Have you heard of the recent “newsfail” in Atlanta? According to the Center for Future Civic Media, there was a significant lack of coverage on the terrible massive flooding in the Atlanta area and local TV stations were scrambling to cover the story. Such big, important news and no one seemed to have been on top of it in a timely manner. What gives?

Photo courtesy of the City of Atlanta, via Creative Loafing

Coincidentally, a few of us at outside.in were preparing for a business trip to Atlanta in the midst of all this flooding and disaster. I only heard of the news through an IM from a friend who asked why I was about to fly out to an area where offices and schools were shutting down and the airports were backed up like crazy. Had it not been for this message, I doubt I would have been in the know, since I don’t really follow Atlanta news and didn’t see it mentioned in my national news feeds. I would have probably shown up at the airport only to realize flights to Atlanta had been canceled or severely delayed.

You would assume that major news like this would be covered by pretty much all national news outlets. But that did not happen. I’m sure all publishers may have their own set of circumstances but one major cause that likely led to the “newsfail” is the fact that many news publishers no longer have the resources to stay on top of all the news breaking in a timely manner (especially when weather makes it even tougher to travel to the right locations). And consequently, the consumers are left to rely less and less on traditional media sources. We now rely heavily on word of mouth via Facebook, Twitter, or IM.

So, the solution? Smart aggregation. Publishers and consumers would be best served through the power of aggregation and distribution. Publishers do not need to cover every major news breaking in their metro. If there are other content producers and local bloggers that are already reporting the story as it breaks, publishers can take advantage of the content by aggregating from these complementary news sources and link out from your site. Your audience do not need to search the web to find the news. You should provide this information, even if it means the content is from an aggregated set of a variety of sources, which can provide for a more comprehensive perspective and coverage.

For local bloggers, such “newsfail” provides a great opportunity. My colleague has already written about the power and benefits of local blogs in this type of a situation on our blogger HQ site. In Atlanta, there were several blogs providing the latest updates, including rounding up tweets, on the flooding early on when only a few major news sources were covering it. Decatur Metro started blogging about this as early as 9/17. We here at outside.in think this is what the new news ecosystem is all about–major publishers tapping into the aggregated set of content and helping to drive traffic to the network local bloggers and the smaller publishers.

Whether it’s a devastating flood in Atlanta, a recent manhunt in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago (covered on the Arlington Heights Neighborhood News Page on our partner site, ChicagoBreakingNews), we believe “newsfail” should and could be avoided.