How 5G helps newsrooms cover national elections
Fast, reliable and secure 5G
from AT&T Business is helping
journalists capture video news
In the days before the internet, reporting on a national story like an election was a convoluted process.
In a state far from the newsroom, a reporter couldn’t just write up an impactful story and hit send: The reporter had to get to a phone, call the newsroom and dictate the whole piece to a colleague or editor while they pounded it out on a typewriter. After a flurry of ink-and-paper edits, a draft was sent off to print in the evening edition or the next day’s paper.
Modern technology has put that workflow into hyperspeed: these days, that same story might be making its way to readers in less time than it would've taken a reporter to find a phone booth. Vetted, credible, professionally reported news is being published nearly as it happens. And increasingly, readers get to experience the news in a way that puts them at the center of the action.
The next generation of field reporting
In covering national elections like this year's upcoming midterms, The Post sends teams to dozens of cities. Writers, photographers and videographers are poised to dispatch the information back to their editors in the newsroom as quickly as they can gather it.
Moving forward, this force of Post reporters will have another tool at their disposal. A new field reporting app, built by The Post's industry-leading digital experience platform Arc XP, will help reporters use 5G connectivity to bring audiences closer to the story faster than ever before.
Big news might happen anywhere. Capitol Hill, a state house in the South, or a polling location in the rural Midwest. But not every reporter will have a video crew on hand to capture it. And even if they do, not everyone will have a solid WiFi connection for transferring gigabytes of media back to the newsroom.
“You never know where that story is going to be. You can have photographers, videographers, audio team members in all of these far-flung places, but you never know where that moment is going to happen.”
Reporters from The Post’s Storytelling Lab are already putting the new field-reporting app through its paces. In October, reporters headed to football stadiums across the country — places where passions can run just as hot as they do in politics. Reporters captured energetic, off-the-cuff video interviews with swing state voters in advance of this year’s pivotal vote.
To quickly get this footage straight back to the newsroom, reporters are able to select video shot right on their phones and, in a tap, beam files straight to the content management system where Post stories get built, for their editors’ review.
Using a reporter’s phone to capture and transmit video back to the newsroom slashes the time it takes multimedia news stories to get news from the field to Post platforms. And that speed brings Post readers closer than ever to the experience.
Accelerating the newsroom workflow
On an average day, The Washington Post might publish over a thousand stories to its site. When the newsroom is covering a massive national event, that number might be much higher. And along with the usual photos, documents and data sheets, editors might be dealing with video files, interviews and B-roll that need to publish quickly to bring readers to the scene of the action.
In the past, editors have had to wrangle and organize multimedia content from numerous platforms. As the newsroom transitions to the new field reporting app, they will centralize this process, organizing photo and videos from reporters onto a single platform.
Accelerating the newsroom workflow
On an average day, The Washington Post might publish over a thousand stories to its site. When the newsroom is covering a massive national event, that number might be much higher. And along with the usual photos, documents and data sheets, editors might be dealing with video files, interviews and B-roll that need to publish quickly to bring readers to the scene of the action.
In the past, editors have had to wrangle and organize multimedia content from numerous platforms. As the newsroom transitions to the new field reporting app, they will centralize this process, organizing photo and videos from reporters onto a single platform.
Photo and video editors can receive media over the AT&T network into The Washington Post's newsroom. The newsroom, which has a distributed antenna system configured by AT&T to strengthen indoor 5G connectivity, houses video and photo editors who review and vet the content, publish it, and keep the nation up to speed.
“Getting a story to readers as it happens is expected maybe more now than ever. Creating that near real time experience relies on the flexibility, lower latency and higher throughput offered by 5G.”
Bringing readers
to the scene
The Post’s new field reporting app and AT&T 5G connectivity don’t just benefit reporters. They also give readers more of the kinds of experiences they’re looking for.
5G networks are increasingly enabling ultra-fast connectivity, which supports video streaming. For readers, more video can translate to more ways to experience the news, whether it’s experiencing an immersive campaign rally or a front-row seat at a music festival thousands of miles away. With its fast speeds, 5G is helping to create a sense of “being there.”
“If you're at the scene of an event, it's very useful for our audience to be able to see it happening as opposed to reading a description. The app is a quick way for reporters to bring our audience closer to the news, to have them feel that they're able to come along for the reporting experience.”
Bringing readers straight to the scene is also about building trust, according to Allen. It’s hard to refute events you feel you’ve seen firsthand. “People want to see for themselves what is happening,” she said. “The ability to provide that goes a long way in building trust with audiences.”
Building trust with firsthand
video reporting
Building trust has never been more important than it is today. A 2021 study by the Pew Research Center found that just about half of all Americans get news from social media. This is especially true for adults under 30, who said social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the main places they get their news. And on these platforms, close to half of users reported getting their news not from professional journalists and credible media sources, but from the accounts of politicians and political activists, influencers and peers.
News on social media moves at the speed of life. But in a swirling ecosystem of user-generated content with few barriers to entry and even fewer reviews for accuracy, media researchers and experts warn about the risks of misinformation and disinformation.
The Post’s new field-reporting app combines the unfiltered, firsthand news experience that digital natives expect with The Post’s editorial rigor and quality — the best of both worlds.
“This is an opportunity for us to bring people into our reporting, to bring people along and better connect them to the stories that really matter to them, that really matter to all of us.”