‘After Deadline’ comes alive once more!

Yesterday, we at the Daily Item re-launched an old favorite: the daily video segment known as “Daily Item After Deadline.”

It stars reporters Francis Scarcella and Rick Dandes. I’m the executive producer.

It kind of a twist on the “newsroom reveals its budget for the next day” trend.

Here’s where you can watch the first episode.

The daily segment will feature all of the day’s major headlines, as well as include some cool features like special guests, on-the-street reporting and weather segments as time goes on.

It will be posted at dailyitem.com each day at around 5 to 6 p.m., depending on how the day’s going – for example today it was up after 6, wince it was a super busy day in the newsroom.

Hopefully you’ll be tuning in each day, and we’d love to hear from you what you think and would like to see! Let us know on our Facebook page!

Below are some still shots from behind-the-scenes of the first day of production, showing Francis, Rick and Dave Hilliard working the camera:

Story goes Facebook viral

If there’s one thing I know about the news, it’s that people love restaurant news – what’s opening, what’s closing, what’s even thinking about opening a new location.

And now with social media, it’s even easier to get people the news they’re dying to know about.

Take, for example, a story that broke this week, that Texas Roadhouse is planning to take over the former Ruby Tuesday site in Hummels Wharf. I posted the story on Facebook, and it exploded. It got something like 150 likes.

But that’s not the most impressive stat.

Facebook metrics tracks a stat that indicates how many “shares” a story has. It shares this data on your newsfeed when you like a page to give you an idea of what people with similar interests are talking about. If there’s a really exciting story, sometimes it will have 200 shares.

Here’s the stats that popped up on my newsfeed Friday:

847?! Amazing!

Just goes to show you – sometimes it’s not the investigative, hard-hitting news people want to read…..it’s just as simple as checking zoning applications.

 

“Bubble Gun” story goes viral

An incident first reported in the Daily Item has officially gone viral.

Numerous news outlets – including The Huffington Post, the New York Daily News, ABCNews (and GMA) and FOX News just to name a few – picked up on the story of a young girl suspended after “threatening” her friends with a Hello Kitty bubble gun (similar to the one pictured).

[Note: The Huffington Post article cites and links to the Daily Item coverage too!]

The school says she made legitimate threats; her mother and lawyer say she’s just a 5-year-old girl saying things that she doesn’t fully understand.

The story has attracted numerous reactions, both in support of the young girl and the school, with both sides citing recent events – some saying that school shootings have left the public oversensitive, while others say you can’t be too careful these days.

A Facebook post we did on the subject got 94 comments.

So now, the question is, what do you think?

12/12/12!

Yesterday was 12/12/12!

While some people scoff, these date-based days won’t be around again until 2101 – so if you missed your opportunity to celebrate, you have a while to wait for the next time!

Here’s some ways our Facebook friends said they were having fun yesterday:

Other cool replies included:

 

• Justin Yoder:  My family and I are at Disney World!
• Marissa Stigerwalt: Possibly giving birth today. Fingers crossed!
• Kristi Bell-Goss: My birthday!!!

I tweeted:

12:12 ON 12/12/12!

— Ashley Wislock (@wisashl) December 12, 2012

What did you do on 12/12/12?

Tweet, Tweet

I’m a huge Twitter nerd. I love the microblogging site, and can be found tweeting at all times of day and night, depending on what’s happening … or, more likely, what’s on TV.

But seriously, Twitter is a great tool for businesses, brands and individuals alike. It’s become like a Facebook for many us Twi-hards: the first site you check in the morning and the last you look at before bed.

But now comes the hard part: convincing others to tweet too.

How do you describe the feeling of seeing events unfold in real time? How do you describe the thrill of being the first to release information?

But seriously, Twitter helps journalists do their jobs. You can find out what happens, when it happens.

You can also be the first to let people know what’s happening – if something big happens, it’s easy to put it in 140 characters and send that info out to the public.

Those are my main reasons for Tweeting, anyway. But I’ve seen these events in action.  For skeptics, it’s harder to imagine.

So I’m asking for help: how would you describe Twitter to someone who doesn’t use it? What are it’s benefits? Let me know – I’d love to hear from you in the comments or via e-mail!