Heathrow Drama On The Web

The crash landing of a plane at Heathrow provided an opportunity for an online breaking news story – so how did coverage compare in those crucial first few hours?

Considering there was no shortage of hacks on the scene – they watched the drama unfold along with Gordon Brown from a China-bound plane stuck on the runway – it’s interesting to see how different websites opted to cover the story.

Leader of the pack of national newspapers was undoubtedly the Telegraph, which saw its recent video news deal with ITN pay dividends as it was the only one to have branded video footage of the crashed plane.

In addition, the Telegraph used the pictures to accompany a phone interview with its political editor Andrew Porter, who described the scene from his runway vantage point.



And their efforts didn’t go unrewarded as the Telegraph came top in Google News searches on the crash at 16.15.

The only other national newspaper site to feature video shortly after the story broke was the Sun, in the form of an embedded video player of Sky News Live.

That aside, the Sun didn’t really distinguish itself in its coverage considering its bid to improve its web offerings, including just a small text story and picture to accompany the Sky News footage.

Another up-and-coming website did impress though – the Daily Mail may not have had video but it quickly put up a lengthy write-up with lots of pictures, and included useful graphics of the crash site, Heathrow Airport and of a Boeing 777 aircraft.

Perhaps another disappointment was the Guardian, which included a short audio clip of reporter Will Woodward speaking from the Prime Minister’s plane and a brief breaking news story but nothing else.

Times Online didn’t exactly go to town either with a standard breaking news story piece and nothing more – and the presence of one of its own reporters at the scene only merited a mention in Sam Coates’ Red Box blog.

And the Independent also adopted a minimalistic approach to the breaking news story, with only a short piece and photograph from the Press Association.

For the regionals, it was a good showing from the Richmond and Twickenham Times which posted a breaking news story on its website shortly after the incident.

And as for the broadcasters – the BBC took the spoils with a live streaming of its BBC News 24 coverage, which featured some great helicopter pictures and interviews with eyewitnesses, aviation experts and passengers who were on the stricken jet.

Within a couple of hours it also had some neat video packages online which featured the best of the interviews and an audio report by mobile phone from political editor Nick Robinson, who also updated his blog from the plane.

Presumably sat next to Nick making his call was Sky News’s politics man Adam Boulton, who gave studio anchor Kay Burley his view of the crash landing.

Sky had live streaming from its news channel on its website but presumably the Sky helicopter must have been in for service because they didn’t seem to have any aerial shots in those first few hours and had to rely on some quite poor ground pictures early on.

Like the BBC, it quickly edited live footage into small video packages for web users but annoyingly my PC couldn’t open them as I lacked the required Macromedia Flash update.

And finally – what about user-generated content?

Well, all the websites were practically pleading for it and pretty soon a photograph of the broken undercarriage taken by an eyewitness appeared on the BBC, and Sky News’s picture gallery featured a photograph from a member of the public.

Information from experts was also in demand and at one point a BBC News 24 anchor posed a technical question to an aviation expert prompted by a text sent in by a British Airways pilot.

Some stories were also open to comments and the Daily Mail had more than a dozen posted within a couple of hours.


All in all, as far as breaking news online goes it’s an A-plus for the Telegraph, an A-minus for the Daily Mail and a “must do better” for some of their rivals.