Let’s just say that last week was unprece­dented for us here in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Two bliz­zards, four days of can­celed classes and one destroyed out­door canopy later, things seem to be return­ing to nor­mal at Amer­i­can University.

The weather caused us to miss two print edi­tions, so the Web became cen­ter stage.

As Web Edi­tor at The Eagle, I con­tin­u­ously mon­i­tored Twit­ter and Face­book for signs of any news. I was orig­i­nally tipped off about the canopy story through Twit­ter, and we also learned about some snow-related per­sonal injuries through the snow as well.

We asked for user-generated con­tent on Twit­ter and Face­book, and got some great pic­tures as a result.

Our biggest news day was Wednes­day, when the canopy col­lapsed. Our read­ers were hun­gry for updates, and we tried to pro­vide those to them. Offi­cials who rarely talk to us at out­side of nor­mal work­ing hours were happy to talk to us — in the mid­dle of a bliz­zard — which sur­prised me

I also started doing rewrites of some metro news that came from other sources. It was good to have, but the traf­fic did not seem to agree with me.

But in clos­ing, my best advice is to have a Web plan going into a major news event. Know what your resources are. We were for­tu­nate to be given some advance notice, and were also able to ben­e­fit from not hav­ing classes, but that’s not always the case. Either way, think of cre­at­ing an “on duty” posi­tion — some­one respon­si­ble for keep­ing the blogs updated, keep­ing the art and home­page fresh and doing rewrites. Basi­cally a jack-of-all-trades.

And most of all have fun. Enjoy the increased traf­fic to your site, Twit­ter fol­low­ers and Face­book fans. Work­ing hard to cover a major event def­i­nitely pays off.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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