Last night’s earthquake
Something getting blanket coverage in the media today is last nights earthquake. Whilst it was really very small in terms of damage, and thankfully a minimal number of injuries, it’s a rare occurrence here in the UK and quite exciting.
At around three minutes to midnight I was listening to BBC Radio Suffolk in bed just before the switch into Up All Night on Five Live. I felt the shaking - and thought it might just be a HGV, although it was a little long for that, and very quiet outside. In the first minute of the programme, the host asked the others in the studio if they just felt the earth move. They hadn’t, but within minutes over 50 text messages had been sent and after the news it became very clear that it was some sort of earthquake or tremor.
The programme continued with normal stories and text messages about the quake, and by half past had interviewed someone from the US Geological Survey about the location, severity and other interesting details - the guest explained that it was felt as far north as Consett, about 20 miles north of here. It was a really interesting hour on the radio, and quite amusing to hear that the first thing many did was login to Facebook and update their status. (Yeah - ok - I did the same).
It seems that BBC News 24 were a little slow off the mark - however Five Live, just meters away, were covering it from 01:00, with guests from BBC Radio in Lincoln. Whether it was just an editorial decision or not having the information, I don’t know - if they did, and Five Live is still the first outlet to get breaking news stories and correspondents, it certainly showed.
The comments about the earthquake on The Guardian and Digg are especially amusing. There’s also some interesting stuff on various blogs, and an analysis of how much quicker Twitter was at breaking the news. I half agree with this - I’d class this more as information, rather than news - especially given the policies at various mainstream media outlets of reporting a breaking story.
It’s interesting reading the comments on Read Write Web - especially those which mention that Sky News broke the story after 15 minutes, and the BBC 10 minutes later. It was being reported/discussed on Five Live within a few minutes, which isn’t too bad - but no-one is really talking about radio coverage. Whilst the internet and social media might have beat television on this occasion, I feel radio was pretty quick off the mark too.
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