Huffington Post Henry DiCarlo, the morning weatherman at KTLA in Los Angeles, threw a fit Wednesday and walked off camera after conducting a live interview and then not having time to do his weather segment. As he left, he scolded the producers: "When you send a weatherman out to do the weather but you're also sending him out to do a story, you might want to give him a little extra time. But that's just me." The anchors played it off with humor. Chris Schauble: "Maybe we'll give him a little cheese to go with that whine." || Marginally related: Ron Paul walks out on CNN interview
Bing (via Mashable) | Project for Excellence in Journalism
Bing has released rankings of its most searched terms this year, and crime and terrorism top the list of news stories, followed by weather and celebrity. The top 10 list:
The Wall Street Journal
This has been a tough year for meteorologists. Forecasting technology has improved -- "A one-day forecast comes within three degrees of hitting the mark, on average; a three-day forecast is usually accurate within four degrees" -- but meteorologists still can't predict the exact intensity of hurricanes or precisely where a storm will dump snow or rain. Adding to the pressure, "people increasingly look to meteorologists not only to predict the weather, but to tell them what to do about it," Sue Shellenbarger writes. "When Hurricane Irene roared up the Atlantic seaboard in August, dozens of anxious people asked meteorologist Elliot Abrams where to park their cars or how much food to buy. Mr. Abrams, a senior vice president with AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pa., broadcast hurricane updates on 15 radio stations and responded to callers who wanted to know, 'Should I board up my windows?' " || Related:Hurricane Irene provides window into The Weather Channel’s info-tainment | Irene generated most coverage of any hurricane since PEJ started tracking news in 2007
Project for Excellence in Journalism
After running the numbers for the week of Aug. 22-28, PEJ found that stories about Hurricane Irene comprised 21 percent of all news covered, less than the 26 percent devoted to news about unrest in the Middle East. Network TV news devoted a third of its airtime to the storm, followed slightly by cable news. Online, radio and newspaper coverage lagged significantly. PEJ notes that Irene generated the largest share of the news coverage of any hurricane since it started tracking coverage in January 2007. The closest competitor was Gustav, which was the subject of 17 percent of stories in the first week of September, 2008.
But dominance is relative; Gustav was a distant second to 2008 election coverage. Remember Hurricane Earl? Probably not. It caused little damage, although the media spent a lot of time covering it, too. Coverage of that storm from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5, 2010 comprised 13 percent of news hole, but that made it the top story for the week. "If anything," PEJ noted in its report then, "last week’s coverage proved again that meteorology is tricky and the media walk a fine line between legitimate concern and excessive hype in a story of this type." Somewhere there's a story about hype being relative. Oh, here it is: The 6 criteria for hype & why Hurricane Irene coverage does not meet them | Related:Patch gets big traffic bump from Hurricane Irene
The New York Times | NPR
While you were watching Hurricane Irene on the The Weather Channel, The New York Times' Brian Stelter was watching The Weather Channel watch Irene. Stelter was with meteorologist Mike Seidel in Nags Head, N.C., as he was blown around by Hurricane Irene for about 15 hours Saturday. Stelter notes that Seidel positions himself so he bears the force of the most powerful winds. Among the tricks of the trade, according to Stelter: "Mr. Seidel donned safety glasses on the beach to help keep sand out of his eyes, and positioned himself almost as low as a football linebacker to stop from being blown over. The audio engineer wrapped his battery pack in a condom to keep it dry." (more...)
I grew up in Chicago, where blizzards rarely closed schools. I’ve been through Hurricanes Fran and Floyd in North Carolina and Charley and Jeanne in Florida. So, I laugh when Washington, D.C. shuts down over a few inches of snow … Read more
How can the media balance the public’s need to stay informed during severe weather with the risk of overestimating potential damage? An imbalance could hurt news outlets’ credibility in the face of future threats, harming a complacent, unprepared public.
Springfield (Ill.) State Journal-Register
News organizations are trying new approaches to how-hot-is-it? stories. One of the more popular experiments is baking cookies on a car dashboard.
It’s simple, really. We bought a package of Pillsbury premade cookie dough, preformed into balls and placed the dough on two cookie sheets. We then placed the dough-laden cookie sheets on the dash of a car in the employee parking lot at The State Journal-Register.
As I write this, the cookies are still baking in a car with an inside temperature of 175 degrees. (The Post-Dispatch's batch is finished.) In Cleveland, Fox 8 and a local hospital teamed up to successfully make S'mores in a car. "Good knowledge, we suppose, if you have no fire, no oven, a car, and 30 minutes of free time, and you want to eat S'mores in your parking lot," writes Vince Grzegorek.
> There are only eight ways to cover a heat wave
