A fantastic blog post from Alison Gow, executive editor, digital, at the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, on her recent job swap with an executive editor on the print side of the operation while the Liverpool FC “sale/saga” broke.
She describes the difficulties of creating a Late Final edition with a solid tip but no confirmation that NESV (New England Sports Ventures) had completed the deal.
Everyone in the newsroom was becoming increasingly desolate as the late special idea looked set to fall down. The confirmation came, we managed to get it online (and cached, for once) before Sky and the BBC were even reporting it and there were celebrations at landing a web exclusive.
Then it turned out we had a print one as well… Echo editor Ali Machray had quietly got the front page change made – including a story announcing the sale, and had sent to the printers on the off-chance. So bundles of the latest news were in vans heading back to outlets on Merseyside… bundles that would have been pulped if no announcement had come through.
Helpfully, she also runs through the elements of print and online coverage that worked well and were valued by readers and those that were not.