Anatomy of breaking news in southwest.

A double homicide happened Wednesday. I watched it closely because I have a friend who lives three blocks away. He was scouring the Internet all day for news so I helped him being the newspaper lover I am. Let’s see who pulled through the past two days.

Shocker of the week

The Valley News posts the first news of a double homicide with a small web post shortly past 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

(The Valley News will cover these stories on occasion and has the reporters to do so with Peter Surkowski, Tim O’Leary and Rocky Salmon) Salmon seemed to be on this one and I wonder how he heard about it. Somehow I don’t think the Valley News monitors scanners or keeps in constant contact with police.

The Cal wasn’t far behind with their own post with the same information less than an hour later.

The PE fired back with Tammy McCoy updates including comments and quotes from the field.

The following day stories between McCoy and John Hall were similar because the police were not talking. Hall did have color on a family member crying but I went over that already.

What happened Thursday afternoon?

The Valley News once again put up a new post and a new story that looked at the fear in the community.

The PE had one web update about investigators at the house. The Cal didn’t even bother with an update.

Then at about 5 p.m. the Valley news broke the first news in a bit, which was the name of the woman. And they also called her the victim’s wife.

I wonder if this means the PE and Cal have competition.

The Cal posted a new John Hall story at about 9 p.m. with the husband’s name and a ton of comments from a teenager named Jaime who didn’t want to give her name. His story read in similar fashion to the web story posted on the Valley News.

The PE had no updates but did have the most compelling new information in today’s paper which was written by McCoy and John Asbury. This one gives details as to why the Arson crew was there, the relationship between the two, an attempt to reach family members and an official saying neighbors could calm down because the killer was someone the victims knew.

After two days it was interesting, how these three papers fought it out and it was interesting that the Valley News was sticking its nose into the breaking news business. It also says something about the PE and the Cal that they were getting beat on web updates.

I bet the editors weren’t happy about that.

****UPDATE********

The PE and the Cal both had updates on the murders explaining an autopsy show they were shot in the head.

Both papers have not talked to family members and both have used anonymous sources to describe the Marine. No Nos in my book.

In fact the PE ran a photo. A photo that looks eerily similar to the MySpace page photo the guy has on his page (yes I once was a reporter so I do get curious and when I have free time will dig around—both Jan and Quiana had myspace pages).

Did the PE pull this off MySpace and call it a courtesy photo? If so that’s a big journalism no no.

Also briefly the Valley News faded from the scene which is understandable. Freelance reporters versus staff reporters will usually weigh in the favor of daily newspapers. I will now start to check the Valley News to see what they are doing. After all, it was Tim O’Leary who scooped the valley with his critical story on Council members tied to developers.