Covering the Boston Marathon – Live
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Spanning from the early morning start to the thrill of the finish line, multimedia journalism students in the Boston University News Service covered the Boston Marathon from all angles this year - live and in real time at the BUNS website.
In advance of "Marathon Monday," students wrote stories, produced an interactive graphic of the race course, and created an audio slideshow.
Then, on race day, students live blogged the entire race, tweeting and emailing in text updates, photos and videos. Photojournalism students uploaded pictures to BUNS' Flickr feed, while broadcast students worked on a video package showing how workers set up the big day. The stakes were real, with outlets like Patch.com and WCVB running selections from the students' work.
"This was truly a multimedia team effort involving multiple classes and students, including one sophomore who showed up on my doorstep and wanted to get on board," said Michelle Johnson, a professor of journalism at COM.
The results, Johnson said, paid off. "We also got props from Jason Tuohey, Boston.com [editor], who was impressed that we're teaching students how to cover events live online this way," she said.
