opportunity to have a question answered by that expert within minutes? I trust that the Globe & Mail is actually speaking to a professor, as opposed to the facilitator of a fan website making nonsense up in their mom's basement somewhere. That's the difference in useful live blogging to me, and I'm curious if it's going on in more places than I think.


Tuesday, June 22, 2010

second day of summer

what our summer looks like so far...