The give and take of beat blogging

Orlando Sentinel tech columnist and reporter Etan Horowitz was recently alerted by a readers of his column and blog that Bright House’s digital cable was down.

At best, many journalists would have posted a small note on their blog and then went on with their day (or a brief in the print edition the next day, after the outage had been corrected). But if a journalist wants to keep getting tips from readers, it’s a good idea to provide a service back to readers. The reason this became a big story for many of Horowitz’s readers is that Bright House’s Web site went down due to an overload of traffic, and their phone lines were perpetually busy.

Horowitz promptly put a note up on his blog and then tried to contact Bright House to find out what was going on. Horowitz’s readers began commenting when their cable went down and where they were located in the Orlando area. This began to form a picture of how widespread the problem was and when it started.

That small note that Horowitz posted was later updated five times with new information throughout the day as Horowitz was in contact with Bright House. Horowitz told readers why service was interrupted (a corrupted database) and provided updates on when Bright House thought service would be restored. He also provided readers with information on how to get some of their service restored by unplugging their cable wire from the cable box and plugging it directly into the TV (this would give most people some of their cable service but without HD).

Horowitz provided a public service to his readers and they were grateful that he did. Many readers could not get through to Bright House, while Horowitz was able to get in touch with a spokeswoman for the company and get updated information throughout the night.

The original blog post received thousands of page views, 560 comments (as of publication of this post) and spawned two print stories. And perhaps most importantly, Horowitz provided a public service to his readers after they tipped him off to the initial story.

If Horowitz simply posted a note on his blog that said, “Bright House digital cable service is down for many people in the area,” and left it at that, he might not get that many tips in the future from readers. Many of his readers already knew that cable service was already down. What they want out of a journalist like Horowitz is why is the service down, when will it be restored and is there anything that readers can do to speed up the process or get some of their service back?

Beat blogging really is a give and take. It’s not about marketing the same old content in new ways or pushing old content onto new platforms. Beat blogging is about expanding ones network of sources. Many of these new sources are not the traditional insiders, but they can help reporters do their jobs better and easier.

But a journalist isn’t going to get a lot of tips if it’s always just take, take, take. Beat bloggers and readers help each other out. Success on social media requires a give and take, and that can be a tough concept for many journalists accustomed to one-way communication to understand. 

Writing about cable outages might not be the sexiest story or win awards, but I can guarantee you that many people are very thankful that Horowitz gave them this information. This kind of coverage probably gave both Horowitz and his employer some good will. Without Horowitz’s coverage (and sounding board for angry customers), Bright House customers might not have gotten a credit.

Horowitz also used Twitter to update people about the Bright House situation. Many people had questions on Twitter about the situation and about getting a credit for lost service.

Here are a sample of some of the questions that readers left for Horowitz on his blog:

“I live by the Orlando Airport. Cable has been out since 3. Phone and internet still working. Stopped trying to call Bright House and customer care. How many busy signals can one person take? Thanks for the update!!” – Kathy

“Thanks OS for keeping us better informed then our cable operator!” – Todd

“And THANK YOU ETAN for posting this article and linking to it from your Twitter! Your article was the ONLY PLACE I could find any information!! The phone number’s been busy for hours, the website was super slow (understandably).. Thanks so much!!” – Jen