Elyria newspaper uses Ustream for its news coverage

By Chris Pugh
Connect Ohio

With changes in how many news consumers are moving online with broadband, traditional media sources are using creative ways to keep up.

The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram newspaper is using Ustream on its website to show live video of breaking news stories.

Ustream is a website where users can stream live video of events.

Photographer Bruce Bishop said the paper decided to use the Ustream video service several weeks ago.

“We have been doing some work here and there with a full-sized camera tethered to a laptop, it was cool but not exactly the most stimulating to use,” Bishop said. “Our Web Editor Rona Proudfoot and I have been trying to come up with things to really make our website pop and the idea of doing live coverage of breaking news came up. We have a popular website for the paper and we are tightly integrated with Facebook and have around 7,000 fans, so the idea of doing live video was really tempting because we could get a good audience online quickly.”

Bishop said the paper uses the Droid phone to shoot video.

“We saw it as an opportunity to do something nobody around here was doing,” he said. “The first day we had the phone we had a house fire, and went live with it. While it wasn’t a huge fire one of the comments left on Twitter was “What a great way to show everyone how newspapers can be relevant!”

The photographer said the paper plans to increase the amount of live video it shows on the Internet.

“We are going to keep working toward ever increasing amounts of live news coverage,” Bishop said. “It’s not easy to do because like most papers we have a pretty slim number of people available to cover things. I cover with the phone and a still camera. It limits my ability to do some things but I’ve been a photographer for 20 plus years so multitasking is something I can handle.”

He said the majority of the comments about the news coverage have been positive.

“Live news is nothing new but live coverage of breaking news from the photographer’s perspective is much more intimate and gritty,” he said. “I have to take great pains to avoid showing things that are too disturbing for the average viewer.”

On the Web:
Elyria Chronicle-Telegram: http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com
Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv