Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Former CNN'er Still on the Chase
As one of the original CNN'ers, Jeff Flock spent most of the past 25 years covering hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, snow storms. Flock never missed a big hurricane.
Flock retired from CNN a year or two back and is now chasing hurricanes full-time. You won't find him tv, just on the web, chasing the hurricanes LIVE at hurricanenow.com. I thought it would be interesting to go on the inside of Flock's new venture, so he answered a handful of questions for WHAC:* You and your staff at hurricanenow.com were put to test this past weekend with covering Hurricane Dennis. Did everything come off without a hitch? Flock: No it didn't, but then it never does in a hurricane. While i nearly got blown off the top of a parking garage and we soaked one of cameras and a few microphones, we did successfully transmit live through the worst of Hurricane Dennis. We also demonstrated we could broadcast live pictures from a moving car tracking the storm north from the coast through alabama which was very interesting to see.
* What are some of the differences experienced covering hurricanes for your website versus for CNN? Flock: I had some great experiences covering hurricanes on CNN...Andrew and Hugo and all the big storms of the past 20 years. While CNN has always been a reporter's network, hurricanenow is a hurricane reporter's dream since i can chose to go "live" on the web whenever the storm warrants. My reports can also go as long as i want since our goal is to be live throughout the storm, non-stop.
* What are some of the advantages do you and staff have over the cable news nets and The Weather Channel in covering the storms? Flock: We focus like a laser beam on the storm. If a terrorist attack occurs, as it did as dennis approached, the cable nets switched their focus, as they should have. We are all-storm, all the time. And while the nets have to pull the transmit dishes down on their expensive satellite trucks if winds get too high, we use technologies that allow us to keep transmitting. The quality of the pictures aren't as good but if you've got incredible things happening viewers are eager to see it. And we now have the ability to literally chase the storm live as it moves inland which is really groundbreaking. Most of the network coverage focuses on the coast. But the damage inland can be pretty amazing too. Despite that i think CNN had the absolute "moment" of Dennis with Anderson Cooper and John Zarrella's live experience as that sign came down. They really upheld the CNN tradition of memorable hurricane reporting.
* What kind of response has hurricanenow.com received? Flock: We got 30,000 new visitors during Hurricane Dennis. We've had more than 100,000 of our pages viewed and more than a million hits. People seem to be spending a lot of time on the site and have given us some great positive feedback. We also have people email us directly during the storm so viewers can literally ask me a question or tell me what they want to see and get a response almost immediately.
* Now that Hurricane Dennis is behind us, is your staff already looking and making plans for a possible Hurricane Emily? Flock: We have to be careful what we wish for at hurricanenow.com. While we wouldn't wish a storm on anyone this season has already been incredible and shows no signs of stopping. We'll grab some rest and be ready for Emily and whatever else comes. I used to have to compete with other CNN reporters who also wanted to cover hurricanes. Now i go on all of them, even when i could use some rest.
* And Jeff isn't chasing hurricanes by himself: Flock: Wanted to mention that hurricanenow also has on board former CNN National Assignment Editor Rob Hess and former CNN photographer Tom Casale.
# posted by ATN @ 12:08 PM 
