A regional daily ensured its readers had access to one of the town’s most important council meetings in history by using video streaming.
The Bolton News streamed the full three hour meeting where Bolton Council’s approved budget cuts of £41m to hundreds of readers on its website.
Political correspondent Andrew Greaves provided up-to-date text coverage using the CoveritLive blogging service, while Paul Dobson filmed the full meeting to ensure nothing was missed.
The paper has previously used video streaming to cover marches by the English Defence League and the funeral of footballing legend Nat Lofthouse.
Multimedia editor David Crookes said: “Readers are increasingly demanding greater immediacy in our news coverage and our reporters love the buzz of reporting on live events.
“The preliminary reader figures from the night are extremely encouraging.”
Meanwhile at sister weekly the Bury Times, senior reporter Sarah Poole reported on Bury Council’s budget meeting using Twitter and by providing exclusive analysis online, due to the deadline of the paper.
Visitors to both websites left their own comments engaging with the reporters, with one reader from Denmark remarking how much he had enjoyed it.
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‘…one reader from Denmark remarking how much he had enjoyed it.’ A three-hour council meeting ? Pervert !
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Any idea how many watched this video? I agree it’s great coverage but would be intrigued to know how many people are actually watching a three hour council meeting on their laptops. I know there’s not exactly much to do in Bolton but even so…
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Hmm. Technology. Just because you CAN doesn’t always mean that you should. Personally speaking, I cannot imagine a more soul-sapping way of spending three hours than watching a load of puffed-up windbags blathering on about their budget amendments.
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Hacked off has hit the nail on the head. Just how many people are interested in live streaming from council meetings – it’s hardly prime time viewing is it? Local paper editors and reporters must ask themselves just how interesting stories really are to their public – falling circulations indicate they need to find answers pretty quickly. Too many local papers are full of drivel these days filling up the gaps around the adverts. There’s a big danger of kidding ourselves that local news is important when in fact nobody would miss it that much if it wasn’t there?
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I had the same reaction as the other posters when I originally read the headline – but it’s clear that this was a really important meeting with implications for a lot of people, plus the paper was flagging up key points with a journalist using Twitter. Are you going to do this for every boring meeting? Of course not. But in this case it sounds like a really good use of multimedia.
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