Being a slow summer weeknight with little compelling local news, I was curious how the local news stations would handle the collapse of Interstate 35W in Minneapolis. The stretch of roadway, crosses the Mississippi River, and is a major thoroughfare between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Seven people were killed and scores injured as cars literally plunged 50 feet to the river below. The incident happened at 4:05pm pst which means 2/6/8 had almost seven hours to pull together some local coverage/reax/angles to this major national story that the cable news channels have been covering non-stop.
10P Fox: Not surprisingly, Fox 12 didn't lead with the bridge collapse story. Instead, poorly referenced surveillance video of a local robbery took top billing. When they finally did get to the collapse towards the end of the first block, they did it as a voice over into an investigative pkg fronted live on what local officials [ODOT] are looking at. If this is what Fox thinks 'investigative' journalism is all about, we're in trouble. The story starts out with people watching television coverage in a bar. Multiple meaningless local soundbites reacting to the tragedy including the ubiquitous, "I'm scared" bite from some woman who probably isn't scared about driving across bridges in Oregon but when pressed, said was she assumed the crew wanted to hear. Yeah, I'm scared too. This 'investigative' part of the story - and this is so sad - was nothing more than an ODOT spokesman saying there are lessons to be learned from the M/SP collapse. Really? Wow. Not one critical fact, not one revealing hint of real useful information. Here's a question: How often are Oregon bridges inspected - and how can the public find that information?
At 11pm, the coverage was mixed.
Channels 2/6/8 all led with the 35W accident but the hands-down winner for comprehensive coverage was KOIN. Channel 8 had typical ho hum coverage with a network pkg first and then some local reaction from a structural engineer. KGW made a strong connection about the importance of bridges in the Portland area [which is also true in M/SP].
KATU had what I'd consider the weakest coverage at 11pm. They stuck to an ODOT spokesman and got the company line about what they're doing. But even the Channel 2 report was more informative than Channel 12's 'investigative' report at 10pm.
KOIN went the furthest. Iwanaga on bridge inspection with an interview from an independent engineer from PSU who spoke on the concerns of bridge safety here in Oregon and then with Kohr Harlan with how emergency medical personnel would respond if something like that happened here. Perhaps a bit too much, but at least they figured out what the big story of the night was - and put resources into it. All in all, more on KOIN than their competitors tonight, but is anyone watching?
Haha, them not leading with the bridge story was definitely NOT a surprise. Probably the only station in the country not to lead with it.