2017 Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Flight

Part of the commitment to covering local news means expanding the coverage beyond county lines. In May, I had the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C., to report on an Honor Flight to photograph our local veterans experiencing the trip. I had this opportunity because of a publisher who supported my vision for the expansive coverage I had in mind for this event. It took a lot of financial and personnel support to make it happen, but the effort was well worth it.

Logistics – I obtained a list of veterans from Seward and Saline counties who were attending the event. I called them ahead of time to let them know that I would be there and would be looking for them. I had some concerns going into it because more then 650 veterans from across the state were attending the one-day trip and they were all going to be wearing the same design of shirt. When I made these calls a few weeks in advance, I explained to them what I looked like (7-months-pregnant). I also asked if they would be carrying cell phones that they could be reached on.

As a journalist walking into this experience somewhat green, I was extremely fortunate to find a family from Seward County attending the event to help the veterans. The Nitz family had attended previous honor flights and shared their knowledge with me about what to expect. Their previous experiences made it possible for me to provide expanded coverage including Facebook Live coverage of the veterans getting off of their planes to a crowd at the airport in Washington, D.C. My coverage included updates on Facebook and Twitter, a brief story and photo that went in that week's paper (printed the next morning), two full color pages of coverage in the next week's paper as well as a personal column detailing my experience. One of the Facebook Live videos had 194,229 people reached, 104,000 views, 881 shares, 315 comments and more than 1,400 likes. The reach of that post went far beyond Seward County and Nebraska. There were comments from people across the nation. What did this do on the revenue side of things for the SCI? Not much but that wasn't the point either. This was a project about honoring local heroes. It was bigger than the paper making money, but we do recognize that this also adds to our brand as a credible and responsible news source.

What I might do differently: This type of event could easily warrant a double truck position in the newspaper. We led the B section with it because of color placement. One other option would be to run a four to six page extra section with a double truck spread. I wanted to optimize the color pages we devoted to it so I took more of the "tell the story in photos" approach. If the event had been closer to Veterans Day, we could have done a separate section and sold advertisements to local businesses who wanted to honor and thank local veterans.

One other aspect of our coverage that I might do differently given this opportunity again would be a focus on Twitter. We don't have a strong following on Twitter with our current subscriber base but this could have been an opportunity to add Twitter followers. Because of limited time, I focused heavily on taking pictures and tracking our local veterans throughout the day. If I had the opportunity again, I would find ways to focus a little more on Twitter throughout the day.