appening overnight at the Student Union at UNC Charlotte. It was either a fire or a gas leak or something. There were fire trucks shown parking outside the Union in the segment that I missed.Since I missed the entire story, but wanted to hear what happened, I went to the www.wsoctv.com website to hopefully read an accompanying article. However, there wasn't one.
I sent an email inquiry to the station, asking why there wasn't an article, because I felt there should be some consistency in their stories.
My response from Robin Whitmeyer, News Director was:
Our website (wsoctv.com) is not, nor will it be, a direct copy of every news item that we broadcast on television. We have to make editorial decisions on what the "web user" needs and not every news item will be posted. Since there were no injuries or health issues involved, this was not viewed as an item to be posted. Every day the editorial judgments are different- based on weather, news and traffic items.
Ouch. It sounds like Ms. Whitmeyer needs some customer service training. What crawled up her ass? Nor will it ever be? An interested viewer contacts the station looking for information about a news story that was broadcast and that's the kind of response one gets? If the "story" was important enough to warrant a broadcast on the morning news, including film footage, wouldn't it be important enough to put on the website, too? Obviously not.
This "web user's" needs were not met, so I guess there's no need for me to even visit the site unless I'm looking for information about an injury or death. For your information, Ms. Whitmeyer, there are other news stories of equal value and importance.
UPDATE: Thankfully, News Channel 14 was happy to post information about the incident on their website.
