It’s been more than a decade since “Stop the presses!” last rang out through the newsroom. But the urgency associated with the phrase hasn’t gone away. It just got a digital upgrade, to: “Let’s go live.”
And while it may not match Hollywood’s version, with frantic shouting across a bustling room filled with anxious editors, the phrase carries the power to activate dozens of journalists around the world, and kicks off a process that delivers minute-by-minute updates to your phone or laptop.
Here’s how our newsroom works during breaking news.
If it’s big, or breaking, we go live.
If you visit our home page, you’ve noticed a word in red at the top of the page: Live. This signals a specific type of Times coverage, one that brings you up to speed on breaking news, or chronicles a big event as it unfolds.
It could mean a natural disaster, a mass shooting, the State of the Union address or the Academy Awards.
The format is simple: a headline and summary with a short, fixed item at the top that helps a reader understand why this is a big news moment. That is followed by a stream of updates from reporters that are posted in a reverse chronological order, so the latest news is at the top.
Putting this live presentation together and keeping it up-to-date is not so simple.
Julie Bloom leads a team of close to 30 editors and reporters based in New York, London and Seoul who work closely with editors and reporters from desks across the newsroom to help produce our breaking news.
“The goal is to get news up very quickly because these are often very competitive news moments, and this format is a very fast way to get news published and out the door,” Bloom said. “The point is to keep it going as we are learning new information, and to elevate at that moment what we think is the biggest piece of news that readers need to know.”
Bloom’s team, which operates round-the-clock, handing off responsibility for the story from one part of the world to the next as the hours pass, connects with editors across the newsroom to decide when an event deserves this treatment.
“We have a high bar for when we go live,” Bloom said, adding that she tries to answer three questions before proceeding:
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Is this a big news event? We rely on our news judgment to decide.
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Can we bring people closer to the scene, or offer insights that help the reader better understand what’s happening?
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Do we expect enough developments to assure that readers will want to stay with us or return to the live story to learn more as it unfolds?
“Live fulfills a specific need for readers who want information in real time and want that insight from reporters who have been really covering something deeply,” Bloom said. “I think live is a really good way for reporters to showcase their expertise and what they know in a more conversational tone than they can sometimes do in traditional stories.”
And while the updates are flowing in, editors are thinking about the bigger picture and the important information to highlight.
“At the end of a news event, we do often look back and help readers digest what happened. Sometimes it is more analytical. Sometimes it’s more what we know are the facts of a news event. Key findings,” she said.
And while the Live team works fast, it doesn’t take shortcuts.
“The standards are exactly the same as we would follow for any piece of journalism,” Bloom said. “Every piece gets at least two edits. We spend a lot of time on headlines, and items are often edited first by a subject-area editor and then a second reader.
“We continue to update stories as new information comes in and we often move quickly because we have to, so some things get improved and revised.”
A team ready to jump on breaking news.
While desks across the newsroom are looking out for breaking news, a relatively new group, called the Express team, often gets there first.
Formed in 2015, Express is made up of close to 40 reporters and editors working across time zones who closely track other news organizations and keep eyes on social media and a service called Dataminr, which monitors online chatter. Coverage of major news events, such as a mass shooting, often starts with a Dataminr alert.
Melissa Hoppert, who leads Express, said her team sees an alert and “jumps on it.”
“If it is a major breaking news story, we launch two or three reporters,” Hoppert said. “So, ‘You call the Police Department, you call the Fire Department, you start looking for witnesses,’ and all the reporting comes together with one anchor writer.”
Coordinating with other desks is paramount, since Express will eventually hand reporting on major news events over to the desk closest to the story.
“We will reach out to National or International and ask them if they are going to look into it or do they want us to look into it,” Hoppert said. “We start with the basic reporting process, and oftentimes it’s Express getting the first take up.”
The fast pace of digital news influences the way we think about that first take.
“If it’s a major news story, the shorter the better because we really just want to mark that this thing is happening,” Hoppert said. “So sometimes it is as little as a sentence or two. And then we are quickly making calls and building the story out as we report. When we talk about ‘building it out,’ we are building it out very rapidly. We might publish, and then two minutes later have a fresh update with five more sentences.”
Once the initial story is up, reporters and editors from other newsroom departments join in.
“It’s all hands on deck when we have a major breaking news story,” Hoppert said.
Alerting readers to what we know.
Getting that news before the eyes of readers quickly falls to another newsroom group: the Messaging team.
A subset of the so-called Home team, which produces the digital front page, the Messaging team is responsible for alerting readers to breaking news, either with an email or a notification sent to their mobile devices.
Eric Bishop, who has worked with Times breaking news alerts since 2016 and now leads the Messaging team, said the goals are accuracy, quality and speed, in that order. His team will often draft the initial language for the alert before an editor working on a story weighs in.
“In addition to the person writing the alert, we have three people who approve it,” Bishop said. “And then there is a final check before the button is pushed. We’re a little bit slower sometimes, but that’s a trade-off we think is worth making.”
The goal with alerts is to get critical information to the readers who want it. So while there is a link to the full article, we don’t hold back on any information to invite a click.
“The average open rate for a Times alert is less than 1 percent,” Bishop said. “It’s rare that more than 2 percent of our audience actually opens a given alert.”
Bishop’s team will typically send 10 to 12 alerts each day. But on a busy news day it can be far more.
“These go to our most loyal readers,” Bishop said. “If you download our app and sign up for ‘push’ you’re a little more bought in.”
Readers who are particularly interested in a live event can also sign up for an alert every time there is an update to that story.
Back to those presses …
While the digital age enables us to present the news as it unfolds, we still have more than 600,000 print subscribers waiting to read their morning paper. That means all the work that goes into the live presentation of breaking news must be translated into a format appropriate for print — and meet a deadline dictated by our presses.
We have two dedicated Page One correspondents who do just that. These reporters take the many pieces of news that have flowed into the live report during the day and create what we call a ledeall; a single article that captures the major news while knitting together other elements of the broader story. Reporters from around the newsroom also contribute to these articles, and they are occasionally written by a reporter who worked on the Live report.
The Print Hub, a group of about 70 journalists who take our digital report and adapt it for print, edit the ledeall, place it in the print edition and send it to the presses. But that’s not the end of the story. The ledeall is also often featured on the Home page, giving both digital and print readers a comprehensive summary of the day’s main event.
Susanna Timmons is an editor on the Trust team, which works to bring greater transparency to Times journalism. More about Susanna Timmons
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