Live chatting about Oklahoma news

Live chatting is not a new concept in journalism, but it’s one the NewsOK breaking news team is looking into using more.

You’re probably familiar with our sports team chatting with fans on the Sports page in a Cover It Live window. It’s a pretty simple way to communicate with readers and allow them to be part of the conversation.

Recently, the breaking news team has tried to use the chats as a way to provide real-time information. Sometimes roads and weather conditions will worsen before we can send a story through online. When that happens, we usually turn to social media or blogging to spread the word. Yesterday, we tried a weather chat about winter storm conditions and road closures in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

Although there were very few comments, the chat had a lot of readers following the timeline. This brings me to my point of this blog post. It’s actually more of a question, really.

When using live chats to cover breaking news, do you want a conversation with reporters, list of facts or a mixture of both?

Comment below and let us know what you think. Take a look at Monday’s chat and see if you think we should have been doing anything differently.

As the largest newspaper website in Oklahoma, we want to make sure we’re providing the information you want and how you want it online.

Thank you for joining our conversation on NewsOK Now. We encourage your discussion but ask that you stay within the bounds of our commenting and posting policy.