A man in New York gave his thoughts about Sept. 11. Someone in Paris passed along information about an explosion at a French nuclear waste facility. A St. Louis woman asked why Amtrak service between there and Kansas City was targeted for cuts when ridership is up.
And that was just the first day of what KOMU is billing as the first broadcast that allows viewers to become co-hosts. The first broadcast of “U_News@4” went off without a hitch Monday despite the fact that nine people who didn’t work for the station could comment behind host and KOMU reporter Sarah Hill. “This is a free satellite truck attached to a crowd-sourcing tool, essentially,” Hill said in an interview after the broadcast. “It makes it really exciting to gather news in this way because it expands our reach so much.”
Mentioned later in the article are 2008-2009 Reynolds Fellow Jen Reeves and the Reynolds Journalism Institute:
The idea began germinating late last year, when the station started making a plan for a newscast to fill the 4 p.m. time slot, KOMU Interactive Director Jen Reeves said. But during the February blizzard, the team had an “a-ha moment” when viewers sent in pictures and comments by the droves. “Mid-Missouri really does want to share,” Reeves said. “And now that we know that, we can do this.”
“U_News” will ask viewers to send in pictures and videos that producers might air live. And with help from a grant from the Reynolds Journalism Institute, public access to webcams will be available in libraries in KOMU’s 14-county viewership area. “I’m really hoping we can reach out against socioeconomics and regions,” Reeves said. “Technology, I really don’t want that to hold back anybody.”
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